Ilmer is a village in Buckinghamshire at the foot of the Chiltern Hills about northwest of Princes Risborough, near the boundary with Oxfordshire. It is in the

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

of Longwick-cum-Ilmer.

Toponym

The village

toponym Toponymy, toponymics, or toponomastics is the study of '' toponyms'' (proper names of places, also known as place names and geographic names), including their origins, meanings, usage and types. Toponym is the general term for a proper name of ...

is derived from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th c ...

for 'Ylla's boundary', referring to the ancient boundary with Oxfordshire. The

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manus ...

of 1086 records the village as ''Imere''.

Parish church

The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

of the Church of England parish church of

Saint Peter ) (Simeon, Simon) , birth_date = , birth_place = Bethsaida, Gaulanitis, Syria, Roman Empire , death_date = Between AD 64–68 , death_place = probably Vatican Hill, Rome, Italia, Roman Empire , parents = John (or Jonah; Jona) , occupat ...

dates from the 12th century. In the 14th century the

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

was rebuilt and a south

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...

was added to the nave. In the 16th century the timber-framed and weatherboarded

bellcote A bellcote, bell-cote or bell-cot is a small framework and shelter for one or more bells. Bellcotes are most common in church architecture but are also seen on institutions such as schools. The bellcote may be carried on brackets projecting from ...

was added to the west end of the building. In 1662 the south transept was demolished. The building was restored in 1859–60 under the direction of the Oxford Diocesan architect,

G.E. Street George Edmund Street (20 June 1824 – 18 December 1881), also known as G. E. Street, was an English architect, born at Woodford, London, Woodford in Essex. Stylistically, Street was a leading practitioner of the Gothic Revival architecture, Vi ...

. The bellcote has three bells, all of them cast by bellfounders from

Reading, Berkshire Reading ( ) is a town and borough in Berkshire, Southeast England, southeast England. Located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the rivers River Thames, Thames and River Kennet, Kennet, the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 mot ...

. The tenor was cast in about 1500, probably by William Hasylwood. William Knight cast the second bell in 1568 and Henry Knight cast the treble in 1618. St Peter's is a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

Railway history

In 1899–1905 the

Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway The Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway was a railway built and operated jointly by the Great Western Railway (GWR) and Great Central Railway (GCR) between Northolt (in north west London) and Ashendon Junction (west of Aylesbury). It was ...

was built through the parish. In 1906 was opened on the line to serve the village. British Railways closed the halt in 1963. The railway remains open as part of the Chiltern Main Line from London. In 1968, a scene from Albert R. Broccoli's ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'' was filmed along the railway line in which the Baron Bomburst's spies capture the wrong car with Lord Scrumptious inside. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Wikipedia: Locations; Railway Bridge

Toponym

Parish church

Railway history

Sources

References

External links