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A Summary History of the Parish
by John Chenevix Trench
In the last quarter of the sixth century, two groups of English
settlers moved up into the Chilterns. One of them came from the
Thames Valley; they were Middle Saxons. The other group, composed of
Angles, had conquered a Roman British community in the Vale of
Aylesbury. Advancing into the hills from both sides, Angle and Saxon
met on what became the boundary of the Chiltern Hundreds. The
Chiltern Hundreds were the Chiltern territory of the Kingdom of
Middlesex. The English did not displace the British; they needed
them to work the land.
The land was all forest, valuable not just for timber, but for
grazing. Some Angles near Tring established grazing rights in what
is now Coleshill. They had a priceless asset, a reliable water
supply: our village pond. They called the place 'Stock', meaning a
cattle farm, and it bore this name throughout the middle ages.
Soon after the year 900 south-west Hertfordshire was conquered by
Danes. The Danish Lord of Tring rewarded his followers with the
empty forest grazing grounds of his new property. So the first
farmers came to Coleshill, and they were Danes. The process was
perfectly peaceful; there was no bloody battle on Core Hill. Core
means a triangular piece of land.
The settlers wanted to have disputes settled according to Danish
law. The court where such cases were heard was the Hundred Court. So
Coleshill was attached to the nearest Danish Hundred: Dacorum in
Herts,
At the time of Domesday Book (1086) there were eight farmers in
Coleshill. But the area under cultivation was expanding, and by
around 1200 the plough had reached the southern boundary of the
township.
Meanwhile Brentford Grange was the centre of a hamlet of three
households, probably with 30 or 40 acres each (12 - 16 ha). The name
is from Old English Bra(y)gen, the brain-case or top of the head,
applied to a hill, and firth, meaning an extensive wood.
About 1155 Coleshill and Amersham were given to William de
Mandeville, Earl of Essex. The Earl gave Coleshill to sub-tenants
and they in turn had sub-sub-tenants: a local family, the de la
Stocks, held most of the land west of what became the A355, and
another, the de Braynfords, what lay to the east.
The de la Stocks divided their part of the manor about 1220. By 1300
its land had become part of the manor of Amersham.
It's western half was acquired about 1450, by the Brudenells. They
held it until the late 16th century, when it passed by marriage to
Sir Basil Brooke. In the early 1500s it was let to Francis Waller of
Beaconsfield. Francis was succeeded by his brother Edmund, and he by
his son Robert, father of Edmund the poet (b. 1607). In 1616 Brooke
sold the place to a lawyer called George Coleshill, who sold off the
land and built three new farmhouses, which still exist. He wanted to
live in the village that bore his name, but not in the manor house,
which was too old-fashioned for him. The eastern manor house was
also old-fashioned, but its owners were keen to sell, and Coleshill
took a long lease and rebuilt it. His house is the Bowers Farm we
see today. What was left of the manor passed to a succession of
local tradesmen.
A full copy of ‘A Short History of Coleshill’ by local historian
John Chenevix-Trench is available price £2.00 - proceeds to The All
Saints'’ Harvest Charity
About the Author:
John Chenevix Trench was a well known figure in Coleshill having
lived here for 50 years. He was a well-respected local historian and
antiquarian who pursued painstaking academic research into ancient
archives, many of these in Latin, and has published many scholarly
works, including his Short History of Coleshill from which this
extract is taken. |
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