Little Kimble
| Little Kimble | |
| Buckinghamshire | |
|---|---|
 All Saints Church, Little Kimble | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SP823069 |
| Location: | 51°45’20"N, -0°48’30"W |
| Data | |
| Post town: | Aylesbury |
| Postcode: | HP17 |
| Dialling code: | 01296 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Buckinghamshire |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Aylesbury |
Little Kimble is a village in Buckinghamshire, at the foot of the Chiltern escarpment in Buckinghamshire, located five miles south of the county town, Aylesbury, and to the north of Great Kimble (with which it sharesd a civil parish ('Great and Little Kimble cum Marsh').
The main A4010 road runs through Great and Little Kimble, as does the Chiltern railway line between Aylesbury and Princes Risborough. Where the main road meets the railway is Little Kimble railway station, which has been in operation since 1872, although the station buildings are now a private dwelling. There is a level crossing at Marsh.
The parishes of Little and Great Kimble lie between Monks Risborough and Ellesborough and, like other parishes on the north side of the Chilterns, were strip parishes, long and narrow, including a section of the scarp and extending into the vale below.
During the Roman occupation of Britain there was a Roman villa at Little Kimble and a tumulus near Great Kimble church is probably a burial mound from the same period. In Norman times a motte and bailey castle was erected at Little Kimble and later developed into a moated site for a mediæval dwellinghouse.
Churches
The Church of England parish church is All Saints Church.
A church with chancel and nave existed before the mid-13th century, when the chancel was widened and the chancel arch inserted. The larger window and lowside window in the north wall of the chancel are early 14th century. The north and south porches and the doors and windows of the nave date from the early to mid 14th century.
There is a simple font of the late12th or early 13th century and in the chancel are 13th century mediæval tiles of Chertsey Abbey type (possibly obtained from the ruins of Chertsey Abbey).
The interior has a remarkable mediæval survival; it is decorated with the remains of early 14th century wall paintings, most of which appear to have represented saints. They include St Francis preaching to the birds and a large figure of St George, but not all can be identified. There seems to have been a doom on the west wall, where a devil is pushing two women into the mouth of Hell.
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Free Church
There is a small chapel in the Tudor style, built in 1922, to the west of the railway bridge at Little Kimble.
Roman Villa and burial mound
At Little Kimble on the east side of the church are indications of the site of a Roman villa. Foundations, wall plaster, tesselated floors, tiles, coins and pottery have been found there over the past two hundred years, but it has never been properly excavated in modern times.[1]
It would have been the dwelling of a substantial land owner farming a fair-sized estate, probably surrounded by the principal farm buildings. Villas are more common on the south side of the Chilterns, but there are seven or eight along the north side below the scarp, of which this is one. (There was another at Saunderton). Surplus produce would have been sold at Verulamium (St Albans).[2]
A barrow or funeral mound lies on the west side of Great Kimble church, adjoining the churchyard and fronting on Church Lane. It is known as Dial Hill (from the sundial formerly erected above it) and is believed to date from the Roman period, but has not been properly excavated, although there were limited amateur investigations in 1887 and 1950. It is scheduled as an ancient monument by English Heritage and their description suggests that it might have held the body of the occupant of the Roman villa.[3]
History
Before the Norman Conquest in 1066, both Great Kimble and Little Kimble were owned by royal thegns; Sired at Great Kimble and Brictric at Little Kimble. Both were dispossessed by the new king, William the Bastard.
Little Kimble (Chenebelle parva) was granted to Thurston son of Rolf, who subinfeudated it to one Albert.
About the village
Behind the church at Little Kimble to the east are mounds and banks in the grass which are all that remain of a motte and bailey castle, of the sort built in great numbers by the Normans soon after the conquest. The motte is still 15 feet high. There are the remains of two separate baileys, but the layout is not easy to recognise on the ground.
Outside links
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("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Little Kimble) |
References
- ↑ RCHM Volume 1 p. 164,(3)
- ↑ Keith Branigan: 'The Impact of Rome' in Archaeology of the Chilterns pp. 102–09
- ↑ National Heritage List 1017512: Burial mound at Great Kimble
- Archaeology of the Chilterns from the Ice Age to the Norman Conquest. The; edited by Keith Branigan (Chess Valley Architectural & Historical Society. 1994)
- Armitage, Ella S.: The Norman Castles of the British Isles (London. 1912)
- Domesday Book vol 13 Buckinghamshire. Text & translation edited by John Morris (Phillimore, Chichester. 1978)
- Lipscomb, George: 'The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham' (2 volumes. London. 1847)
- Mawer, A. & Stenton, F.M.: 'Place-Names of Buckinghamshire
, Part' (English Place-Names Society, 1925)
- Oxford Companion to Names, ed:, Patrick Hanks, Flavia Hodges, A. D. Mills and Adrian Room (Oxford University Press. 2002)
- Nikolaus Pevsner: The Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire, 1960; 1994 Penguin Books ISBN 978-0-300-09584-5
- RCHMB=Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England): An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Buckinghamshire, Volume 1 (1912)
- A History of the County of Buckingham - Volume 2 : {{{2}}} (Victoria County History)