Marsh Gibbon

Marsh Gibbon is a village and civil parish in Aylesbury Vale district in Buckinghamshire, England. It is close to the A41 and the border with Oxfordshire about 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Bicester.

Marsh Gibbon
A view of the village
Marsh Gibbon Location within Buckinghamshire
Population	969 (2011 Census)[1]
OS grid reference	SP645235
Unitary authority	Buckinghamshire
Ceremonial county	Buckinghamshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Bicester
Postcode district	OX27
Dialling code	01869
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Buckinghamshire
Ambulance	South Central
UK Parliament	Buckingham

The village name comes from the English word 'marsh', describing the typical state of land in the area due to the high water table of the Aylesbury Vale. The affix 'Gibbon' derives from the family name 'Gibwen', the lords of the manor here in the twelfth century. In manorial rolls of 1292 the village was recorded as Mersh Gibwyne, though earlier (in 1086) it was known simply as Merse.

One of the two entries in the Domesday Book for the village is unique in having the only comment of any kind, namely "Graviter et miserabiliter". In translation the complete entry reads:

Ailric held it in King Edward's time but now holds in farm of William heavily and miserably.

Ailric's manor, now named Westbury Manor, was given by King Edward IV to the Company of Cooks in London, though it has since been sold into private hands.[2]

The second manor was the property of the abbey of Grestein in Normandy, France. However, in 1365 this was seized by the Crown because it belonged to a foreign church. In 1437 it was granted to an almshouse trust founded at Ewelme in Oxfordshire. In 1617 James I granted the Mastership of the Ewelme Trust to the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford in whose hands it remains today. Its manor house is Elizabethan and situated just south of the thirteenth-century church and about 200 metres from Westbury Manor to the West.

Following a skirmish at Hillesden in 1645, the parliamentarian troops were garrisoned here in Marsh Gibbon before marching on to Boarstall. The ground works of their encampment were visible in the field to northwest of the Ewelme manor house but have since been flattened in the late 1950s.

To the east of the village is the hamlet of Little Marsh and to the south east is the hamlet of Summerstown.

The parish church of Marsh Gibbon is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. Robert Clavering, who later became the Bishop of Peterborough, was the rector from 1719.[3] The village has two pubs, the Greyhound and the Plough, and one shop comprising a post office and general store.

North of the village and just outside Poundon, is Tower Hill Business Park. This was previously Poundon Hill Wireless Station, a FCO/MI6 signals intelligence station. [4]

Marsh Gibbon Church of England School is a mixed, voluntary aided primary school, with approximately 100 pupils. It takes children from the age of four through to the age of eleven.

References

1. Neighbourhood Statistics 2011 Census Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine, Accessed 3 February 2013
2. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62568#s2
3. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. 2004. Missing or empty |title= (help)
4. Turnbull, Alan (24 August 2006). ""Secret Bases" Part 1". Pagliacci Productions Limited. Retrieved 30 August 2006.