Marsworth

Due to the presence of Marsworth, Bulbourne and Pitstone quarries in the parish, many early artefacts have been found. Some fossilized animal bone, probably about 140-170,000 years old, was found in the lowest gravel deposits of Pitstone Quarry and Palaeolithic flint flakes have been found in Marsworth quarry. Later prehistoric material has also been found, such as Neolithic to Bronze Age flints near Bulbourne Quarry, and Late Iron Age to Roman features (a possible farmstead, Roman house and corn-drying kiln) in Pitstone Quarry. Ploughed fields in the parish have revealed Bronze Age flints and Roman and medieval pottery. Roman finds near and in the canal over the last few centuries suggests a Roman building there too, possibly even a villa. An enclosure of an unknown date, but possibly prehistoric or Roman, is known from aerial photographs south-east of College Farm.

Come the medieval period, there are many more historical documents. The medieval manor of Marsworth with Goldington is recorded, as is the separate manor of De La Hay. There are also eleventh to sixteenth century records of a watermill on Nottimore Brook. All Saints church is the oldest building. What was a twelfth century nave was turned into an aisle when the fourteenth century nave was built. The tower dates to the eighteenth century. Two fifteenth to sixteenth century brass palimpsests can be found inside the church, as can the seventeenth century tomb of Edmund West, now used as an altar. The only other building that may incorporate late medieval fabric is the Red Lion pub, which seems to be a nineteenth century remodelling of a fifteenth century house.

There are earthworks that date to the medieval period as well. A possible medieval or post-medieval house platform and other earthworks can be found at Manor and Church Farms. Medieval to post-medieval wall foundations and fishpond are known at Marsworth Great Farm. The old great house is known to have been there but was demolished in the eighteenth century. Excavations found some artefactual remains and a moat.

Several of the later listed buildings date to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Old Manor is a sixteenth century timber-framed building with later extensions. Many of the nineteenth century constructions relate to the canal, such as the locks, bridges, lock keeper’s houses, canal offices and workshops and the Grand Union Canal itself, built over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are also characterised by mills, a paper mill at Startop’s End recorded on an eighteenth century map and in nineteenth century records and another steam-mill in the parish.

Cheddington airfield is actually in Marsworth. It was used by the RAF and then the USAAF in the Second World War and is a monument for the twentieth century.