Hogshaw

A Roman road is thought to pass through Hogshaw, but not much Roman material has been found, apart from the 2nd to 3rd century pottery and tile found in a fieldwalking survey at Sion Hill Farm, which suggests the site of a building there. A possible Anglo-Saxon cemetery was found in the 19th century on ‘Hogshaw Hill’. The precise location of this hill is not known as its name seems to have changed.

Hogshaw was part of Bernwood Forest. Bernwood had been a hunting forest from the time of Edward the Confessor. It grew to its largest extent under Henry II. The whole area was not covered by woods; in the medieval period a forest was a place where deer roamed for hunting and so included open land, villages and fields. All those who lived in the forest were not allowed to hunt or even gather wood without a special licence from the king. Bernwood Forest was finally disafforested in the reign of James I in 1635, although it had been shrinking in size since the time of King John (1199-1216).

There were several manors in Hogshaw. Hogshaw Manor, of course, and also Fulbrook Huett, centred at the moat at Fulbrook Farm. The farmhouse itself dates to the 16th and 17th centuries. There are also earthworks of a medieval village around Fulbrook that was later deserted and there are records that it had its own windmill. Hogshaw has shrunk since the medieval period as well. An excavation carried out in 2003 uncovered eight medieval buildings fronting the still surviving road and a possible pottery kiln south of the church. The village is recorded as having been depopulated in the period 1450-87 as the landlord enclosed the farmland and converted it to pasture for sheep. That is why so much ridge-and-furrow survives so well around Hogshaw and Fulbrook as it was not ploughed after the 15th century until very recently.

This excavation also found two substantial stone walls of the possible Knights Hospitallers Commandery that seems to have been established in 1180 during the reign of Henry II and dissolved long before the Dissolution in the late 15th century. Some medieval moulded limestone probably from this monastery was found reused in a nearby barn. The monastery is known to have had a dovecote and windmill in the 14th century, though their exact site has not been found. A double-moated site may be associated with this monastery, or with a medieval manor house. There is one record of a possible monastic cell for the Sisters of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in Hogshaw ,dissolved in 1180, probably for the foundation of the Knight’s Hospitallers Commandery, but its location is unknown.

Unlike many other parishes, the church is not the oldest building. The medieval parish church, dedicated to St John the Baptist, was partially destroyed during the Civil War and then demolished in the 18th century. One of the latest changes to the parish was the Aylesbury to Buckingham railway, opened in 1868 and run by various railway companies over the years. It was closed in 1936 as it was unprofitable and then reopened at the end of the Second World War for three years but then closed again. Cuttings and bridges can still be seen.