Chilton

The oldest archaeological site in Chilton parish is an Iron Age settlement east of Chilton Grove. This was excavated in the course of two pipelines, one the Southern Feeder and the other a parallel pipeline from Aylesbury to Chalgrove. A pit and several ditches were discovered, suggesting perhaps the edge of a settlement. The oldest artefacts found were a Mesolithic to Early Bronze Age flint blade, also found along the Southern Feeder pipeline and a Mesolithic blade found in allotments on Brill Road.

A little Roman pottery has been found around the parish, for instance in ditch-digging south of Wombwell Farm, in a stream north-west of Westfield Farm and during the construction of the school.

Both Chilton and Easington (Hesintone) were recorded in Domesday, were separate manors and were 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).

Easington was bigger in the medieval period and medieval village earthworks can be seen on aerial photographs around the present hamlet. There is also a local tradition that Easington had a chapel in the medieval period. A 19^th century map records a field named Millway near Lower (Easington) Farm, in which there was a mound that could have supported a windmill, but it has since been levelled. A piece of millstone was found nearby.

In Chilton, a medieval moat is known from aerial photographs south-east of Hornage Farm. The oldest standing building in Chilton is St Mary’s church, built or rebuilt in the 13^th century and restored in 1907. Some of the secular buildings in Chilton also date to the medieval period, such as Wheelwrights, a timber-framed hall-house with 16^th century additions south-west of the church. Others date to the 17^th and 18^th centuries, like Hornage Farm, White Cottage and The Thatch.

John Croke, the lord of the manor in the early 16^th century, designed his own gardens around 1529. This became part of Chilton Park. When Chilton Park was enclosed as a deer park in the 16^th century (c. 1544), a hunting lodge was built. This was later altered in the 18^th century and is now Chilton Park Farm. A map of Chilton House grounds from the 18^th century records a pond, which can still be seen south-east of the house and may have been used for breeding fish or ducks. Chilton House itself is 16^th but was enlarged and altered in about 1740. There are 17^th and 18^th century records of a dovecote and malt-house at the house.

There is field-name evidence that there was a brickworks at Chilton Grounds Farm in the post-medieval period and there are records of extraction pits in the playing fields and south of the old vicarage in the 19^th and early 20^th century.