Quarrendon

The following reference sources have been used in the construction of this page, and may be referred to for further detail. Most if not all of these volumes are available in the Reference section of the County Library in Aylesbury.

"History and Topography of Buckinghamshire", Sheahan, James Joseph, 1862
"Magna Britannia: Buckinghamshire", Lysons S. and Lysons D., 1806.
"The Place-Names of Buckinghamshire", Mawer A. and Stenton F.M., 1925.
"The Victoria History of the Counties of England: Buckinghamshire", Page W. ed., 1905-1928

In 1798 the Posse Comitatus listed 12 men between the ages of 16 and 60 in Quarrendon.

In the earliest government census of 1801, there were 55 inhabitants in 0 families living in 0 houses recorded in Quarrendon.

* = No names were recorded in census documents from 1801 to 1831.
** = Census documents from 1911 to 2001 are only available in summary form. Names are witheld under the 100 year rule.

Microfilm copies of all census enumerators' notebooks for 1841 to 1891 are held at the Local Studies Libraries at Aylesbury and Milton Keynes, as well as centrally at the PRO. A table of 19th century census headcount by parish is printed in the VCH of Bucks, Vol.2, pp 96-101.

Availability of census transcripts and indexes.

• 1851 - Full transcripts and indexes for Buckinghamshire are available on CD-ROM, hard copy and microfiche from the Buckinghamshire Family History Society.
• 1861 - Available on CD-ROM with advanced search and mapping capabilities etc. from the Buckinghamshire Genealogical Society.
• 1881
  • Available on CD-ROM from the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as part of the National 1881 Census Index.
  • Available on CD-ROM for Buckinghamshire, with advanced search and mapping capabilities etc. from Drake Software.
• 1891 - Available on CD-ROM with advanced search and mapping capabilities etc. from the Buckinghamshire Genealogical Society.

The are no parish registers for Quarrendon, the parish church having been a ruin for many centuries.

• Buckinghamshire Church Photos by Kevin Quick.

• Geograph
• Flickr

• Ask for a calculation of the distance from Quarrendon to another place.

Quarrendon was described in 1806 in "Magna Britannia" as follows:

QUARENDON, in the hundred of Aylesbury and deanery of Wendover, lies about two miles to the north-west of Aylesbury. The great storm of 1570 was so destructive at this place that Sir Henry Lee is said to have lost 3000 sheep, besides horses and other cattle. The manor of Quarendon was anciently in the family of Fizjohn, from whom it descended by female heirs to the Beauchamps. On the attainder of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, it was granted, in 1397, to Thomas Mowbray, afterwards Duke of Norfolk; and on his attainder, which followed soon afterwards, became again vested in the crown. In 1512, it was granted to Robert Lee esq. whose family (being a younger branch of the Lees, or Leas, of Lee a township of Wibunbury in the county of Chester) had been seated at Quarendon as early as the year 1460, and had been for some time lessees under the crown. Sir Edward Henry Lee was created Viscount Quarendon and Earl of Litchfield, in 1674. The title became extinct in 1776, by the death of the Earl of Litchfield, the last heir male of the Lees of Quarendon. The manor was sold by his representative, Lord Dillon in 1802, to James Dupré esq. of Wilton park, in this county. The ancient seat of the Lees at Quarendon, was pulled down in the early part of the last century.

St. Peter's chapel in Quarendon, which was an appendage to Bierton, was founded by John Farnham about the year 1392. In Queen Elizabeth's time it was rebuilt by Sir Henry Lee: it has been many years disused, and is now much dilapidated. The costly monuments of the Lees are in a very mutilated state, and hastening to total decay: the most remarkable are those of Sir Anthony Lee, who was knight of the shire and died about the year 1550, and that of his son Sir Henry, who died in 1611. The effigies of Sir Henry Lee is in gilt armour: his epitaph is printed in Collins's Peerage. Sir Henry Lee's lady, who was a daughter of the first Lord Paget, died in 1584, and lies buried at Aylesbury, where is a monument to her memory: after her death he cohabited with a lady of the name of Vavasor, who was buried at Quarendon; where there was formerly a monument to her memory, with her effigies and the following inscription:

 

"Under this stone entombed lies a fair and worthy dame,
Daughter to Henry Vavasor, Ann Vavasor her name:
She living with Sir Henry Lee for love, long time did dwell;
Death could not part them, but here they rest within one cell."

This monument was defaced after Sir Henry Lee's death, as appears by some church notes taken early in the seventeenth century, which were in the library of James West esq.

There are no vestiges of the hospital mentioned in Sir Henry Lee's epitaph. The village of Quarendon is much depopulated, and now contains little more than 50 inhabitants: it is esteemed a separate parish although its chapel was dependant on Bierton.

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference SP806158 (Lat/Lon: 51.835005, -0.831653), Quarrendon which are provided by:

• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps
• StreetMap (Current Ordnance Survey maps)
• Bing (was Multimap)
• Old Maps Online
• National Library of Scotland (Old Ordnance Survey maps)
• Vision of Britain (Click "Historical units & statistics" for administrative areas.)
• English Jurisdictions in 1851 (Unfortunately the LDS have removed the facility to enable us to specify a starting location, you will need to search yourself on their map.)
• Magic (Geographic information) (Click + on map if it doesn't show)
• GeoHack (Links to on-line maps and location specific services.)

• All places within the same township/parish shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby townships/parishes shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby places shown on an Openstreetmap map.

The name of Quarrendon derives from the old english cweorn + dun and means 'mill-hill'.