Great and Little Kimble
Coordinates: 51°44′47″N 0°48′18″W / 51.7464°N 0.8051°W
| Great and Little Kimble | |
 Great Kimble Church |
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 Great and Little Kimble
Great and Little Kimble shown within Buckinghamshire |
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| Population | 960 [1] |
|---|---|
| OS grid reference | SP824065 |
| District | Wycombe |
| Shire county | Buckinghamshire |
| Region | South East |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | AYLESBURY |
| Postcode district | HP17 |
| Dialling code | 01296 |
| Police | Thames Valley |
| Fire | Buckinghamshire |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| EU Parliament | South East England |
| UK Parliament | Aylesbury |
| List of places: UK • England • Buckinghamshire | |
Great and Little Kimble is now a civil parish in Wycombe District, Buckinghamshire. It comprises the ancient ecclesiastical parishes of Great Kimble and Little Kimble and also the medieval Manors which had the same names. The two separate parishes were amalgamated in 1885, but kept their separate churches, St Nicholas for Great Kimble and All Saints for Little Kimble. They fell within the Hundred of Stone (one of the Three Hundreds of Aylesbury). They lie between Monks Risborough on the south and Ellesborough on the north and like other parishes on the north side of the Chilterns wera strip parishes, long and narrow, including a section of the scarp and extending into the vale below. The village of Great Kimble lies about 5.5 miles (9 km) south of Aylesbury and 2.5 miles (4.0 km) from Princes Risborough on the A4010 road.
There is an Iron Age hillfort at the summit of Pulpit Hill in Great Kimble. Later,during the Roman occupation of Britain there was a Roman villa at Little Kimble and a barrow near Great Kimble church is probably from the same period. In Norman times a motte and bailey castle was erected at Little Kimble and later developed into a moated site for a medieval dwellinghouse. The present churches of St Nicholas (Great Kimble) and All Saints (Little Kimble) date from the 13th century, but their fonts are probably from earlier churches. Traditionally it was here that John Hampden refused to pay his ship-money in 1535, one of the incidents whch led to the English Civil War.
In addition to Great Kimble and Little Kimble the parish contains the hamlets of Kimblewick and Marsh. An area within Great Kimble is called Smokey Row.
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[edit] The origin and meaning of the name Kimble
The name is first found in Anglo-Saxon times when it appeared as cyne belle, which corresponds to two Anglo-Saxon words, cyne meaning 'royal' and belle which is the modern word 'bell'.[2]
(The apparent similarity to the name Cymbeline led (probably in Victorian times) to a theory that the name was derived from his name. This has no basis in fact. Cymbeline (as Shakespeare called him), whose exact name is unknown but which was spelt by the Romans as Cunobelinus, was the leader of the tribe known as the Cassivellauni from about 4 BC to about 41 AD. His tribe occupied part of southern Britain at that time, which was about 800 years before the name first appeared, with 400 years of Roman occupation and several invasions from Europe in the intervening period).[3]
The exact reason for calling the place cyne belle is not certain. Mawer and Stenton, who published their book on the Place Names of Buckinghamshire in 1925, thought that belle could have meant a hill as well as a bell and suggested that the conspicuous hill at Kimble would have impressed itself on the minds of the first settlers and might have been called 'royal' as the largest visible hill in the locality or that it earned the epithet by reason of some royal burial or other unknown event.[4]
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, first published in 1951, thought that the name implied "Royal bell-shaped hill" and the later Oxford Companion to Names (2002) also gives that as the meaning.[5]
The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place Names (2004) gives the translation "Royal Bell, the bell-shaped hill" and says that it is derived from the Old English cyne + belle, probably used as a place-name, and that the reference is to the prominent Pulpit Hill crowned with its hillfort, suggesting that 'royal' referred to Great Kimble for distinction from Little Kimble.[6]
Not all these explanations are completely convincing and there may be more to be said.[7] The precise nature of the Royal Bell in the minds of the inhabitants of Kimble in the 9th century or earlier remains something of a mystery. It must be remembered that Pulpit Hill (or part of it) might then have been unwooded open grassland,[8] which would have made the shape of the hill more apparent from below and the hillfort on the summit (already a thousand years old) would in that case have been clearly visible and impressive and might well have been thought to be a royal castle.
[edit] Education
Ladymede School, an independent co-educational school, is located in Little Kimble.[9] It has a capacity of just over 100 day students from ages 3–11.[10]
[edit] Notable alumni
[edit] Transport
The main A4010 road cuts straight through the middle of Little Kimble, as does the Chiltern railway line between Aylesbury and Princes Risborough. Where the main road and the railway meet there is Little Kimble railway station, which has been in operation since 1872. The same railway line also bypasses Marsh, where there is a level crossing.
[edit] References
[edit] Books
- Barker, Louise: Pulpit Hill, Great and Little Kimble, Buckinghamshire (English Heritage Archaeological Investigation Report series AI/16/2001) (English Heritage. 2001)
- Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names based on the collections of the English Place-Name Society, ed:Victor Watts (Cambridge University Press. 2004)
- Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, ed: Eilert Ekwal (Oxford University Press. 1951)
- Domesday Book vol 13 Buckinghamshire. Text & translation edited by John Morris (Phillimore, Chichester. 1978)
- Lipscomb, George: The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham (London. 1847)
- Mawer, A. and Stenton, F.M: The Place Names of Buckinghamshire (Cambridge, 1925)
- Oxford Companion to Names, ed:, Patrick Hanks, Flavia Hodges, A. D. Mills and Adrian Room (Oxford University Press. 2002)
- Pevsner, Nikolaus & Elizabeth Williamson: Buckinghamshire (The Buildings of England - Penguin Books. 2nd edition. 1994)
- RCHMB = Royal Commission on Historical Monuments (England): An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Buckinghamshire, Volume 1 (1912)
- VHCB = Victoria History of the County of Buckingham, Volume 2, ed: William Page F.S.A. (1908)
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Neighbourhood Statisitcs 2001 Census". http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=792152&c=Great+and+Little+Kimble&d=16&e=15&g=425253&i=1001x1003x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1216423295135&enc=1&dsFamilyId=779. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
- ^ Mawer & Stenton p.13
- ^ Lipscomb Vol.2 p.341 mentioned it as a conjecture in 1847
- ^ Mawer & Stenton p.13
- ^ Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names under 'Kimble'. Oxford Dictionary of Names - Place Name Section - p.1093
- ^ Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names under Kimble, Bucks
- ^ Mawer & Stenton (p.13) thought certainty was not possible.
- ^ Barker p.17
- ^ "Welcome to Ladymede". Ladymede School. 2010. http://www.ladymedeschool.bucks.sch.uk/. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
- ^ "Ladymede School". Independent Schools Directory. 2010. http://www.independentschools.com/england/ladymede-school_1696.html. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
- ^ Howard-Gordon, Frances (22 December 2007). "Obituary: Arabella Churchill". The Guardian. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/politicsobituaries/story/0,,2231474,00.html. Retrieved 2010-09-11.
[edit] External links
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