Dinton, Buckinghamshire Family History Guide

Dinton is an Ancient Parish in the county of Buckinghamshire.

Other places in the parish include: Waldridge, Upton, Moreton, Ford, and Aston Mollins.

Alternative names: Dinton with Ford and Upton, Donnington

Parish church: St. Peter and St. Paul

Parish registers begin:

Parish registers: 1560
Bishop’s Transcripts: 1600

Nonconformists include: Baptist, General Baptist, Independent/Congregational, and Wesleyan Methodist.

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Adjacent Parishes

Parish History

The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales 1870

DINTON, a village and a parish in Aylesbury district, Bucks. The village stands near the river Thame, 4 ½ miles SW of Aylesbury.

The parish includes also the hamlets of Aston-Mollins, Ford, Upton, and Waldridge, and the liberty of Moreton; and its post town is Stone, under Aylesbury. Acres, 4,100. Rated property, £5,396. Pop., 814. Houses, 191. The property is divided among a few.

The manor-house, recently restored, and now the resideuce of the Goodall family, retains portions of an edifice of the time of Edward the Confessor; was built chiefly by Archbishop Warham, in the time of Henry VIII.; was inhabited by Oliver Cromwell, at the time of Charles I. being at Oxford; belonged to Simon Mayne, the regicide; is associated with the name of James Bigg, “The Dinton hermit,” whom tradition alleges to have been the decapitator of Charles; and possesses curious relics of Cromwell, Mayne, and Bigg, also a fine Anglo-Saxon glass and a jug of Edward IV. dug up in the neighbourhood.

The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford. Value, £529. Patron, the Lord Chancellor. The church is ancient; has a south door with spirally shafted pillars and a very curiously sculptured arch; contains a circular Norman font; and is very good.

There are chapels for Baptists and Wesleyans.

Source: The Imperial Gazetteer of England & Wales [Wilson, John M]. A. Fullarton & Co. N. d. c. [1870-72].

A Topographical Dictionary of England 1848

DINTON (St. Peter and St. Paul), a parish, in the union, and chiefly in the hundred, of Aylesbury, and partly in the hundred of Desborough, county of Buckingham, 4½ miles (W. S. W.) from Aylesbury; comprising the hamlets of Aston-Mollins, Ford, Upton, and Waldridge, and the liberty of Moreton; and containing 818 inhabitants.

The ancient mansion of Dinton Hall was probably erected by William de Wareham, Archbishop of Canterbury, his name, and his arms quartered with those of the see of Canterbury, frequently occurring in the old painted-glass windows. It was afterwards the seat of Sir Simon Mayne, one of the regicides of Charles I., from whose family it passed in 1727 to the Vanhattems, who came to England with William, at the Revolution; from these latter the estate was conveyed, by marriage with their heiress, to the family of Goodall.

The Vanhattems brought over with them from Holland to this country a small but valuable collection of pictures, chiefly by the first masters of the Dutch school; now in the possession of the Goodalls.

The parish comprises 4000 acres, about three-fifths of which are arable, and the rest pasture: the soil is in some parts a deep rich loam, and in others gravel alternated with clay; the substrata are principally limestone and ironstone, and various fossils are found, chiefly of the Cardium and Buccinum genera. The surface is pleasingly undulated, and the lower grounds are watered by the river Tame.

The living is a vicarage, endowed with a considerable portion of the great tithes, valued in the king’s books at £17. 9. 7., and in the patronage of the Crown, with a net income of £529: the great tithes of the hamlet of Upton belong to G. S. Harcourt, Esq. The tithes were commuted for land and corn-rents, under an inclosure act, in 1802. The church, which has a small part in the Norman style of architecture, has been enlarged.

Source: A Topographical Dictionary of England by Samuel Lewis 1848