Hillesden in Buckinghamshire

Abstract

If you take a map of Buckinghamshire and look a few miles south of the old county town, between it and the Claydons — that have their memories now for all lovers of English letters — you will find a name that means nothing to you : Hillesden. It is indeed a forgotten place: hipped up there on its little hill, the fat pastures and flat water-meadows all round it, isolated from any main roads, with only one road winding up to it: a dead end. And yet it was far from being that in its heyday; only its heyday was three centuries ago, the time of the Civil War, which left such a mark upon it and on the lives of all that lived there. Now, hardly anyone; just a cottage or two, a church, a farm, where once was all the bustle, the coming to and fro of a great house, with the family, important, numerous, ramifying in every direction, affecting the life of this countryside. Now all vanished and gone; where the house stood but an open space in the fields, the fields revealing under the grass the slopes of the former terraces.