The village name is a compound of Brythonic and Anglo Saxon origins, which is a common occurrence in this part of the country. The Brythonic breg means 'hill', and the Anglo Saxon hyll also means 'hill'. In the Domesday Book of 1086 the village was recorded as Brichelle. The affix 'Great' was added in the 12th century to differentiate from nearby Bow Brickhill and Little Brickhill. Robert Merydale was parson of the parish church of Great Brickhill in 1470, according to a legal record, in which Edward Lucy & Thomas Hampden claim that he owed them £20 Great Brickhill was described in 1806 in Magna Britannia as follows: The Victoria History of the Counties of England provides substantially more detail on the manorial record, but does not mention the Beauchamps. In 1643 Great Brickhill was touched by the English Civil War. The ParliamentarianEarl of Essex and his army camped in the village for a month. Great Brickhill was considered a strategic site due to its elevation and proximity to Watling Street, at the time the main approach road toLondonfrom the north. However, there were no battles or even skirmishes here.
Modern Great Brickhill
That Great Brickhill survives today as a village is due in no small part to the objections of its residents to the ever-increasing development of Milton Keynes. This new city on the doorstep of Great Brickhill comes closer every year: already parts of the parish have been swallowed. It may be that this will one day be Great Brickhill's fate too. Conversely, and to much local amusement/bemusement, a speculator recently bought a tract of agricultural land near the village and resold it at enormous profit as individual plots that might one day become part of the city. The high brick wall, reminiscent of that at nearby Woburn, which runs for some distance adjacent to the road, now neglected and ruined in places, surrounds the 70-acre park which once housed the principal seat of the Duncombe family, Great Brickhill Manor. The last manor house to occupy this park was built circa 1835, a large square brick stuccoed building of no particular architectural merit – old photographs show a slight Italianate influence in the design, a style later made popular by Queen Victoria at Osborne House. This house was demolished in 1937 after serving for a time as Stratton ParkPreparatory School. The Duncombe family continue to live in the village and own the estate; however, they now reside at what used to be the old Rectory near the church. Ironically the rectory is shielded from the empty site of the family's former more splendid home by a battlemented folly wall, built by a former Duncombe who disliked the vicar so much that he did not wish to see him or his home! The parish church of St. Mary the Virgin is a Grade II* listed building, dating back to the 13th century. Another large house in the area was Stockgrove, built in the 1920s on the site of a much older mansion this Georgian-style house was built by the industrialist Sir Ferdinand Kroyer-Kielberg. The estate was divided and sold in the 1950s. The house for a time became a 'Special School' and in the 1990s was divided into luxury apartments. Great Brickhill no longer has a shop, like so many other villages its bakery and post office are long closed. It has a local public house, the 'Old Red Lion'. The village primary school is High Ash Church of EnglandCombined School, which is a mixed, voluntary controlled, Church of England school. It takes children from the age of four through to the age of twelve and has approximately 240 pupils. It is one of several Buckinghamshire schools which host mobile phonemasts. Contracts between Buckinghamshire County Council and various mobile phone operators generate an income of £145,000 per annum, of which about £59,000 comes from contracts for masts that are installed in schools.
