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Photo's from Farmhouse Breakfast at Hoggeston
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DUNTON VILLAGE WALK
1.
Start from the gate of the churchyard. Look to your right and you will see a large farmhouse. This was built as one house, known as “Blick’s” after the farming family which lived there. (You may spot a number of their headstones in the churchyard, dating back to the 18th century.) It was later converted into three farm labourers’ cottages, which fell into such a poor state of repair that no farmhand could be persuaded to live in them. Now it is one house again.
2.
Walk along the pavement towards the village then stop at the mirror and look to your left. You are looking at the Old Rectory, built in 1693 by the Duchess of Marlborough for her younger brother. He was the third son and so by tradition joined the Church, with the eldest inheriting the estate and the second son joining the military. The manor of Dunton has at various times been owned by the Bishop of Bayeux (though we doubt he ever visited) and Sarah Churchill, Dowager Duchess of Marlborough (likewise). Her family took on the manor after Richard Hampden – whose family had owned it since the 15th century – lost nearly all his property in the South Sea Bubble. She gave it to her grandson, the Honourable John Spencer, in 1730. There is a clue to the present owner of the manor further along your walk.
Invisible from the path in the front garden of the Old Rectory, and pre-dating it, are signs of a large freshwater fish pond where fish were kept for Fridays, when earlier Christians were not allowed to eat meat.
3.
Continue along the pavement until you come to the next house on the opposite side of the road. Although a modern building, this is a copy of the 18th Century Orangery at Dunham Massey, in Altrincham, Cheshire (a National Trust property). The rear of the house features large floor to ceiling windows which in the original provided light for ripening the oranges.
4.
Continue along the pavement until the first field gate on your side of the road. If you look over the gate into this field you will see the lumps and bumps which are signs of earlier buildings. This was probably the location of the earlier settlement, when Dunton was simply the farm (ton) on the hill (dun, as in Downs). Further down the hill over to the left lies Hoggeston, which may have got its name from being a pig, or hog, farm.
Dunton has also been known as Dodintone (Domesday Book, 11th century), Donton (15th century) and Duddington (16th century).
5.
The second house on your right (Old Cottage) was in fact originally a row of six cottages, two of which fell down. Now one house, it dates back to the mid 16th century.
6.
The road you are walking beside is part of a Roman road which served as a short cut between Akeman Street (the A41) and Watling Street (the A5). It joins the A41 just outside Aylesbury at the right hand bend just before Fleet Marston Farm. If you travel in the opposite direction from here its Roman origins are very evident in the long straight stretch to Stewkley. The Romans also left another reminder of their presence locally, which you will come to later.
7.
As you reach the telephone box (which has a Preservation Order so it cannot be replaced with a modern monstrosity!) the large house on your right is Manor Farm. This was called Lower Farm when Blick’s was known as Manor Farm, and is a tenant farm still owned by the Lord of the Manor – whose name you are close to learning, just a little further down the road. Until only last year it was a dairy farm, but the dairy herd has now gone and been replaced with a suckler herd.
Look in through the second gateway and you will see a curious object in front of the house. This could be a medieval dog kennel, or it could be a mounting block for climbing up onto your horse, made out of odd bits of masonry. You decide.
8.
Continue along the pavement. The building on your right is the old milking parlour. There is still at least one village resident who remembers as a child helping to milk the cows and bottle the milk on the farm, then delivering it around the village.
9.
Stop where the path crosses the road. The road continues to your right, all the way to its junction with the A413. However, this section of the road (from just a little further down) is officially called Carrington Close. There’s even a road name sign to prove it. This is for two reasons: firstly, because the owner of the manor is Lord Carrington; secondly, because the road once stopped at the end of the village, becoming just a farm track, so it was a dead end or close.
Many villagers wish it still was, to stop the speeding traffic which uses it as a
cut-through. So please take care as you retrace your steps to the farm driveway and cross the road onto the village green.
10.
Follow the mown path across the green. The first house on your right, behind the high hedge, was originally two farm labourers’ cottages which were at one time almost derelict. The second house – Brickbats – is so called because it was built in 1810 from left over brick oddments, known as brickbats.
The next gate is the entrance to Carter’s Cottage, not visible from the walk, which is probably the oldest house in the village. One of its earlier residents is believed to have married into the aristocracy, and her ghost is said to haunt Hampton Court.
11.
Turn left and walk up the gravelled driveway in the direction of the church. You will pass on your right a pump, sometimes known as Dunton’s pub: The One-Armed Man. Dunton has a number of springs and wells on the south side of the ridge. For instance, the cottage behind the hedge, overlooking the green, has a well, and the Old Rectory has a spring in its garden. There are also many springs in the field which lies behind the houses behind the pump. One of the houses in the village is actually called “Springfield”.
With springs come ponds, and one Dunton resident met her end in a village pond in 1881. The burials register for 15th December that year records that “Charlotte Green aged 55 of Dunton, appeared to have fallen into a pond and drowned, Coroner’s inquest verdict of accidental death.”
12.
At the end of the gravelled drive, carefully cross back over the road and return to the church.
Not all Dunton’s past residents are buried in the churchyard. The burials register for 1633 records that: “Armingel Fowler, of Dunton & sometime a Farmer and almost 80 years of age hangd himself 5 Aug without any expression of the least discontent and was interred without the Churchyard near the highway without any rites & christian burial.”
The other legacy left by the Romans, apart from their road, is the burial site of a Roman soldier, believed to be where the church now stands (some say actually under the altar). The church itself was built in 1140 whilst the manor was owned by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. Enter the churchyard and walk around the North (back) of the church, and you can still see on the wall the lintel of a former door that dates from the 12th century. The old square font, now locked away in the vestry at the foot of the bell tower, probably also dates from that period.
The church itself has unusual box pews dating from the 18th century restoration of the church, which took place after the nave roof collapsed. If you were lucky enough to have a seat with your back to the Rector, no doubt you could have nodded off undetected during the longer sermons.
'A Big Thank you to Nick for this!'