Brill
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brill is a village in Buckinghamshire, England, close to the border with Oxfordshire. It is situated about four miles north west of Long Crendon, seven miles south east of Bicester. Although it is still in possession of a Royal charter to hold a weekly market on account of its prestigious history (see below), the village hasn't hosted such an event in years.
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[edit] History
Brill's name is a combination of Brythonic and Anglo Saxon words for 'hill' (Brythonic breg and Anglo Saxon hyll). At the time of King Edward the Confessor it was a town known as Bruhella.
The manor of Brill has, for a long time, been a property belonging to the Crown. Edward the Confessor had a grand palace here, that remained in place through to the time of King Charles I, who turned the building into a garrison. This action led to its eventual destruction by John Hampden in 1643 in the English Civil War. There is evidence that kings Henry II, John, Henry III and Stephen all held court here.
Ecclesiastically, Brill was originally a chapel of ease to the nearby parish of Oakley, though in the years since the English Civil War it grew to become a parish in its own right. There was also a convent in Brill, dedicated to St Frideswide, and a hermitage dedicated to St Werburgh, though these were both disbanded during the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
[edit] The Brill Tramway
Brill once hosted a northwestern terminus of the London Underground system (Oppitz, 2000).
After the completion in 1868 of the Aylesbury and Buckingham Railway, the Duke of Buckingham had built the light railway to provide freight access by rail to his estates at Wotton Underwood. The extension to Brill gave access to a brickworks there. The line was opened in 1871, and following public demand passenger facilities were provided early in 1872. Originally known as the Brill Tramway, the line’s name changed to "Oxford and Aylesbury Tramroad" when a company was formed in an abortive attempt to extend the line to Oxford; the biggest hindering expense was the cost of making a tunnel under Brill Hill.
The original Quainton Road station was north of the Quainton-Waddesdon road, and wagons from the Brill line reached it by means of a wagon turntable; there was no direct access (Mitchell and Smith, 2006). When the Metropolitan Railway took over the line in 1896, it doubled the main line from Aylesbury and resited the station to its present position, replacing a level crossing with the present road overbridge; a running connection between the Brill line and the main line was constructed at that time. In 1935 on the creation of the LPTB control was transferred to it from the Metropolitan and Great Central Joint Committee which had taken it over in 1906; the whole branch was closed on 30th November 1935.
[edit] Little London
The hamlet of 'Little London' located to the south was part of Brill parish until 1934, at that time the parish boundary was moved by Buckinghamshire County Council to Oakley. When the Metropolitan railway built the station, it has been said that in honour of the metropolitan ambiance the planners were trying to evoke, another Little London was founded to the North of the village.
Today the village of Brill is small, but it is easy to see from some of the buildings in the village and the extent of its common land that it was once a grand place. The parish church is dedicated to All Saints.
[edit] Trivia
Brill is featured in the novel The Book of Dave by Will Self. Set 2,000 years in the future, Brill (spelled 'Bril' in the novel) is the location of a manor of Plateist Queers.
It is also often said that J. R. R. Tolkien based the village of Bree in The Lord of the Rings on Brill (Shippley, 2002); he used other nearby places in Oxfordshire as part of the Shire, sometimes using the same names, such as Buckland.
The perpetrators of the Great Train Robbery in 1963 hid-out at the remote Leatherslade Farm on the boundary with the village of Oakley.
[edit] References
- Mitchell, V. and Smith, K. (2006) Aylesbury to Rugby, including the Brill Branch, Midland Main Lines, Middleton Press, p. 24-48, ISBN 1-904474-91-8
- Oppitz, L. (2000) A tramway built for a Duke, In: Lost Railways of the Chilterns, Countryside Books, p. 73-82, ISBN 1 85306 643 5
- Shippey, T. (2002) Tolkien and Iceland: the philology of envy, Symposium, The Nordic House, Laxness, Undset, 12th and 13th September 2002, Sigurður Nordal Office: Árni Magnússon Institute of Icelandic Studies website, (accessed 22 January 2007)
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