Chalfont St. Giles Village - Buckinghamshire
An English Village Worth Visiting
Whilst on your visit to Milton's Cottage, why not stop off in the Village centre, enjoy seeing a real English Village, so often missed by tourists rushing from one historic site to another.
Start at the River Misbourne, see the Sarcens Stone a Roman road which was discovered not many years ago bridging the river.
Imagine Cromwell's soldiers camped beside the river in Silsden meadow, using the Church tower for target practice. See the Alms houses built by Bishop Hare, the bakehouse where the Christmas turkeys of the village were once baked, together with local cherry pies.
In the late 16th Century, Milton's Cottage was built for an Estate Manager of the Vache estate then owned by Robert George Fleetwood one of the Regicides of Charles I.
In the late eighteenth century, Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser who was Lord of the Manor and Treasurer of the Navy was living at the Vache. When he heard of the death of his colleague and friend Captain Cook the discoverer of Australia, he built a memorial to him in the grounds which still stands.
Visit the Grade I Listed Church, which is of Norman origin, with amongst other things, its medieval wall paintings, its double piscina, its tombs of the Lords of the Manor, its hatchments, its Corbel Stones telling the story of St Giles, the Village's patron saint, and its ancient pews.
Take tea in the tea rooms on the Green, or have a drink in one of the Village's many public houses. On your way to Milton's Cottage, note Stonewells Farm, the oldest inhabited building in the village. Pass by the old Rectory, which is depicted in a 1774 picture by Thomas Jones in Milton's Cottage.