H ouses with a History 
THE CHURCH AND MANOR MIDDLE CLAYDON 
perience, which do not appear in the small- 
scale narrations ot our general histories. 
Therefore the research of today strives to 
recover the detail, as tar as may be, life size, 
that the things ot the past may stand before 
our eyes more nearly on a like plane with 
those of our own times. To this process of 
recovery the local annals of manor-house, 
church and village, as gleaned from many 
an ancient charter, will and record, have 
largely contributed. 
The Buckinghamshire villages of Steppel 
Claydon, Est, and Botyl Clay- 
don, and Middel Claydon, as 
they are called in old deeds, 
are typical examples ot rustic 
sites with vivid stories. Thev 
are situated in the heart ot 
the county, on a breezy down, 
which has been associated for 
four hundred and httv years 
with the tortunes ot the 
Verney family. None of the 
prefixes of the village names 
appear in Domesday. The 
Norman record calls them 
simply Claindone or Claidone. 
At that time the old vills 
were already long-established 
and flourishing settlements. 
Their population in 1086 
cannot have been far short 
of 600 souls, even after the 
reduction caused bv the cal¬ 
amities just overpast. The cen¬ 
sus of 1901 gives them 1,288 
inhabitants. Their Domesday 
assessment is 50 hides, or round¬ 
about 6,000 acres, 1 with also some 
1,500 acres of wood. Their total 
area at present is a little over 
8,000 acres, so that the difference 
is comparatively slight. These 
tacts prove the strong continuity 
of the village life from Anglo- 
Saxon times, and even earlier, for 
in 1620 a pot was found near 
the pond of Steeple Claydon full 
of Roman coins of brass, chiefly 
ot Allectus and Carausius. 2 Hid¬ 
den money tells its own tale of 
people on the spot who found it 
necessary to hide it. 
In later Anglo-Saxon days these vills 
were communities of a distinctly manorial 
type, with the thegn’s headquarters firmly 
set down within his earthen ramparts and 
moats, and with his church close by for the 
service ot his own household and his geburs , 
or half-free laborers. At three of the villages 
the later church stands now, as then, hard by 
the early manorial center, and at Steeple and 
1 Mr. |. H. Round and others have practically proved that the hide, 
whilst a term of assessment rather than of measurement, is usually 
equal to 4 virgate of 30 acres each. 
2 287 to 296 A. D. 
MIDDLE CLAYDON 
