Lee, Buckinghamshire

Infobox UK place
country = England
official_name= The Lee
static_

static_image_caption=
latitude= 51.7299
longitude= -0.6825
civil_parish= The Lee
population = 679 [ [http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadTableView.do?a=7&b=792132&c=the+lee&d=16&e=15&g=424668&i=1001x1003x1004&m=0&r=1&s=1216508669247&enc=1&dsFamilyId=779 Neighbourhood Statistics 2001 Census] ]
shire_district= Chiltern
shire_county= Buckinghamshire
region= South East England
constituency_westminster= Amersham
post_town= CHESHAM
postcode_district= HP16
postcode_area= HP
dial_code= 01240
os_grid_reference= SP900042

Lee (normally referred to as The Lee) is a village in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located in the Chiltern Hills, about 2m north east of Great Missenden and 3m south east of Wendover. The Lee is also the name of a civil parish within Chiltern District. Within the parish is the hamlet of Lee Clump, named for a small group of houses separate from the main village.

Early History

The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'woodland clearing'. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as "Lee" and was, following the Norman Conquest granted by William I to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. Its early history is closely tied up with that of Weston Turville and a chapel-of-ease was established in this connection. It and also had associations with the Earl of Leicester who, in the early part of the 12th century charged Ralph de Halton to oversee the lands and at the end of that century, the Turville family took over this role. Soon after this Robert, Earl of Leicester granted the land to Missenden Abbey. After the dissolution of the Abbey, The Lee stayed in the possession of the Crown until in 1547 when Edward VI granted a lease on the estate to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford.

Almost a hundred years on the events that led to Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford initially leasing the lands at The Lee to William Plaistowe in 1635 and later selling the land to the Plaistowe family are obscure. Either they were mortgaged to pay off debts or were sequestrated as a consequence of the Russells involvement on the wrong side of the English Civil War. Thomas Plaistowe, who died in 1715 was the first of the family to be the outright owner of The Lee and his namesake in 1785 passed ownership to his daughter Elizabeth who married an Irishman, Henry Deering. Although the Plaistowe's once more owned the village for another 50 years, in 1900 Arthur Lasenby Liberty bought the Manor from John Plaistowe and built a new Manor on the outskirts of the village itself; siting the figurehead of the HMS Impregnable outside the building. The timbers of this ship were also used for his famed Liberty's department store in London. The old Manor simply became three attached properties, they remain so today.(The Liberty family have continued to reside at The Lee to the present day).

The Church

The parish church in the village St John the Baptist is unusual in that it consists of two buildings: the ancient chapel of ease built in the 12th century which includes a window depicting Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden as 'champions of liberty', and the more modern Victorian construction that was built of red brick in 1867. Both sit within an oval churchyard, common in places of importance in the pre-Roman period.

There is also a Methodist Chapel at Lee Common.

References