Lillingstone Dayrell

Lillingstone Dayrell
St Nicholas Church, Lillingstone Dayrell, 2009
Lillingstone Dayrell Location within Buckinghamshire
Population	100 (Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey parish, 2021) [1]
OS grid reference	SP705395
Civil parish	Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey
Unitary authority	Buckinghamshire
Ceremonial county	Buckinghamshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BUCKINGHAM
Postcode district	MK18
Dialling code	01280
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Buckinghamshire
Ambulance	South Central
UK Parliament	Buckingham and Bletchley [2]
List of places UK England Buckinghamshire 52°02′58″N0°58′43″W / 52.0494°N 0.9787°W / 52.0494; -0.9787

Lillingstone Dayrell is a village in the civil parish of Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey, in Buckinghamshire, England. It is about three and a half miles north of Buckingham, eight miles west of Milton Keynes and five miles south of Towcester. At the 2021 census the population of the civil parish was 100.

History

The village name 'Lillingstone' is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'Lytel's boundary stone', referring to the proximity of both places to the border with Northamptonshire. In the Domesday Book of 1086, both settlements were recorded jointly as Lillingestan though already at that time there were two manors owned respectively by the Dayrell and Lovell families. The suffix 'Dayrell' (as 'Dayerell') was first recorded in the fourteenth century. The Dayrell family were Lords of the Manor from the fourteenth century until the 1880s. ^[3]

Lillingstone Dayrell was an ancient parish. In 2001 the parish absorbed the area of the neighbouring parish of Luffield Abbey, which was abolished. The enlarged parish was renamed Lillingstone Dayrell with Luffield Abbey at the same time. ^{[4] [5]} At the 1971 census (the penultimate one before the merger with Luffield Abbey and rename), Lillingstone Dayrell had a population of 141. ^[6]

Notable buildings

The parish church of Lillingstone Dayrell is dedicated to St Nicholas of Myra.

Lillingstone House is the ancient seat of the Dayrell family.

In 1882, the banker Abraham John Robarts, of Robarts, Lubbock & Co., then the tenant of Lillingstone House, built Tile House in the village for himself, designed by Ewan Christian. This is described by Nikolaus Pevsner as “Neo-Elizabethan, big and forbidding with groups of huge chimneys.” ^[7]

Notable people

• Gerald Robarts (1878–1961), banker, soldier, and notable squash player, lived at Lillingstone Dayrell House. ^[8]

References

1. "2021 Census Parish Profiles". NOMIS. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 31 March 2025. (To get individual parish data, use the query function on table PP002.)
2. "Location of Buckingham and Bletchley". parliament.uk. July 2024. Retrieved 11 August 2025.
3. 'Parishes : Lillingstone Dayrell'  – Victoria History of the Counties of England, A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4 (1927), pp. 187-191. Date accessed: 14 January 2012
4. "The Aylesbury Vale (Parishes) Order 2000" (PDF). Local Government Boundary Commission for England. The National Archives. Retrieved 5 October 2025.
5. "Aylesbury Vale Registration District". UKBMD. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
6. "Population statistics Lillingstone Dayrell through time". Vision of Britain. Retrieved 5 October 2025.
7. Nikolaus Pevsner, Elizabeth Williamson, Geoffrey K. Brandwood, Buckinghamshire (1994), p. 432
8. The London Gazette, issue 33299 dated 2 August 1927, p. 5002

Further reading

• Eleonora Dayrell, The History of the Dayrells of Lillingstone Dayrell (1885)

External links

• The deserted medieval village and the surviving church
• North Buckingham Parish