Owlswick is a hamlet in Buckinghamshire, England, about 3 miles E of Thame and 4 miles SSE of Aylesbury. It is part of the civil parish of Longwick-cum-Ilmer and is in the ecclesiastical parish of Monks Risborough.
A hamlet is a small human settlement. In different jurisdictions and geographies, hamlets may be the size of a town, village or parish, be considered a smaller settlement or subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. The word and concept of a hamlet have roots in the Anglo-Norman settlement of England, where the old French hamlet came to apply to small human settlements. In British geography, a hamlet is considered smaller than a village and distinctly without a church or other place of worship.
Buckinghamshire, abbreviated Bucks, is a ceremonial county in South East England which borders Greater London to the south east, Berkshire to the south, Oxfordshire to the west, Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north east and Hertfordshire to the east.
Thame is a market town and civil parish in Oxfordshire, about 13 miles (21 km) east of the city of Oxford and 10 miles (16 km) southwest of the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury. It derives its name from the River Thame which flows along the north side of the town. The parish includes the hamlet of Moreton south of the town. The 2011 Census recorded the parish's population as 11,561.
The name appears in a document of about 1200 as Ulveswike, meaning the dairy farm of Ulf, which was a Danish personal name. The district is well to the south of the Danelaw, but a man of Danish origin may have come south and settled here. [1]
The Danelaw, as recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is a historical name given to the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. Danelaw contrasts with West Saxon law and Mercian law. The term is first recorded in the early 11th century as Dena lage. Modern historians have extended the term to a geographical designation. The areas that constituted the Danelaw lie in northern and eastern England.
The hamlet was not mentioned in Domesday Book in 1086 because it formed part of the manor of Monks Risborough. It was later subinfeudated (i.e. granted as a feudal sub-manor) to a military subtenant and was held by knight-service by the 13th century. It continued as a separate sub-manor, paying a quit-rent to the manor of Monks Risborough until copyhold tenure was abolished in 1925. [2]
Domesday Book is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states:
Then, at the midwinter [1085], was the king in Gloucester with his council .... After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land; how it was occupied, and by what sort of men. Then sent he his men over all England into each shire; commissioning them to find out "How many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon the land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire."
Monks Risborough is a village and ecclesiastical parish in Buckinghamshire, England, lying between Princes Risborough and Great Kimble. The village lies at the foot of the northern scarp of the Chiltern Hills. It is 8 miles (13 km) south of the county town of Aylesbury and 9.5 miles (15.3 km) north of High Wycombe, on the A4010 road.
Knight-service was a form of feudal land tenure under which a knight held a fief or estate of land termed a knight's fee from an overlord conditional on him as tenant performing military service for his overlord.
