Little Missenden is a village and civil parish on the River Misbourne in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the Chiltern Hills, about southeast of Great Missenden and west of Amersham. The village lies on the River Misbourne in the Misbourne valley.
The parish includes the villages of Holmer Green, Hyde Heath and Little Kingshill, and the hamlets of Beamond End, Brays Green, Mop End and Spurlands End. The 2011 Census recorded the population of the ward of Little Missenden, which includes Hyde Heath and Little Kingshill, as 2,234, albeit those other two villages in the ward are each larger than Little Missenden itself. The population of the entire parish was estimated as 6,490 in 2017, reflecting the inclusion of the much larger Holmer Green within the parish.
The main London – Aylesbury road used to run through the centre of Little Missenden and past the two pubs – The Red Lion and The Crown. Early in the 19th century a new by-pass road was built to the north and this now forms part of the modern A413 road.
Etymology
The name Missenden is first attested in the Domesday Book as Missedene, with other early attestations including the spellings Messedena and Musindone. The -den element probably comes from Old English denu, meaning 'valley', but the etymology of the first element is uncertain. It is thought to occur in the name of the River Misbourne, which rises in Great Missenden, and also in the Hertfordshire place-name Miswell. Frank Stenton and Allen Mawer guessed that it came from a hypothetical Anglo-Saxon personal name Myrsa, which they also supposed to be found in the name of Mursley. Eilert Ekwall suggested that it came from a lost Old English word related to English moss, and to Danish mysse and Swedish missne (which denote plants of the genus Calla, such as water arum). Recent researchers have tentatively preferred Ekwall's guess, in which case the name Missenden would once have meant something like 'valley where water-plants/marsh-plants grow'.
Manors
The Domesday Book of 1086 records Missedene without distinguishing the two villages, but three manors of Little Missenden are identifiable as having existed by the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–66). William the Conqueror granted one hide of land around what is now Town Farm to his half-brother Robert, Count of Mortain. After Domesday it evolved as the manor of Holmer, whence the hamlet of Holmer Green arose.
The manor of Mantle was half a hide and was held by the Mantle family.. Another half-hide in Little Missenden had been held by Wulfwig, Bishop of Dorchester, but by 1086 was held by Hugh de Bolebec.
By the early 14th century a fourth manor, Beamond, had emerged, probably from part of the Mortains' manor. It was held by the Augustinian Bicester priory until 1536, when it surrendered its estates to the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Its name survives in Beamond End.
The current Little Missenden Manor house originated in the 16th century as a late medieval timber-framed hall house. In the 17th century it was extended in red brick, and retains gables and a staircase from that period. The house was refaced in the 18th century. The Manor House has been Grade II listed since 1958 as a "timber framed 2 storey C16 with modern cement infill".
Missenden House, a red and grey brick building, has been Grade II listed since 1958 as Missenden House, Trout Hollow and East Wing. The listing indicates that it was completed in 1729, with an east wing added in the 19th century.
Little Missenden Abbey is a Tudor Revival mansion, Grade II listed since 1987, as a "country house on the site of a medieval Augustinian Abbey ... founded in 1133". The listing indicates that the abbey was modified into a mansion ca.1600, when it was owned by the Fleetwood family. Additional modifications were made when subsequent owners acquired the property in 1787 (James Oldham) and in 1815 (John Ayton). In the 21st century, the mansion was being used as a conference and training facility, and as a wedding venue, after an extensive renovation completed in 1988, necessitated by a fire that occurred in 1985.
A history of the community, published in 1908, offers this description of it in that era:The village consists of a few small houses of the 18th century, of brick and rough-cast, and some cottages. Of late a number of week-end cottages have been erected in the parish. The manor house has some remains of 17th-century work, but was modernized in the early part of the 19th century and later. The house called 'Little Missenden Abbey,' the residence of Mr. E. Callard, possibly incorporates the remains of an old house.