Marsh Gibbon

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Marsh Gibbon is a village in Buckinghamshire, England. It is close to the A41 and the border with Oxfordshire about 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Bicester.

The village name comes from the English word 'marsh', describing the typical state of land in the area due to the high water table of the Aylesbury Vale. The affix 'Gibbon' derives from the family name 'Gibwen', the lords of the manor here in the twelfth century. In manorial rolls of 1292 the village was recorded as Mersh Gibwyne, though earlier (in 1086) it was known simply as Merse.

Anciently the village was the property of the abbey of Grestein in Normandy, France however in 1365 the village was seized by the Crown because it belonged to a foreign church. Later it was granted to a hospital at Ewelme in Oxfordshire.

Typical with other villages in proximity to both Oxford and Aylesbury (see Brill or Boarstall, for example) Marsh Gibbon was largely wiped off the map in the English Civil War. A particular skirmish took place here in 1645, the groundworks of which still remain to this day at the manor house.

The hamlet of Westbury on the Oxfordshire border in this parish was given by King Edward IV to the Company of Cooks in London, though it has since been sold into private hands. To the east of the village is the hamlet of Little Marsh and to the south east is the hamlet of Summerstown.

The parish church of Marsh Gibbon is dedicated to St Mary the Virgin. Robert Clavering, who later became the Bishop of Peterborough, was the rector from 1719.^[1]

North of the village and just outside Poundon, is Tower Hill Business Park. This was previously Poundon Hill Wireless Station, a FCO/MI6 signals intelligence station. ^{[2] [3]}

Marsh Gibbon Church of England School is a mixed, voluntary aided infant school, with approximately 100 pupils. It takes children from the age of four through to the age of nine, when they generally move on to the combined school in Grendon Underwood.

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