Gayhurst is a
villageA village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
and civil parish in the
Borough of Milton KeynesThe Borough of Milton Keynes is a unitary authority and borough in south central England, at the northern tip of the South East England Region. For ceremonial purposes, it is in the county of Buckinghamshire...
, ceremonial Buckinghamshire in
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. It is about two and a half miles NNW of
Newport PagnellNewport Pagnell is a town in the Borough of Milton Keynes , England. It is separated by the M1 motorway from Milton Keynes itself, though part of the same urban area...
.
The village name is an
Old English languageOld English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
word meaning 'wooded hill where goats are kept'. In the
Domesday BookDomesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
in 1086 it was recorded as
Gateherst. At that time the
manorManorialism, an essential element of feudal society, was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire, was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market...
was owned by
BishopA bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
Odo of Bayeux.
Gayhurst had an outstation from the
Bletchley ParkBletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
codebreaking establishment, where some of the
BombeThe bombe was an electromechanical device used by British cryptologists to help decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted signals during World War II...
s used to decode German
EnigmaAn Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
messages in World War Two were housed.
Gayhurst House is reputed to have once belonged to Sir Francis Drake although it is not known whether he ever lived there, and for many years the gatehouse leading to the estate was a public house called the
Francis Drake. The house certainly once belonged to the father-in-law of Sir
Everard DigbySir Everard Digby was a member of the group of provincial English Catholics who planned the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Although he was raised in a Protestant household, and married a Protestant, Digby and his wife were converted to Catholicism by the Jesuit priest John Gerard...
(1578–1606), one of the conspirators in the
Gunpowder PlotThe Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I of England and VI of Scotland by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby.The plan was to blow up the House of...
of 1605, and he resided there for some time.
The church of St Peter was built in the classical style in 1728 to replace a medieval church; the designer is unknown.
External links
- 'Parishes : Gayhurst', Victoria History of the Counties of England, A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4 (1927), pp. 343–347.