Grendon Underwood, Buckinghamshire

Description
Grendon Underwood, a village and a parish in Bucks. The village stands 3 1/2 miles from Marsh Gibbon station on the L. & N.W.R., and 6 1/2 ESE from Bicester, is characterized in an old Buckinghamshire rhyme as " the dirtiest town that ever stood," but is now cleaner, and is said to have furnished to Shakespeare, on occasion of his spending a night in it, some of the humour of his "Midsummer Night's Dream." It has a post and money order office under Ayles-bury; telegraph office. Marsh Gibbon. The parish comprises '2566 acres; population of the civil parish, 379; of the ecclesiastical, 373. The manor belonged anciently to Almeric <3e St Amand, a godfather of Edward L, passed to the Pigotts, and belongs still to the Pigott family. The living is a rectory in the diocese of Oxford; gross value, £ with residence. This living has been in the gift of the Pigott family for nearly 400 years. The church is ancient and good, and contains monuments of the Pigotts, and one of Lord Saye and Sele. There are a Baptist chapel and an endowed school Grendon Hall is a large mansion in the Elizabethan style, standing in a park of about 160 acres.