Landscape
Seven miles North West of Aylesbury, located in …”Undulating hills and ridges with distant panoramic views across the strongly rural and picturesque landscape, including to the Vale of Aylesbury to the south. Together with the Brill-Winchendon Hills they form a series of low, generally open limestone hills with hilltop settlements, between the foot of the Chilterns escarpment and the dip slope of the Cotswords. The prominent hills form a backdrop to many views in the district. Nucleated villages create texture, a sense of history, variety and rhythm. The strong sense of history is present in the many Conservation Areas, Scheduled Monuments and landscape features such as ridge and furrow and irregular enclosed fields ” – (landuse.co.uk, October 2015). The image below is the view from the Quainton Hills towards distant Brill on the hill.
This is the geology of the Jurassic coast, spanning a period from 145 Million years Ago [MA] to 201.3 MA. An earlier layer of Oxford clay is overlain by the more recent Kimmeridge clay of the Vale of Aylesbury. Fossils, including ammonites, snails and slugs can be found in the Portland stone of the surrounding hills and date from around 185 million years ago, in what was then a tropical seascape, geographically located then in a region much closer to the equator and moving north along with the Eurasian tectonic plate. The geology of the limestone hills and clay slopes are evident in the building materials of early Quainton, in the stone and the brick. Over sixty of these buildings are listed by English Heritage as being of special national interest and are under conservation control.
Heritage
Quainton Parish has around 236 heritage sites, which have been mapped along with a description for each archaelogical find or listing (see heritage section). The sites span from the Neolithic Age to Late Modern England and include sixty-three listed buildings, the age and grade distribution of which is depicted in the charts below, along with a gallery of village houses, archaeological objects and artefacts relating to C14th to C18th centuries (C14th to C18th Contemporary Era[CE]).
Sources:
Lipscomb, G., (1847). The History and Antiquities of the County of Buckingham, Vol.1. J&W Robins, London, p.,390.
Sheahan, J,J., 1862, History and Topography of Buckinghamshire: Comprising a General Survey of the County, preceded by an epitome of the Early History of Great Britain. Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts, Pontefract. p. 415.
Quainton and Shipton Lee (1905). Statistics from Board of Agriculture, in A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 4, 1927. Victoria County History. Htttp://www.british-history.ac.uk accessed 18th August, 2016.
Map Image © Google Maps
Cross Section of Buckinghamshire, North to South, with permission Bucks Geology (www.bucksgeology.org.uk)
Quainton Topology, AOD, https://earth.google.co.uk
Stratigraphical dating, International Commission on Stratigraphy. https://www.stratigraphy.org
Ammonite image, ©2016, P Turnbull
LUC, 2015. Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (ANOB). Defining the special qualities of local landscape designations in Aylesbury Vale District, p.23. URL://www.aylesburyvaledc.gov.uk accessed 3rd October 2016. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government License v3.0.
Listed Buildings Source: https://historicengland.org.uk accessed 7th February 2017.
Scotese, C.R., 2002, http://www.scotese.com, (PALEOMAP website)
