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Seer Green
Holy Trinity Parish Church
Seer Green Location within Buckinghamshire
Population	2,311 (2011)
OS grid reference	SU9691
Civil parish	Seer Green
Unitary authority	Buckinghamshire
Ceremonial county	Buckinghamshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BEACONSFIELD
Postcode district	HP9
Dialling code	01494
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Buckinghamshire
Ambulance	South Central
UK Parliament	Chesham and Amersham

Seer Green is a village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the Chiltern Hills, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) east-north-east of Beaconsfield and 1.8 miles (2.9 km) south-west of Chalfont St Giles.

Geography

The village overlies silts and gravels, deposited by the River Thames at the end of the last Ice Age, and through which dry valleys cut down into the underlying chalk. The surrounding agricultural lands are pasture. Areas of ancient woodland include Hodgemoor Woods, in the north of the parish. Former extraction pits (for example north of Aeswood Farm) for gravel or clay for the local brick and pottery industries, are distributed across the area.

Palaeolithic finds include a handaxe and an axe-head from a railway cutting at Seer Green Halt, and a handaxe from a gravel quarry at Long Bottom Lane. Neolithic or Early Bronze Age flint scrapers (for example NW of Wilton Lane) are commonly found within surface deposits, and an arrowhead was found in the garden of a cottage on Chalfont Road.

A Roman road passes through Hodgemoor Woods. This is most likely the 'Camlet Way' between the Roman towns of Verulamium (at St Albans) and Calleva Atrebatum (at Silchester). In the vicinity of this road are the remnants of late prehistoric to early Roman field systems and a possible Romano-British farmstead. Another possible farmstead, probably of similar age, can be seen on LiDAR coverage within Green Wood. Extensive medieval ridge and furrow cuts across the Roman road. A report from an Elizabethan Court of Survey from 1561 indicates the date of the planting of these woodland areas to be the mid-1550s. This is probably also the date of the associated wood-banks, as well as the start of field enclosure within the parish.

History

The toponym "Seer" or "sere" is derived from the Old English for "dry/barren", while "grene" is a grassy spot. In manorial rolls of 1223 it was called La Sere, although local legend has it that the "Seer" refers to King Arthur's Court visiting the area and locals consulting his "seer" – a nice story but of doubtful origin. Even so, there is a pub called Merlin's Cave in the nearby village Chalfont St Giles, after this legend.

At Domesday, Seer Green was a detached part of Farnham Royal, and as such was held by Bertram de Verdun. The first certain documentary record of Seer Green (La Sere) is in a Court Chancery Roll of Henry III from 1232. For a short period in the late thirteenth (by 1284) and early fourteenth (after 1309) centuries, it was also a manor in its own right, held by the Verdun family. A rectangular ditched enclosure seen on LiDAR coverage could be the remains of the manorial property.

As part of Farnham Royal, Seer Green continued to be held by the descendants of the Verdun’s. Then it passed through the Furnival, Neville and Talbot families, becoming a holding of the Earls of Shrewsbury.

In 1541 the 5th Earl of Shrewsbury exchanged the manor of Farnham with Henry VIII, for the manor of Worksop, and it then became a holding of Elizabeth I.

The oldest building in Seer Green is the sixteenth century Hall Place. Other timber framed buildings include seventeenth century Colliers, Peaceful Cottage and Pondstile. The timber framed and brick-built farm buildings at Newbarn Farm are eighteenth century.

Francis Godolphin (who later became 2nd Baron Godolphin) acquired the lands from the Earl of Leicester in 1753. His 1753 estate map shows the area to be fully enclosed. Later maps of the Farnham Inclosure in 1831, and the Tithe Commutation in 1841, show no further changes in partition of the land. Through the Godolphin family line, the manor of Farnham became a property of the Dukes of Leeds. This title became extinct in 1964.

The Church of England parish church of the Holy Trinity was built in 1846. It is brick and flint with lancet windows. There is also a Baptist church. This chapel building, now the Parish Church Hall, was probably built in the mid-nineteenth century and was modified in 1933.

Seer Green became a separate parish in 1866, having previously been a hamlet of the parish of Farnham Royal, with the parish becoming a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1847 and a civil parish in 1901. It had levied a separate poor rate before then.

In 1847, land was gifted from Mr James du Pre, of Wilton Park to build a school in the village. The School House, and one classroom was built at a cost of £500 and it opened in November 1859.

Seer Green’s heritage includes rural crafts: pottery; bodging and timber trades; lace-making, bead-work and needlecrafts. Census records show a lacemaking community in mid-Victorian times and a Lace School is thought to have existed on the site on which the first Baptist Church was built in the mid-nineteenth century.

The village changed significantly with the arrival of the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway in 1905. A railway halt was built, to service the Beaconsfield golf course at Wilton Park, and opened to the public as a full Station at the end of 1914. The railway brought an influx of people, as well as ‘Arts and Craft’ style development.

Until the early part of the 20th century Seer Green was mainly an agricultural village, known for its cherry orchards, which supplied London markets. The remnants of some of these orchards remain and in honour of this tradition the local school holds a "Cherry Pie Fair" every summer which usually involves a fancy dress parade and a procession through the village.

Hodgemoor Woods was occupied during WWII for troop build-up. Then, post-war until 1962, the facilities were used as a Polish refugee resettlement camp.

Further residential expansion took place in the 1960s and 1970s. The Victorian Manor Farm was replaced by a modern housing estate. A new community hall was erected to commemorate Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, and a new Baptist Church was erected in 1980. Seer Green, off the beaten track and jealously guarding its village atmosphere, continues to seek to preserve its identify and its heritage. For further history of the village, see the website, "Our Living Village".

Amenities

The parish has a Church of England primary school. The village has a Scout troop that is successful in regional competitions. The village youth football club, Seer Green United, has under 7s, under 8s and under 13s teams. The village is close to Hodgemoor Wood, a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Seer Green and Jordans railway station is on the Chiltern Main Line between Beaconsfield and Gerrards Cross. The station was originally called "Beaconsfield Golf Club", the golf club being next door, but the name was later changed to reflect its position between the two settlements. Bus route 580, provided by Carousel, also runs through the town.

M40 Junction 2 is nearby.

Notable people

Notable residents have included:

• Val Doonican, singer
• Frederick Forsyth, author
• Ian McCaskill, weather presenter
• Jon Anderson, musician and lead singer of Yes

Demography

Seer Green compared
2001 UK Census	Seer Green ward	(Former) Chiltern District	England
Population	2,267	89,228	49,138,831
Foreign born	1.3%	9.3%	9.2%
White	98%	95.5%	90.9%
Asian	0.8%	2.8%	4.6%
Black	0.1%	0.3%	2.3%
Christian	78%	74.7%	71.7%
Muslim	0.3%	1.9%	3.1%
Hindu	0.3%	0.5%	1.1%
No religion	14.0%	15.0%	14.6%
Unemployed	1.3%	1.7%	3.3%
Retired	13.7%	14.6%	13.5%

At the 2001 UK census, the Seer Green electoral ward had a population of 2,267. The ethnicity was 98% white, 0.6% mixed race, 0.8% Asian, 0.1% black and 0.5% other. The place of birth of residents was 88.7% United Kingdom, 0.7% Republic of Ireland, 2.6% other Western European countries, and 8% elsewhere. Religion was recorded as 78% Christian, 0.2% Buddhist, 0.3% Hindu, 0% Sikh, 0.7% Jewish, and 0.3% Muslim. 14% were recorded as having no religion, 0.4% had an alternative religion and 6.1% did not state their religion.

The economic activity of residents aged 16–74 was 40.6% in full-time employment, 11.2% in part-time employment, 13.6% self-employed, 1.3% unemployed, 2.2% students with jobs, 3.6% students without jobs, 13.7% retired, 9.9% looking after home or family, 2.1% permanently sick or disabled and 1.8% economically inactive for other reasons. The industry of employment of residents was 14% retail, 10.8% manufacturing, 5.5% construction, 25.7% real estate, 9.3% health and social work, 8% education, 6.3% transport and communications, 3.5% public administration, 2.3% hotels and restaurants, 4.9% finance, 1.1% agriculture and 8.6% other. Compared with national figures, the ward had a relatively high proportion of workers in real estate, and a relatively low proportion in public administration, hotels and restaurants. Of the ward's residents aged 16–74, 36.2% had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared with 19.9% nationwide.

External links

• Vision of Britain