Brill on the Hill

So good they named it twice; the Celtic “Bre” + Saxon “Hyll” = Brill - or Hill-Hill for linguistic show-offs - and inspiration for a rather dull nursery rhyme composed by a disgruntled nursemaid (1) in the early 1800s.

At Brill on the Hill,
The wind blows shrill,
The cook no meat can dress;
At Stow in the Wold
The wind blows cold,
I know no more than this.

Brill history is a nutshell…

Interesting geology, Iron Age fort and royal hunting lodge. Roundheads and Royalists (the royalists won). Failed spa town (Queen Vic preferred Tunbridge Wells), nice bricks, and an end-of-line railway. Wartime refugees, modern-day train robbers, Midsomer Murders (2). And a windmill - don’t forget the windmill! - oh, and JRR Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings in the pub. Maybe.

But there’s more, of course - much more

History isn’t all about kings and queens: It’s about the Royalists stabling their horses in the church, and villagers gathering where Spa Close is now to watch London burn during the Blitz. It’s about the corner of Brill Common that may or may not be a plague cemetery, and the 35 Brill men who fell in the Great War, four from the same family. It’s acrid smoke billowing from Poore’s Brickworks at the bottom of the common and Brill Windmill rattling and rocking in a strong westerly.

History is about people and their lives in this tiny outpost of Buckinghamshire - and it these messy, uncoordinated stories (and how to discover them) that we’ll slowly gather together on these pages.

The Brill Society

The Brill Society (TBS) is a registered charity set up in 1965 to protect and enhance the amenities and environment of Brill, and help residents and public enjoy and understand our heritage. To further these aims (in normal times) the Society organises talks and visits, and publishes leaflets and books of local interest. The Society also (usually) makes an annual award to a local amenity, service or structure that has significantly enhanced the environment or otherwise contributed to community wellbeing. Previous recipients have included the Brillennium book, the restoration of Hartwell’s Barn, Brill Oldies Radio Station, and Brill Stores.

TBS manages Brill Windmill on behalf of its owners, Brill Parish Council - and the demands of this role have become the main focus of the Society in recent years. A dwindling membership to call on for help, loss of income during the pandemic and serious structural damage in late 2021 have added to this burden and, as a result, the heritage side of TBS’s work has fallen a little by the wayside. We hope that this web presence, a judicial bit of social media self-promotion, and the Brill History Day in February will help reverse this decline.

If you’d like to join The Brill Society and be part of this exciting revival, please email Andy Fisher, the new Chair, to find out more.

TBS Extraordinary General Meeting

Read the minutes of the meeting on December 6th 2022, plus reports from the out-going Chair and Treasurer and a review of TBS activities in last couple of decades.

A huge ‘thank you’ to the retiring committee for their dedication and hard work over the last 5-20 years - and welcome to the new committee. Look out for a new TBS website, improved membership package, and opportunities to get involved.

The Brill Society Archives (a work in progress)

Old minute books, TBS correspondent, random pamphlets about aspects of Brill’s history, lots of books about windmills - and a nice pile of sepia photographs; all neatly packed away in plastic boxes and stored in the basement of Brill Memorial Hall - until now. We’ve lugged them up into the Old Library, where we will eventually display the most interesting and decide how to store the remainder (with advice, probably, from Buckinghamshire Archives). In the meantime, the collection is available to anyone who wishes to browse; take a look at our meticulously-compiled catalogue (huge thanks to Merilyn Munson) and drop us an email.

If you have any artefacts of old Brill squirrelled away in shoeboxes up in the loft, please consider loaning or giving them to TBS. We will take good care of them, making sure they are displayed or stored to advantage and shared as widely as possible.

Read all about it

For pages and pages of wonderful details, read Brill Buckinghamshire Historic Town Assessment Report, a joint AVDC / English Heritage publication of 2012 that deserves to be read more widely.

For human interest, first-hand accounts and erudite commentary by local amateur historians, beg, borrow or steal a copy of the incredible Brillennium: A 1000 Years in the Life of a Buckinghamshire Village, edited by Dave Croydon and published 1999 by The Brill Society and Hilltop Publishing. It was published as a subscription-only limited edition but there 750 copies around Brill if you put the word out.

(Not long before he sadly died, we spoke to Dave Croydon about updating and republishing Brillennium and he thought 2025 would be a good year to aim for. Is there anybody out there who’d like to take on this project?)

NEW BOOK ON old BRILL

In early summer 2022, the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society (one of the oldest voluntary organisations in the county, founded over 170 years ago) published The Kings at Brill; the Early History of a Buckinghamshire Village in the Forest of Bernwood authored by Mike Farley.

Mike, a former Buckinghamshire County Archaeologist, believes that Brill’s association with the medieval kings makes it one of the most interesting villages in the county. Locals may find some of his observations challenging - for example, his suggestion that there was never a castle at Brill - but he hopes the book’s publication will stimulate further discussion and research. Contents include:

• Bernwood Forest

• Edward the Confessor's Hall

• The kings’ principal buildings after the Norman Conquest

• The kings' presence at Brill

• Maintaining the court

• Church, chapel and hermitage

• Other secular buildings

• Ancient houses and earthworks

• Mapping the village

• Markets, fairs and a borough

• Brill in the English Civil War

• Recent survey results

• Where might the kings’ buildings have been?

The writing is lively and accessible, the illustrations plentiful and pertinent; a must for every Brillite and well worth its £18 price tag. We have a few copies of The Kings at Brill in the village on a sale-or-return basis; email to order and collect a copy.

Aerial photos of Brill

Here’s a treat! A searchable database of historic aerial photographs. Search ‘Brill’ for wonderful images of our village and surrounding countryside:

• 1947 - Brill’s so small!

• 1952 - lots of snow

• 2005/6 - spot the difference

Please respect the copyright on these photos.