Strip parish

A number of common factors influenced the creation of strip parishes: the establishment of the parish unit, the topography of the landscape and the scarcity of valuable resources.

With the fragmentation of the hundreds in England during the 8th and 9th centuries, due to the division of larger estates and the transfer of land, smaller manorial estates gradually emerged. Other reasons for this were the endowment of lands for newly-established churches; the patronage of the lower levels of nobility; the legal inheritance of land within families; and the beginning of Norman rule. These resulted in the creation of a patchwork of parish units, the administrative boundaries of which were formalised alongside the re-assembling of manorial lands.

In places like the Chilterns, the South Downs and coastal areas of Devon and Cornwall, where resources were limited, there were more developments. For example, parish settlements in the lowland areas of the Vale of Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire) and the Thames Valley (Oxfordshire), bordering the Chiltern Hills, expanded by adding land in the adjoining largely uninhabited hillside, scarp and hilltop areas to exploit scarce resources such as woodland and upland summer pasture (by transhumance). This resulted in estates and parishes which were narrow elongated strips with a mix of land types, ensuring a greater availability of resources.

Subsequent expansion of the temporary summer settlements resulted in the establishment of permanent communities, including the formation of autonomous manors or hamlets with their own, initially modest, chapels-of-ease, which later became churches. Where topography did not allow a parish to expand uphill in one contiguous strip, it might acquire an exclave of upland territory: for example, Marsworth and its detached manor of Hawridge. Usually, such an exclave was within the same hundred and county; but occasionally, as in Tring, Hertfordshire and its detached upland hamlet Coleshill several miles away and in Buckinghamshire, such detached communities could cross county boundaries.

As early as the late Middle Ages and as late as the 20th century, some of these "offspring" communities separated completely from their longer-established parent village miles away. Such separation sometimes caused the lowland community to relocate to a new village location. The upland communities sometimes became parishes in their own right, or amalgamated with other hilltop villages to create one or more new parishes.

A detailed account of the development of strip parishes in the Chiltern Hills can be found in The Chilterns by Leslie Hepple and Alison Doggett.

The parishes of Westerham, Brasted, and Sundridge in the Vale of Holmesdale, North West Kent are examples of strip parishes that are large enough to have a detached hamlet. Chartwell is the detached hamlet of Westerham; Brasted Chart is the detached hamlet for Brasted, and Ide Hill is the detached hamlet for Sundridge.

The geological structure of the underlying rock found in a strip parish can sometimes be indicated by the variety of local rock used to build the parish church: for example the rocks found in the church buildings in Westerham and Brasted are sandstone, Melbourne rock (hard chalk), flint, and chert. Details of the local geology can be found in local geological maps: for example the rocks cited above are indicated on the Dartford geological survey.

The combination of soils that form as a result of this variety of underlying bedrock promotes prosperity because it allows several different types of agriculture in a small area: alluvium (holding water, promoting lush pastures for feeding cattle), chalk (well drained, dry for sheep), sandstone ridge (infertile, but still suitable for woodland to provide charcoal and fuel for cooking and heating).

The benefits can be enhanced if the local land profile is sloping, because the washdown from the valley sides transports the base minerals to the shelter of the valley, where they are mixed to form a fertile soil suitable for growing cereals and root crops.

• Hepple & Doggett, Leslie & Alison (1971). The Chilterns. England: Phillimore & Co Ltd. ISBN 0-85033-833-6.