Ivinghoe Area Guide

With gorgeous ivy-clad houses centred around a large village green, and some very fine examples of Tudor and Georgian architecture, Ivinghoe boasts a beautiful and historic village centre. Set in the Chiltern Hills amongst magnificent countryside that can often be spotted in blockbuster movies, the attraction of this rural idyll is easily understood.

About Ivinghoe

Close to the borders of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, this bucolic Buckinghamshire village lies on the edge of some 5,000 acres of National Trust land, where Pitstone Windmill and Ivinghoe Beacon can be found.

Life is centred on the Ivinghoe Lawn - the village green from where the High Street slopes down and heads to the nearby village of Pitstone. There is a local shop and Post Office, a library, plus the Rose & Crown Inn - something of a hidden gem - which offers great guest ales and fabulous pub grub.

Ivinghoe is unusual for a village in that is has a Town Hall, not a Village Hall.

For shopping and culture, lovely Berkhamsted and Tring are full of cute shops & coffee houses and good for daily provisions with M&S Food Hall, Waitrose and Tesco all represented. Also within easy reach are the larger towns of Hemel Hempstead and Aylesbury with their shopping centres, department stores, cinemas and leisure facilities.

To survey the landscape, head up to Ivinghoe Beacon, an ancient signal point for sending messages across the country in times of peril. It is now an understandably popular destination for a brusque walk and beautiful outlook. Schooling here is excellent. Brookmead, the local primary, is shared with neighbouring Pitstone and caters for children aged 4 to 11. Ivinghoe also falls within the Grammar Schools catchment area in Aylesbury.

Tring mainline station is about 6 minutes’ drive from the village centre and has regular and direct trains to London Euston that take about 35 minutes. The A41 can also be picked up on the outskirts of Tring, and provides a dual carriageway link direct to the M25 (J20).

History

Ivinghoe is an important point on the Icknield Way, claimed to be the oldest road in Britain, dating back centuries to before Roman times. This ancient trackway stretches all the way from Norfolk to Wiltshire and, in this part of the world, joins the Upper Icknield and Lower Icknield together.

An early Iron Age hill fort from the Bronze-Iron transition period between 800-700 BC was discovered during excavations in the 1960s, in the vicinity of Ivinghoe Beacon. It's thought the fort was not occupied for long, possibly not even one generation, which is a familiar story in the ancient history of the Chiltern Hills.

The adorable Ford End Watermill is the only remaining watermill in Buckinghamshire that's still working with its original machinery. Although records date back to 1616, the mill is undoubtedly significantly older, and remained in commercial use until 1963. Restored by volunteers, Ford End is now open to the public on periodic Sundays and bank holidays from April to October, with Stoneground wholemeal flour is on sale.

We Recommend

• Capture a photo of the sunset at Pitstone Windmill
• Visit Ford End Watermill - Buckinghamshire's only working watermill with original machinery
• Enjoy dinner out at Acres restaurant, located nearby at the beautiful Grade I listed Ashridge House
• Sample the real ales at The Rose & Crown Inn
• Take a stroll around nearby College Lake, a thriving nature reserve that boasts more than 1,000 different wildlife species

Types of Property

There are a number of very attractive listed buildings in and off the High Street in the village centre, the oldest of which dates back some 800 years! Heading off the main street, old gives way to new - although never entirely - with streets of semi-detached houses from the Victorian period and the mid 20th century, accompanied by some older properties. There are also some houses from the 1990s and early 2000s.