Chicksands
Timeline

Places > Chicksands

1086: Chicksands Priory first mentioned in The Domesday Book before becoming a home to a religious order.

c1150: Chicksands Priory founded by Payne de Beauchamp and his wife The Countess Rohese. The Priory was granted to the Gilbertine Order, the only religious order to originate in England during The Middle Ages, and was formed by Gilbert of Sempringham c1083-1189. It was unusual in being only one of nine religious houses in England that housed both nuns and canons. The men and women lived in different buildings and were separated in church by a screen. Confined to the British Isles the order became extinct at the Reformation and was never revived.

1164: Archbishop Thomas Becket stays at Chicksands Priory on his way to exile in France.

1538: Archbishop Thomas Becket stays at Chicksands Priory on his way to exile in France.

1540: King Henry VII sells Chicksands Estate to Richard Snowe.

1598: The title to the Chicksands Estate passed to the Osborne family who hold it in the family until 1936.

1642-46: During the Civil War Bedfordshire was Parliamentarian while the Osbornes were Royalist. Lady Dorothy Osbourne and her children fled to the London home of her brother Sir John Danvers and Chicksands was occupied by Roundheads; the estate was considered to have been sequestrated.

1813: James Wyatt a leading London architect designs the all brick north wing of the Priory.

1815: Obelisk erected in 1815 to commemorate peace after the Napoleonic War.

1914-18: During The First World War Chicksands was a nursing home for wounded service men.

1936: Chicksands Priory Estate leased to the RAF. RAF Chicksands played a major role in The Second World War by receiving signals which were later decoded at Bletchley Park.

1950: The USAF take over the Priory and Chicksands becames home to the Air Defence Intelligence Agency 450th Intelligence Squadron and the Department of Defence Joint Operations Centre Chicksands which provided rapid radio relay. The base's listening device, 35 meters high and 400 metres in circumference was built in 1962 and became operational in 1963. The structure became a well known landmark and was known locally as 'the elephant cage'.

1995: The USAG leaves Chicksands, the base was returned to the Ministry of Defence on the 30th September and became home to the National Defence Intelligence and Security Centre.

2001: The site was visited by Channel 4's Time Team programme who investigated The Priory, a scheduled monument, which is situated on the NDISC premises.  (Biggleswade Chronicle, 11th May)

2004: The Peace Monument and Orangery renovated.

Sources:

• Newspaper Cuttings Collection, Local Studies Library, Bedford Central Library
• GRAYSON, William  Chicksands : a millennium history.  1992.

Page last updated: 23rd January 2014