Buckland is a village and large civil parish about 4 miles (6.4 km) northeast of Faringdon[1] in the Vale of White Horse District.

[2] Outside the village the civil parish includes the small settlements of Carswell and Barcote to the west, Buckland Marsh to the north, and the modern development of Gainfield on the southern boundary.

The soil of the parish is a rich, sandy loam on a geology of Corallian Limestone and Oxford Clay.

It is derived from the Old English bōcland — bookland — which is a term in Anglo-Saxon law for "land held by charter".

[3] The Domesday Book of 1086 lists Buckland as part of the lands of Bishop Osbern of Gamesfel Hundret (now called Gainfield).

The estate was assessed as eight hides and consisted of a mill, four fisheries and a dairy farm producing 10 wheys of cheese a year.

William died childless in 1236, by which time his sister Maud had married Hamo de Crevecoeur.

[3] In 1263, wardship of the manor of Buckland was granted to Eubold de Montibus, from whom it passed in turn to Philip Bassett until John came of age.

It is a masterpiece of Palladian architecture designed by John Wood, the Younger and built for Sir Robert Throckmorton, 4th Baronet in 1757.

Barcote Manor or Park is a Tudor Revival house built in the 1870s for the writer Lady Theodora Guest by her mother, but she married and went to live elsewhere.

The old house was then converted into stables, and re-faced in Georgian Gothic Revival style with turrets and battlements.

Carswell Manor is a gabled house built early in the 17th century for John Southby, who was both JP and MP for Berkshire.

The main north and south nave doors are unusual in having a matching pair of Norman arches.

After the Reformation, he became a zealous lay preacher, often gracing the pulpit in his "velvet bonnet and damask gown...sometimes with a gold chain".

Other monuments in the church include a number of 14th-century tomb recesses, an inscribed slab with a floriated cross to Dame Felice la Blonde and a number of monuments to the Yates of Buckland Manor, including the brass of John Yate (1578), and hatchments of the Throckmorton family.

[16] St George's Roman Catholic Church is a Gothic Revival building, completed in 1848[17] for the Throckmortons of Buckland House.

[19] In 2008 the Lamb Inn was owned by Peta and Paul Barnard, former owners of The Plough at Clanfield which won a Michelin star.

[25] A more detailed breakdown shows that 54.4% of people were employed as agricultural labourers, 12.9% in retail and handicrafts as well as 8.8% as servants.

In 1774 Henry James Pye, Poet Laureate to George III, wrote the poem Faringdon Hill.

Part of it refers to Buckland: See Buckland here her lovely scenes display, which rude erewhile in rich disorder lay til Taste and Genius with corrective hand spread Culture's nicest vesture o'er the land, and called each latent beauty to the fight; clothed the declining slopes with pendant wood, and o'er the sedge grown meadows poured the floor.