Ickford is a village and civil parish in the unitary authority area of Buckinghamshire, England.
[2] From the 12th to the 14th centuries it evolved through Ycford, Hicford, Hitford, Ikeford and Ickeforde[2] before later reaching its present form.
[2] It is recorded that before the Conquest a second manor at Ickford was held by Ulf, a man of Harold Godwinson.
[2] The Domesday Book records Robert, Count of Mortain as holding this second manor, with the Benedictine Grestain Abbey as his mesne lord.
[2] By the time his great-grandson John held the manor in 1302–03, the family carried the surname "atte Water".
[2] In the 14th century the atte Water family gave land to Bisham Priory in Berkshire.
[2] In the 16th century the Bisham Priory lands passed to Thomas Tipping, who from 1585 held the "manors of Great and Little Ickford".
[3][4] The walls of one of the ground floor rooms in the north block has late-17th-century decorative painting now largely concealed behind early-18th-century panelling.
[2] The north aisle has one Norman and Early English Gothic 13th-century lancet windows, one of which has a later rere-arch with cusped spandrels, each with a carved rosette.
[2] The large stone monument to the first Thomas Tipping used to be in the north aisle, but in 1906 was moved to its present position in the chancel.
[7] The Puritan minister Calybute Downing held the living of the parish from 1632[2] but it was then conferred on Gilbert Sheldon[2][5] in 1636.
[9] Ickford had a bridge over the River Thame by 1237, when repairs were ordered with oak from Brill Wood.
Its extensive roof and almost all of its walls are hung with wooden shingles,[12] possibly in response to the shortage of many types of building material after the Second World War.
[citation needed] For more than 60 years an annual tug of war with neighbouring Tiddington has been held each summer across the River Thame.