The main London – Aylesbury road used to run through the centre of Little Missenden and past the two pubs – The Red Lion and The Crown.

It is thought to occur in the name of the River Misbourne, which rises in Great Missenden, and also in the Hertfordshire place-name Miswell.

Frank Stenton and Allen Mawer guessed that it came from a hypothetical Anglo-Saxon personal name Myrsa, which they also supposed to be found in the name of Mursley.

[7] Recent researchers have tentatively preferred Ekwall's guess, in which case the name Missenden would once have meant something like "valley where water-plants/marsh-plants grow".

[4][8] The Domesday Book of 1086 records Missedene without distinguishing the two villages, but three manors of Little Missenden are identifiable as having existed by the reign of King Edward the Confessor (1042–66).

William the Conqueror granted one hide of land around what is now Town Farm to his half-brother Robert, Count of Mortain.

It was held by the Augustinian Bicester priory until 1536, when it surrendered its estates to the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

[10] The Manor House has been Grade II listed since 1958 as a "timber framed 2 storey C16 with modern cement infill".

Additional modifications were made when subsequent owners acquired the property in 1787 (James Oldham) and in 1815 (John Ayton).

[12] In the 21st century, the mansion was being used as a conference and training facility, and as a wedding venue, after an extensive renovation completed in 1988, necessitated by a fire that occurred in 1985.

A history of the community, published in 1908, offers this description of it in that era:[5]The village consists of a few small houses of the 18th century, of brick and rough-cast, and some cottages.

Modern vestry to north in C18 style, roughcast, hipped tiled roof ...Other sources provide more specifics.

On the north side of the church is a modern vestry designed in 18th-century style by Quinlan Terry.

Ellis II and Henry III Knight of Reading cast the tenor bell in 1663.

[22] Little Missenden became the village of Blandley in the 1963 film Nurse on Wheels by Gerald Thomas and Peter Rodgers.