[2] The centre and east of the village are designated as the Marsh Gibbon Conservation Area,[3] including the Greyhound pub, The Plough, the Manor House and the Church.

The village name comes from the English word 'Marsh', describing the typical state of land in the area due to the high water table of the Aylesbury Vale district.

In 1348 the lands of the Abbey of Grestein, including Marsh Gibbon and the manors of Ramridge[6] in Hampshire and Conock in Wiltshire, were seized by Edward the Black Prince during the Hundred Year’s War, as ransom for the capture of Jean de Melun, Comte de Tancarville[7] during the Crecy campaign.

In 1617 James I granted the Mastership of the Ewelme Trust to the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford in whose hands it remains today.

He was appointed to the Royal Sanitary Commission[10] on public health in 1869, and took a great interest in the welfare and sanitation of rural villages like Marsh Gibbon.

In 1884, Acland published Health in the Village (1864),[11] an influential book based on his experience in Marsh Gibbon and presenting “a broad view of the circumstances most favourable to the good order and happiness of a rural population” – it includes a map of the village and a plan of the houses that were built, describing them as model labourer’s cottages.

[12] The geology of the area comprises cornbrash limestone to the west, and Kellaway beds and Oxford Clay to the east and south of the parish.