Aston Abbotts (or Aston Abbots) is a village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated about four miles north of Aylesbury and three miles south west of Wing. The parish had a population of 404 according to the 2001 census. The village name 'Aston' is a common one in England, and is Anglo-Saxon for Eastern Estate. The suffix 'Abbotts' refers to the ancient abbey in the village, which until the Dissolution of the Monasteries was the country home of the abbots of St Albans in Hertfordshire. The present house known as The Abbey, Aston Abbotts was largely rebuilt in the early 19th century. The hamlet of Burston sits within this parish. During the Second World War from 1940 to 1945 Dr Edvard Beneš, the exiled President of Czechoslovakia, stayed at The Abbey in Aston Abbotts. His advisers and secretaries (called his Chancellery) stayed in nearby Wingrave, and his military intelligence staff stayed at nearby Addington. President Beneš donated a bus shelter to the villages of Aston Abbotts and Wingrave in 1944. This is on the A418 between the two villages.
References
- Neil Rees "The Secret History of The Czech Connection – The Czechoslovak Government in Exile in London and Buckinghamshire" compiled by Neil Rees, England, 2005. ISBN 0-9550883-0-5
