Dorney is a village and civil parish in the Unitary Authority of Buckinghamshire, England, bordering on the River Thames to the west and south, and bisected by the Jubilee River. In 2011 it had a population of 752. It is west of neighbouring Eton, which is a slightly larger parish.
It includes a grade I listed manor house, Dorney Court, as well as the largest rowing lake in the south of England, Dorney Lake. Altogether water accounts for 13% of Dorney, the highest proportion in Buckinghamshire.
History
Dorney Manor was mentioned in the Domesday book, and was famed for honey; it is named after the Saxon for "Island of Bees". Dorney Court Dorney Court adjoins the centre of the village and has comparable grounds to other village centre properties. It was however the manor house so owned much of the land of the village until the late 18th century. It dates to the early Tudor period, its listing states " 1500, altered", and is made from a timber frame with red brick rather than wattle and daub infill its tile roof has old original tiles. It has bold star-shaped timbers and a large fireplace with panels from Faversham Abbey, Kent.
A social history account of its early history reveals the then adjoining Boveney manor at the southern extremity of the village of Burnham had a great oak tree cut down by an employee, saw revenge exacted by Dorney's employees, who the latter had placed in the 'stokkys', and this man who had the tree cut down defended his conduct by declaring that at a court, held by the Steward of the Honour of Wallingford in Buckinghamshire, fifteen honest men had found Dorney to be a royal manor and that the green was therefore common, as waste grounds, to the tenants dwelling nearby. Thus it was legal to cut the tree down.
The ownership of the manor is summarised in its own article, but perhaps the most notable head of family was in 1542, on being bought by William Garrard, who was afterwards (1555-1556) Lord Mayor of London. Maj. C. H. D. Palmer owned it in 1925, having been passed down by earlier Palmers since 1624. Until after 1925, the manor's family owned the rectory, improved and kept up the church, a state of affairs which ended with the ending of all tithes in England and Wales.
Other History
Dorney Court is where the first pineapple in the UK was grown and so Dorney has a public house named The Pineapple, Grade II listed for its age, dating half to the 17th century and half to the 18th century.
In 1961 a cornfield at Dorney was the scene of a nationally reported abduction. A lone gunman, James Hanratty, abducted Valerie Storie and Michael Gregsten in a Morris Minor parked in the cornfield. He forced them at gunpoint to drive to a lay-by on the A6 at Maulden in Bedfordshire, where he shot and murdered Gregsten, raped Valerie Storie and shot her. She survived, paralysed.
Topography
The village is on the north bank of the River Thames on very gently sloping land towards the river and inchoate streams which were mostly joined into the Jubilee River, mainly on gravel-underlain soil.
Eton is east, the centre of which directly faces Windsor across the Thames. Slough, which is linked by two roads forming a rectangle with Dorney, is ENE.
Dorney has Dorney Lake, where alongside Holme Pierrepont in England major rowing events take place, such as at the 2012 Summer Olympics and annually in events such as the Wallingford, Marlow and Metropolitan Regattas. The Olympic games also hosted canoeing events there which continue to take place occasionally.
In the south east Dorney Common is a large traditional grassed common, roughly triangular, which is an SSSI. Owing to the continued use of the land for grazing, the common offers panoramic views of Windsor Castle 2 and a half miles to the east.
Local administration
In local administration Dorney's community meets at a civil parish council for minor upkeep, community events and recreational matters and is surrounded to the south, east and west by the non-metropolitan county of Berkshire, with a narrow border along its north (with Taplow and Burnham) further towards the heart of Buckinghamshire. This anomaly of forming a salient just like Iver dates to the Local Government Act 1972, which came into force on 1 April 1974 – the village had been originally included in Berkshire in its Bill, but an amendment to keep it in Buckinghamshire was proposed by local MP Ronald Bell and accepted by the government.