The Queens College association with Toot Baldon
Provided by JohnWright
By 1086 the Count of Evreaux, a companion of the Conqueror had been rewarded with certain land in Baldon St Lawrence which he later bestowed on a French monastery. After various changes of hands the land was acquired in 1504 by a Christopher Bainbridge. Shortly after, he, when Archbishop of York and a Provost of Queens College, gave the estate to the college on the understanding that a daily mass would be said for his own soul and that of his deceased uncle (late Bishop of Winchester). Subsequently in 1509 he gave the manor of Toot Baldon to the College. A John Pereson, also a Provost had earlier given his own estate in Baldon St Lawrence to Queens.
Thus a large part of the Doomsday estates were now owned by Queens and a long association with Toot Baldon had begun. In Tudor times, fellows and students used to retire to the village houses to escape the plague. In 1519 for instance College rolls showed that the whole College was in residence at Toot Baldon!
Acknowledgements to Victoria County History