The town name is a combination of Brythonic and Anglo Saxon words for 'hill' (Brythonic breg and Anglo Saxon hyll). At the time of King Edward the Confessor it was known as Bruhella.
The manor of Brill has, for a long time, been a property belonging to the Crown. Edward the Confessor had a grand palace here, that remained in place through to the time of King Charles I, who turned the building into a garrison. This action led to its eventual destruction by John Hampden in 1643 in the English Civil War. There is evidence that kings Henry II, John, Henry III and Stephen all held court here.
Ecclesiastically, Brill was originally a chapel of ease to the nearby parish of Oakley, though certainly since the English Civil War it has been a parish in its own right. There was also a convent in Brill, dedicated to St Frideswide, and a hermitage dedicated to St Werburgh, though these were both disbanded during the dissolution of the monasteries.
In the late Nineteenth century a tramway was constructed that ran from the Metropolitan railway terminus at Amersham tube station to Oxford. This tramway had a station at Brill. When the tramway proved unsuccessful Brill was made the terminus of the line and when it still proved to be unprofitable the tramway was dismantled altogether. The hamlet of Little London was founded around the station, in honour of the metropolitan ambiance the planners were trying to evoke. Although the tramway has long gone, Little London is still there.
Today the town of Brill is very small, but it is easy to see from some of the buildings in the town and the extent of the town's common land that it was once a grand place. The parish church is dedicated to All Saints.