Section 4 South of Peterley

 

 

 

We now return southwards down the common back to Peterley andaim for the crossroads at the road to Wycombe.

 

To the south of the lane is Crooks Wood, a narrow belt of old trees part of the Dormer manor lands, conserved as a game covert, as well as marking the border between Dormer and Richard Davis lands.  Richard Davis has planted another narrow row of pines on his side of Crooks Wood (to the west) andextending beyond it to Heath End.  This is known as Long Plantation and was planted to create material for the timber for the sawmill at Heath End, where the plantation ends up.  Davis owns all the land to Heath End between the Wycombe road, Kingshill Common and Crooks Wood, currently leased to Rev. Cole.  As we turn south down the road to Wycombe, to the right after Biggs’s house on the corner, there is a field with woods on the west and south sides, (Great and Little Sisters Wood) [Citers Wood].  Part of the southern arm has recently been cleared for agricultural land and a lane used to go alongside the west edge of the old wood to the former Sisters Farm.

Crooks Wood

                    There is a field to the south called Stockings, part of Thomas Mason’s farm, by the corner of which is a house with a large meadow and pond, the property and residence of farmer John Gibbons in the 1830s, who had three further fields of crops behind this meadow.  Gibbons's Farm [Stockens] is now combined with a smithy run by Winslow Page (1808) who until 8 years ago lived with his late father William (died 1846) in Great Kingshill, from whom he learned his trade.  He married Mary Lacey about 1842, went to live in Chesham and only returned last year.  His wife works at lace-making and two daughters, Caroline aged 8 and Sarah Ann 6, are plaiters, this income no doubt essential while he establishes his new business here.  His youngest daughter Sarah has only just been born, her sister Mary is still just one and her brother John four.  Winslow is an unusual name, for which originality his parents seem to have a predilection, as his oldest living brother is called England, whom we shall meet shortly in Great Kingshill.  Other siblings and relatives live in the area, the Pages having lived in the area since at least the middle of the C18^th.

 

Gibbons's Farm [as it was, much altered, in 2000 - the building on the right was originally the smithy]

 

We are now at the edge of the village of Great Kingshill.  Just across the road, only a few yards further on, where Great Kingshill Common starts to funnel out, lies Ninneywood Farm, leased in 1840 to Rev. Cole by Richard Davis, although Cole did not seem to have taken up residence here.  It is now occupied by tenant farmer George Pearman (1801) and his wife Charlotte, who come from Hertfordshire, where his father George was a farmer and beer-seller at Benington.  Ninneywood farm occupies 100 acres and employs three workers.  The land includes a farmyard with a pond, an orchard each side of the house, and all the fields between there and including Long Plantation.  As the Hughenden/Missenden boundary still follows the road here, the farm is in Missenden Parish.  The farm is quite old, as its Anglo-Saxon name reveals (a wood with "innings" or clearances in it), but the house was rebuilt 25 years ago.

 

Ninneywood Farm and pond [2007]

Cow pond on Ninneywood Farm [now much overgrown, 2017)

 

Across the road from the farm, behind an arable field called Mead Croft, is a field called Higgins, owned by the charity Wycombe Poor Law Union, which is relict common land, with a strip of crops and an area of recently felled firs.  After Mead Croft is a house built around 1840 with a couple of narrow fields behind and owned by John Nash, originally leased to his sonCharles, who has now moved to become publican at the White Horse at Heath End.  It is currently occupied by widower George Mason (1778), a timber valuer, whose brother farms adjoining land (Fry’s Farm).  He was wealthy enough to put up nearly £904, with his son-in-law the late James Gurney, formerly of Great Kingshill, for all the timber, mainly beech, in Atkins Wood in 1841.  Formerly the property of Thomas Ives, the wood had been acquired by former Hertfordshire farmer, William Grover, now living in Wendover Dean, while his sons manage a large farm at Chesham.  The whole wood was felled, as the sale included thousands of “tellers” (saplings) and all “underwood” as well as 139 oaks, 212 larch, 33 elms, 29 ash, 25 poplars, 19 cherries, and 18 sycamores.

An older cottage by George Mason’s house is occupied by his widowed daughter Ann Cartwright (1803) who is a midwife.  Her husband’s father Richard (1769) is a small farmer at Great Hampden, and he has another son, John (1791), with a much larger farm of 96 acres at Piggotts.  Ann has two children with her, Allen (1834) a farm worker, and Martha (1840) at school.  Currently here also is Ann's sister Elizabeth, James Gurney’s widow.  Before this, the cottage was used by one of the workers on Fry’s Farm, William Pusey.

Right next door to these properties is the farmhouse for Fry’s Farm [Cherry Tree Farm].  Thomas Mason (1766) leased the farm from Rev. Cole in the 1830s, but he has now retired from farming, which he leaves to his son William (1815), who has a wife and 4-year-old son.  They have one live-in farm servant William Lacey (1833).  The farm covers 90 acres to the west of the house, including an orchard, and employs 3 or more labourers according to season.  Another son Thomas (1822) is a labourer at Chesham.

South of the farm is another strip of three small meadows and arable belonging to Wycombe Poor Law Union.  Here the old common has widened out but there are many new encroachments along the eastern edge that restrict the road for a few hundred yards before it becomes an unfenced track through the centre of the common.  The old Hughenden/Missenden boundary follows the east edge of Kingshill Common and so diverts eastwards from the road.  This means that the encroachments, although on the east side of the road, are still in Hughenden.

On one of these is the house [The Cottage] of John Bristow (Brister) (1825), a sawyer.  He has a young wife Phoebe (1827) and a new-born son named after his father. Following these are allotments belonging to Hughenden Parish, on part of which was built about 1840 a cottage occupied by farm-worker George Mason (1808), brother of Joseph Mason (above), and his wife Sarah.  Not having had any children, they have space for lodgers, currently Sarah’s 21-year-old brother James Bunce.  Previously lace-maker Maria Lacey and blacksmith Winston Page had both lodged here, in their twenties. 

Slightly further on, but set back further, are two adjoining cottages [Lowland Cottage].  One belongs to another sawyer (and carpenter), Edward Ward (1781) and his wife.  He is from Speen and has a carpenter father (William) and sons Job, carpenter at Cryers Hill, and William with the same occupation in Prestwood.  (With a sawmill nearby, as we shall see shortly, there is a lot of employment for wood-workers in the Kingshill area.  The woodlands are actively worked for timber and new plantations often established.)  His brother John, a farm-worker, lived here ten years ago with a wife and seven children, but he seems to have left the area. 

In the adjoining cottage is another wood-worker, the bodger (turner of chair-legs) William Crutchfield (1791) with his wife and four children at home.  The eldest of these, also William, is 29, still single, and works at the same trade as his father.  Two more sons, James (1819) and George (1825), live in the south part of Great Kingshill.  His father, a farm labourer, also lived in Kingshill.  Labourer George Busby lived in this cottage in 1841.

The next set of new cottages is closer to the road again.  The first adjoining pair used to be occupied, ten years ago, by the blacksmith family, the Pages, whom we met a short while ago.  They are now occupied by two labourers’ families – Richard Montague (1780) and Mary, who have two married children living locally and a son William (1827) who is a farm servant at Hoppers Farm; and Charles Pearce (1805) with his wife Elizabeth (née Nash) and three children at home, eldest son Isaac (1831) being a farm servant at Atkins Farm, and the next two eldest, James and Elizabeth, lodging with their uncles William and James Nash in Prestwood.

There follows a cottage occupied by sawyer William Tucker (1824) who married Elizabeth Beeson (1827) last May, just after their daughter, christened Elizabeth Eliza Beeson, was born.  William’s father Joseph is a carpenter at Cryer’s Hill, although he used to live by Kingshill Common.  William’s three brothers are all woodworkers too, the eldest Edward also living in Great Kingshill (below).  His sister Caroline (1832) is a nursemaid at Hughenden Vicarage.  William’s wife is the daughter of Thomas Beeson, the gardener at Peterley House.  This was previously the home of labourer Daniel Fountain, another sawyer, who recently lost his wife and now lodges in Tylers Green. 

Then comes The Rising Sun ale-house [The Stag].  This is run by William Page (1824) the son of England Page (below).  He also works as a sawyer.  He has a wife, Ann (1826) and three young children, the youngest only just born.  His wife is Elizabeth Beeson’s sister, who had been a nurse at Peterley House.  They currently put up three single lodgers:another of the Beeson sisters, Eliza (1823), a lace-maker, and two bodgers in their twenties from Little Missenden.  In 1841 this house was managed by publican/labourer Edward Busby, but he died and his widow is now a servant for a family in Boarstall, one son William is lodging witha chair-maker uncle in Wycombe, a daughter Phoebe was married to James Frith (see below) in 1846, two sons are married and live in Widmer End, and just one son, Robert, still lives here (below).  The cart saddletree-maker William Nash (1831), his wife Mary and one-year-old son were then lodgers, but he died young and she now lives at Heath End (below).

Busby owned this house, the Pages’ old house above, and the next cottage, which is now a grocer’s and general dealer’s run by Benjamin Mason (1819) and his wife Rachel (daughter of William Groom), a lace-maker.  Ten years before, he had been a single man helping his father George to manage Hoppers Farm.  At that time this cottage was occupied by his cousin William Mason (1815) then recently married, who now manages Fry’s Farm for his father Thomas (see above).  George Mason owns three grass plots at the back of these cottages, either side of the Rising Sun, at the very edge of the old common (with the Davis/Cole fields behind), the first encroachments along here.

After a couple of garden plots and paddocks is the last of the residences among these encroachments before the common widens out abruptly both east and west.  This is occupied by John  Mason, a 60-year-old farm-worker, with his 47-year-old wife Ann and a 5-year-old daughter Mary Ann, their older children living elsewhere.  He is the father of Joseph, George and Thomas above.

Opposite these encroachments on the west side of the common and just south of the Wycombe Poor Meadows is a house belonging to the same charity.  James Lacey (1810), farm worker and dealer in wood, lives here with his wife Mary, a lace-maker, and seven children aged from 16 down to a new-born boy.  They have been here for over ten years, originally with his father and mother Samuel and Mary, who have since died, his father having been over 80 in 1841.  Samuel had also been a timber dealer.  The Laceys are a long-established family in the Hampden/ Hughenden area.

There is a small garden encroachment on the common extending the front garden of this house, which is set back from the edge of the common, and other narrow encroachments follow – two orchards sandwiching another new house (1830s flint with panels of blue header brick, patterns in red brick, and corner quoins of Denner Hill stone), all the property of William Nash.  The house [Red Lion] is leased by William Collins (1811) who sells beer and other items and is a small farmer, as well as doing work for other farmers.  He used to manage Fry’s Farm for the Masons and now leases Hoppers from them.  His daughter Mary Ann lives at Hoppers and is in charge there, even though she is only thirteen.  He is from Marlow originally, where his father John is a general dealer, and his wife Fanny is from Chesham.  They have two children still at home.

A series of ponds occupy the edge of the common just past this house, the largest being over a quarter of an acre.  As at Prestwood, the common is used by surrounding inhabitants to pasture and water stock, whose trampling keeps the pond-edges bare, allowing an unusual plant, starfruit, to grow here.  It is undrained heathy land on unproductive clay-with-flints, with extensive heather and gorse.  To the west of these ponds, set back where a track, Hatches Lane, funnels into the common, is the old Hatches Farm, surrounded by pasture. 

 

Old barn at Hatches Farm [2000]

 

This farm is held from the Hampden Estate, along with 70 acres of fields behind as far as the Hampden Road, by farmer George Mason at Hopper Farm.  His son Richard (1821) runs Hatches Farm for him and regularly employs a live-in farm servant, two non-resident labourers permanently, and others seasonally.  His wife is from Kent.  He was preceded at Hatches by his older brother Allen, while he then ran Hoppers Farm with his father.

This is one of the oldest farms in Great Kingshill, dating back at least to early medieval times.  Until 1613 yeoman farmer George Russell lived here.  He conveyed it to his son William, who in 1664 married Elizabeth Piggott, daughter of William Piggott, who also came to live there.  In 1665 the 28 acres of Hatches Wood, marking the western boundary of the farm, were mortgaged to William Piggott.  On William Russell’s death around 1673, the farm and the wood were conveyed to his son and heir John, a Cheshire yeoman, and two others, another Cheshire yeoman and Henry Naylor, then a farmer in Great Missenden, and they in turn sold it on to William Neighbour, a yeoman farmer at Saunderton.  The tenant at Hatches at this time was Jeremy Allnutt, probably the son of Francis Allnutt, a gentleman of the Hughenden parish who held land neighbouring the farm.  In 1675 Jeremy Allnutt was still living there, along with William Allnutt and the owner William Neighbour.  Neighbour married Anne Fletcher, daughter of Ambrose Fletcher of Monks Risborough (for a settlement of £300) and in 1703 conveyed the farm and wood (now less than 19 acres) to Henry Newell of Saunderton and his brother-in-law John Fletcher of Princes Risborough.  Apart from the main house there was another residence, barns, stables, gardens, and orchards; as well as arable, ley and pasture fields.  The land extended south and west to the Hampden road and Hatches Lane, including the ancient Anglo-Saxon field of Watering Deane between it and Hatches Wood.  In 1722 the farm was incorporated in the large estate of Richard Sydenham of North Dean, High Sheriff of Bucks, who held land in North Dean, Speen and Piggotts, plus Upper Warren Farm and The Harrow nearby.  At this time Robert Wright was the tenant at Hatches.  Sydenham died in 1737 and left his estate to a relative Richard Warre, a London gentleman.  In 1755 Warre sold the whole estate to Robert Hampden, in which family it remains to this time.

In a cottage by Hatches Farm lives William Wells (1785), a millwright hailing from St Albans, his wife Martha who is local, and an 18-year-old son who is a shoemaker.  Ten years ago they lived in London and the widow Ann Cartwrightlived here with three young children.  She was the sister of Richard at Hatches Farm.  Her husband, who died very young, was one of the Cartwright family who held farms at Piggotts and Great Hampden.

 

Hatches Farm Cottages [2015]

 

Much of the land to the west of here is outside the parish of Prestwood, the land south of Hatches Farm being owned by John Staples.  This includes one cornfield called Jennets that is inside the parish, separated by a grass verge from the common, at the north-east corner of which, right beside the common, are two neighbouring houses [photo below taken in 2000].

 

 

The first is George Evans’ smithy.  He is 52 and has a 12-year-old son James apprenticed to him and another son who is a tailor.  The Evanses are prominent blacksmiths in the area, as he has relatives in the same trade at Cryers Hill and Great Missenden.  He has been here for over ten years.  Next door is a carpenter, 50-year-old George Newell.  His wife Sarah, who is from London, is a dressmaker and she is helped in this business by three unmarried daughters aged 26, 25 and 19.  Their 24-year-old son John is also single and acts as schoolmaster at the church school.  Finally, a 16-year-old son George is apprenticed to his father.  George’s father Henry was also a carpenter and owned some minor plots of land.  He lodges in Little Kingshill since he lost his wife Sarah.  George’s grandmother Elizabeth recently lived by Prestwood Common, but she also died recently.

After Jennets the common again funnels west into Boss Lane, an ancient track leading to Pipers Corner and Boss Lane Farms outside the parish.  On the south side of this extension, and just within the parish, the small field by the common is owned by Richard Janes, a 39-year-old gardener, who lives here with his wife Ann from Little Hampden (a lace-maker), and four children from 11 to 4.  Across a narrow strip of pasture behind this house is a strip with an orchard and a house owned by Richard’s father Martin (1781), who has been a widower for over ten years and still does farm work.  Martin is from a farming family (John, Richard and William Janes were all farmers locally in 1798) and his brother James currently runs Upper Warren Farm just to the west.  We met his brother John at the Kings Head in Prestwood. 

Richard Tilbury owned the field in between, at the east end of which was his house where he lived in 1841 with his wife Jane, 27 at that time, and three children.  But he died in 1849 and Jane moved to a cottage in the south part of Great Kingshill.  The Tilburys, who are Methodists, have long been associated with this area.  The sawyer Solomon Saunders from Saunderton (1804) lives here now with his wife Jane from Great Hampden.

To the east of these properties is land and a pair of cottages [Yew Tree Cottage] belonging to John Janes.  One tenant here is Benjamin Cartwright (1830), a bodger recently married with a young baby.  Benjamin is the son of George Mason’s daughter Ann, and a second cousinGeorge Mason (1840) lives with them, learning to bea bodger.  Their neighbour is George Ridgley (1804), a sawyer with a lace-making wife and four lace-making daughters (aged 24 down to 8), an 18-year-old son who is also a sawyer, and a youngest son who is only 5.  George came from Princes Risborough in the 1820s and he has a brother Absalom who is a sawyer in Speen and another in the same trade at Lane End.

East again, and by the boundary of the main common, is a final double cottage [Piper's Cottage] backed by a large pasture, all formerly owned by Hannah Janes, nearly 70 in 1841, the sister of James Janes, the farmer at Upper Warren farm (below).  She had her own income and lived here with her sister Fanny, also in her sixties.  After she died William Nash bought these properties and the tenant now is Thomas Sturgess, a farm labourer (1814) with a wife and three children, of whom the 13-year-old also works as a labourer.  His parents Joseph and Esther live near Kingshill at Wycombe Heath.  Joseph (1788) is an army pensioner.  Next door is the shoemaker William Gurney, just 22, whose 19-year-old wife Rebecca does shoe-binding for him, although she iscurrently preoccupied with new first-born.  They only moved from Amersham at the beginning of the year, but William’s widowed mother is a daughter of George Mason, and lives with him and her sister Ann at Fry’s Farm.  His father James jointly purchased timber from Atkins Wood with George Mason in 1841 (see above).  In front of these cottages, on the common, is the huge half-acre Limmers Pond, used for washing carts as well as watering stock.  All these properties, lying inside the parish boundary, which was set to follow the west boundary of the common, are recent encroachments.

The ancient Boss Lane, stony and between high banks, leaves the common to the west past the above properties.  It was the start of the much-traversed path to Hughenden Church, the parish church for Kingshill residents until Holy Trinity was built and Prestwood Parish formed.  This lane leads to Pipers Corner Farm, where farmer James Taylor (1806) cultivates 170 acres, employing 6 labourers.  He and his wife come from Oxfordshire and they are assisted by their 21-year-old son.  They moved to Surrey before coming here about ten years ago.  Out here is also the cottage of Benjamin Ives (1816) who works on the farm.  He is also from Oxfordshire originally, but his wife is from this area and they lived until recently in the southern part of Great Kingshill.  With this family lodge a farm servant and a domestic nurse Eliza Willis (1826).

Beyond Pipers the lane carries on to Boss Lane Farm where Daniel Cartwright (1814) from Great Hampden farms 120 acres with five labourers.  He is the son of John Cartwright who runs Piggotts Farm, and his father Richard was a small farmer before him.  George Mason’s daughter Ann is Daniel’s sister-in-law.  He and his wife Martha (née Montague), who is from Little Hampden, have one indoor- and one farm-servant.  The latter is Benjamin Hatt (1833) whose parents live in a cottage by the farm, his father Charles (1804), from Berkshire originally, also being one of the farm workers.  Also nearby are another farm worker Henry Free (1811) from Oxfordshire, and sawyer Thomas Anderson (1817) from Princes Risborough.

The Prestwood parish boundary, immediately after the above, strikes north-east across the common, leaving the southern part of the Great Kingshill community outside.  Only a hundred yards further south the common ends and there is a substantial house known as Firtree “Cottage” or Springfield, where Charles Riley, now in his late forties, lived until recently with his wife and three children.  He had a private income, as did another resident there in 1841, William Gardener, who was Riley’s brother-in-law.  None of them were from Buckinghamshire.  Their income was sufficiently large to cover a governess, Caroline Hanning, who was born in India, implying a colonial connection, as well as an under-servant and three farm servants, as they leased a number of the adjoining fields.  They have now moved, however, and the house is only occupied by a farm worker/manager, Joseph Montague (1810) his lace-maker wife and a five-year-old son.  We encountered his parents at the north end of Great Kingshill.

The road to Wycombe emerges from the unfenced track across the common at its southern extremity and extends through farmland to the small settlement at Cryers Hill, after which it plunges down a steep slope to the Hughenden Valley and Hughenden Manor, set within an estate of parkland and woods.  On the way to Cryers Hill the road passes Sladmore Farm on the right (with the fields of Hoppers Farm on the left).  James Cox (1795) from Little Missenden, is the farm bailiff here, managing the farm on behalf of the owners with the help of his wife and two farm servants, one of whom, George Chilton (1832) is his sister’s son, whose father Joseph lives alone at Church House, Little Hampden. 

Cryers Hill includes two pubs.  One, the White Lion, is also a shop and has been run for over ten years by Richard Ray (1813).  His 11-year-old son is an assistant and his unmarried sister Ellen (1822) acts as housekeeper for four younger daughters, his wife having died a few years ago.  The other, the Two Brewers, is a beer-house managed by Edmund Axten (1816) who also does labouring jobs.  There is also a grocer’s shop under William Free (1817) who is also a cordwainer, working with his 18-year-old brother, and able to employ an apprentice and a servant.  His grandThomas used to be a baker here before he died, at the age of ninety, five years ago. His mother Sarah (1776) still lives here with the help of a live-in housekeeper, Mary James (1808).  The Frees have been farmers and artisans in this area since the early 1700s and were prominent in the Princes Risborough  parish long before that.  Jonathan Evans (1818) is a blacksmith here, the nephew of George Evans in Great Kingshill (above).  His brothers Samuel (1815) and John (1812) are also blacksmiths here, both single and living with their widowed mother Ann (1786).  Their father was a blacksmith, like his brother George and his father before him.  Joseph Tucker (1787) has a carpentry business here, employing a labourer, two of his sons as sawyer and carpenter, and a grandson as errand boy.  Older sons William and Edward work at similar trades in Kingshill (see above).  Job Ward (1814) is a carpenter, as is his17-year-old son; he and his wife have five other children with them and his widowed grandfather William (1766), who was also a carpenter.  His uncle Edward, another carpenter, we met at Great Kingshill.  William Eden (1777) is a chair-maker and labourer; he and his wife live with their daughter Martha and her husband, Samuel Nash (1823) who is a saddle-tree maker, the son of William Nash at Heath End (below).

Still outside Prestwood Parish, we turn back north-eastwards along the SE edge of the common, past more ponds, fields, orchards, allotments and houses of the southern part of Great Kingshill.  We first pass a group of cottages on the right, one of which is occupied by the carrier William Tompkins (1801) from Cheshire, who married a woman from Great Missenden (his sister may be John Biggs’s wife).  They have only jut moved here after living for a while at Little Missenden.  His son Samuel (1827), a sawyer, is currently lodging at the Rising Sun.  Another two cottages are occupied by widowed ladies raising families on their own, both lace-makers and both assisted in this by two teenage daughters.  In one is Elizabeth Page (1804) daughter-in-law of William Page (see below), who also has a 6-year-old son.  In the other is Mary Wells, who has been here more than ten years now, and is helped by her 22-year-old son Cornelius, a chair turner.

Half way along, the common has been enclosed on the north as well as the south side, and these are clearly new fields and buildings.  The parish itself owns the allotments with a pond, and a couple of other enclosures.  John Biggs (1806) lives here and is a bricklayer, employing two sons, aged 20 and 14, in the same trade.  He is the son of Joseph Biggs at Collings Hanger Farm and owns a couple of the orchards here.  He has lived here since he built the house in the 1830s on land leased from Lord Dormer.  In the adjoining cottage is Samuel Dean (1822), a farm labourer with his wife and two young toddlers, although around 1840 another labourer George Bennett (1802) was here with his wife but no children.  In the next house, on land owned by Biggs, the Janes’s and the Tilburys have lived since the 1830s.  William Janes is a chair turner and his 17-year-old son George works with him.  There are three other children still at home.  James Tilbury, a farm labourer, used to hold the other cottage, but moved out about 1840 (going to lodge with widow lace-maker Elizabeth Lacey, see above) and was succeeded by his son Richard, then in his late thirties and also a labourer, his wife Jane, and three young girls.  Richard died just two years ago and Jane, only 37, now lives there alone with two teenage daughters, who help her with lace-making, and two young sons.

Here also is Edward Tucker (1819) a carpenter, with a new cottage on Parish land, and also two young children.  Nearby is old George Page, formerly a labourer, but now at 76 too infirm to work, although his wife of the same age still does lace-making.  They have been here in this cottage on Daniel Statham owned land, since the 1830s, and in 1841 their son George Jr., then 43, his young wife and baby, lived here too, helping to support them.  At that time George Sr.’s older brother William, then in his seventies, lived on an encroachment at the north end of Kingshill Common where Richard Montague now lives (above).  William has passed on now, but some of his sons still live nearby, as well as a widowed daughter-in-law, Elizabeth, who we met at Boss Lane.  One of his sons is Winslow, the blacksmith, above, but the other two live here in Great Kingshill.  England Page (1800) is a grocer who also does some farm work, and lives at Pound (old word for “pond”) House, with a wife who does lace-making and six children, one of whom, at 19, is already a bodger.  The latter's colleague David Sturges, also 19, lodges with them.  son William runs the Rising Sun (above) and another son Benjamin, 16, currently lodges at Sladmore Farm as a farm servant.  England’s brother Thomas(1808) lives close by and is an earthenware dealer, one of whose sons is apprenticed to him.  His wife is from Beaconsfield and they have five other children with them.  Both England and Thomas live in semi-detached cottages.  Next door to England is the farm labourer Thomas Dean (1815) with wife and three children, while next door to Thomas Page is labourer Francis Harris (1817) who not only has a wife and four children, but also cares for an old maiden aunt, Miss Hazell (1790) who is blind, and a 6-year-old niece Ann Jefkins.  (John Phillips, a chair turner, used to live here and owned this plot, but has now moved to Wycombe Heath.)  Pound House is on John Nash land.  Before England Page and Thomas Dean, the Lacey brothers, William and Samuel lived here.  William was a sawyer and has moved away.  Samuel died before 1840 and his widow Elizabeth, then only in her thirties, has since moved to the next house, caring for two teenagers and her 80-year-old father James Tilbury, who was born in West Wycombe.   Her son William (1833) lodges nearby as a farm servant at Fry’s Farm.

Another household here is that of master carrier John Frith (1801) whose wife is a domestic servant, and who puts up his 23-year-old labourer son James and his wife, who is also a domestic servant, plus their two young children.  Then there arethe Pearce brothers George (1831) still single and a tallow chandler’s apprentice, living next to Joseph (1823), a journeyman carpenter, and his wife.  There are two farm worker families.  They are the sons of Thomas and Mary Pearce of Little Kingshill. Thomas was a builder, but he died a little while ago.  Mary continues to live at Little Kingshill.  Until the two brothers moved in only a few years ago this was the house of John Nash who was already 83 in 1841 and lived on what he had made running the sawmill at Heath End, where his sons still work (see below).  He also owned several of the enclosures in Great Kingshill.  He was supported by his daughter-in-law Mary (1811) who worked as a farm servant. 

Another cottage is that of Thomas Pheasy/Feasy (1806), a sawyer.  His wife and two teenage daughters still at home all work at lace-making.  A nearby cottage is split between two farm labourers.  James Wheeler (1785) used to be a hawker.  He and his wife care for an eight-year-old grandson, all their children having now left home.  They have been in this house for over ten years.  William Jones (1784) came from Radnage and his wife from Bledlow, and they also care for a young grandchild, in their case a 6-year-old girl.  Ten years ago their son James, also a farm labourer, lived here with his family.

Finally, the former east corner of the common is reached at the steep-sided pond called Cockpit Hole which must, with its precipitous sides, represent an old swallow-hole, where the underlying chalk collapsed after erosion by underground water.  This prominent feature gives its name to the adjoining Cockpit Hole Meadow and Farm.  The small farm is run by James Nash (1810) whose father James Sr. has his own farm at Heath End (below).  He has a wife, who also works as a domestic servant, and six children.  The farm is, however, owned by Joseph Langston (1795) who used to run it and still lives in the main farmhouse, but now earns a living as a carrier, and leaves the farming to Nash, who used to be his main labourer.   He has a wife and seven children, five of whom are engaged in lace-making.  He is a cousin of Charles Nash at the Green Man and the father of James Nash Jr. at Heath End.  His brother Charles is publican at the White Horse.

Beyond here to the south lies Hoppers Farm , which is managed by Mary Ann Collins, the 13-year-old daughter of small farmer William Collins we met near Hatches Farm.  She has the help of a domestic servant and a live-in farm-worker, a son of John Montague at Lower Warren.  This farm was run until recently by George Mason (now retired and living at Fry’s Farm) and his son Richard who now has Hatches Farm.

At Cockpit Hole two tracks cross along the south-eastern and north sides of this eastern triangle of the common.  The southern one goes on north-east to Heath End and the northern one eastwards along the edge of Wycombe Heath, whichextends southwards from Heath End to Hazlemere and High Wycombe as a large expanse of furze and acid grassland reaching as far as Penn Woods.  The boundary between Hughenden and Great Missenden parishes follows the road south beside the common, but the new Prestwood Parish boundary follows the other road and includes within Prestwood the little community of Heath End.

As we take the track to Heath End, with the heath on our right, to the left are croplands farmed by Francis Cole and owned by Richard Davis.  Among these are a fir plantation set back one field’s breadth (Four Acres Plantation) and the narrow Long Plantation, which we saw at its northern end.  There is a house set back just south of the first plantation.  Here lives the butcher Charles Tilbury (1825) with his wife Letitia and first child, one-year-old Mary.  His widowed mother is a domestic servant at Knives Farm, where she lives with her daughter and the latter’s husband, Daniel Statham (see above).  His brother was once a publican at Little Kingshill and the family come from Little Missenden.  (His grandfather was the late James Tilbury – see above.)  In an adjoining part of the house is a newly wed couple, the bodger William Pearce (1826) and his 22-year-old wife Penelope Rebecca.  We met William’s brothers George and Joseph at Great Kingshill.

Also set back, at the southern end of Long Plantation, is another house [Old Fox Cottage] where small farmer William Babb (1796) lives with his wife and two older children, George (1829) and Emma (1831), who work at farming and lace-making respectively.  This is the farm that the father of James Nash at Cockpit Hole Farm used to run.  Babb formerly ran the Chequers pub and his son Thomas is a carpenter in Prestwood (see above), while another son Benjamin is a farm-worker at Piggotts, just west of the parish.  He has a meadow that runs along the south edge of the trees.  In front of this is a narrow smallholding, a recent encroachment on the heath.  Another new smallholding after this, in front of the house, is Babb’s, and is followed by similar strips owned in the 1830s by John Nash.  Behind these is a cluster of buildings, meadow and field of crops belonging to the brewers John and William Weller, who also own a building in front of them, next to our track, which constitutes the White Horse pub (earlier known as the Checkers).  Here Charles Nash (1813) is publican (and also a fruit dealer), although he is a saddle-tree maker by trade, like his father and grandfather before.  The other Charles Nash, at the Green Man in Prestwood, is his cousin.  The present Charles Nash was in charge of the Polecat until just last year.  He and his wife Ann (1807) have two teenage children at home and currently two lodgers – Mary Trouble (1801), a widow from London who makes ladies’ caps, and Ann Coleman (1832) from Cheshire who makes fancy baskets.  They both travel around the country selling their wares at fairs or from door to door.

Charles is the grandson of John Nash, who recently lived in a house next-door.  This is now a sawmill and two families live here.  The first is the widow Mary Nash, still only 31, who, with her husband William (Charles's brother and also a saddle-tree maker) ran the Rising Sun in 1841 (see above).  William died in his late twenties around 1845.  Mary has two children, James and Elizabeth, and keeps herself with lace-making.  Also living here is the sawyer William Stacey (1824) and his wife Ann.  The woods providing broadleaf timber for this mill are mainly Longfield Wood, Citers Wood, Crofts Hedgerow, and Hatches Wood.  Pinewood comes from Long Plantation and another square plantation at

Heath End [Fernside].

 

The complex of buildings comprising the saw-mill [now been converted into gentrified residences, 2017]

There are encroachments further into the common land of Wycombe Heath at this point, on the right side of our track, an orchard, meadow and garden.  The orchard belongs to James Nash (1781), one of John’s sons, who lives in a house beside it.  He is the uncle of Charles Nash at the Green Man (above).  He is a small farmer and has been widowed for some time.  He is supported at home by his brother John's widow Mary (1796), a lace-maker, and a grandson James Nash (1834), a sawyer.  He is the son of the elder James’s son James who runs the farm at Cockpit Hole (see above)  Until a few years ago there was a row of five labourers’ cottages here, but these have been demolished.

This is truly a kingdom of Nashes and we have not yet reached its end.  Beyond this group of houses lie just two more tiny cottages on the edge of the common.  Here liveHenry Nash (1798) mentioned above and his brother William (1789).  Both are cart saddle-tree makers.  Henry and his wife Sarah live with two teenage sons, David (1832) having the same occupation as his father and Reuben (1834) working at the sawmill.  William just lives with his wife Elizabeth.  As far as anyone can remember the Nashes have been a wood-working family (cf. remarks on this surname in relation to Charles Nash at the Green Man above).

 

The final cottage at Heath End [in much disrepair in 2017 and now demolished]

 

The track now continues to Little Kingshill through the southern extension of the Dormers’ Peterley estate cultivated by Thomas White, who lives outside the parish.  This is also the end of Wycombe Heath and on the right hand side is the Dormers’ Birchmoor Wood, a name that accurately catches the heathy nature of this area.  Just past this on the left is Peterley Avenue leading directly north-west to Peterley House.  A milestone opposite the entrance to the Avenue shows we are 30 miles from London.

We travel up to Peterley House and back west along Peterley once again to the crossroads.  Opposite is a narrow lane (New Road) between the final Dormer fields farmed by Joseph Biggs and then between Davis fields on the north side (also farmed by Biggs) and Francis Cole land to the south, farmed by Thomas Mason.  On the south side, too, lie Great and Little Sisters Woods and the narrow Longfield Wood, part of the woodland that used to extend all the way along the valley we now enter, which runs between Great Hampden and High Wycombe.  The track is still used by the farmer and by those taking timber from the woods.

 

Longfield Wood from the north-west.  The buildings are Stonygreen Farm.

On the other side of Great Sisters Wood the lane makes a sharp bend and starts a steep decline down a side valley to the main valley bottom, now an unfenced track through arable fields, Cradle Piece and Long Bottom.  At the bend used to be Sisters Farm, abandoned in the early part of this century.  No trace of it now remains, although a track still goes north from here along the hedgerow to the old chalkpit west of the new church.  The fields are cultivated along the valley bottom, but the steep upper parts are grazed.

At the bottom we come to the road near the southern boundary of the parish.  Down the road half a mile and outside the parish lie the old farms, now called Upper and Lower Warren, part of the Hampden estate.

At Upper Warren lives farmer James Janes (1778), his wife Charlotte, and a widowed son, also James (1818), who now does most of the farm work with the help of his 12-year-old son, yet another James.  He also has a 10-year-old daughter Sarah who does some lace-making as well as attending school.  They have one farm servant lodging with them, Ebenezer Dell (1831) from Princes Risborough.  They farm 85 acres and employ four labourers.  Ten years ago the Janes’s lived here with two live-in farm-servants and a girl servant.  Formerly called Stonewall or Stonell Warren, this farm was part of an early Anglo-Saxon settlement, as there was abundant water at the time from the stream running down where the road is now and various springs issued from the sides of the valley.  Indeed the first name may be a corruption of “stone well”, while the second indicates that rabbits were bred here in medieval times.  In 1722 it included 80 acres and the tenant was John Montague.

At Lower Warren the farmer is John Montague (1796) who came from Princes Risborough in the 1840s, although his wife Elizabeth is a local woman (so the correspondence of his name to that of the occupier of Upper Warren in 1722 is presumably nothing more than a coincidence).  They have five children with them aged from 10 to 22.  The four daughters work at lace-making, and the last one, Henry (1831), helps with the farm.  They have 60 acres and employ two labourers.  Another quarter of a mile would bring us to the Harrow pub run by William Munger, who supplies food for the local area as well as providing drink and lodging.  In 1841 the labourer Levi Saunders ran this house.  It sits at the start of the Hughenden Valley community.