Part III Prestwood After 1851

 

9       The Enclosures and Beyond: 1850-1900

 

… these Justices and Gentlemen have enclosed the Fields and the cause of laying down the flails The Devil will Whip them into Helltails.

From a poster at Bicester 1800, quoted in Hay, Linebaugh, Rule, Thompson & Winslow “Albion’s Fatal Tree”

 

Those fenceless fields the sons of wealth divide,

And even the bare-worn common is denied.

Oliver Goldsmith "The Deserted Village"

 

In some ways the next fifty years was a relatively stable period for Prestwood.  A number of the houses in 1850 were of recent origin, representing a moderate expansion of population in the 1830s and 1840s, and this modest expansion continued during the rest of the C19^th, with about half as many households again in 1900 as in 1850 (i.e. an increase of just over one house per year).  The lives and work of the people, too, changed very little.  For an era of supposedly major progress, the Victorian age brought little benefit to the rural farm-worker.  Admittedly, some diseases like cholera and typhus were almost eradicated, and typhoid fever (an intestinal disease unrelated to typhus) much reduced, but medicine was still primitive and largely unavailable to the ordinary person.  While Prestwood did not suffer from the growing overcrowding of the cities and its associated social ills, infant mortality rates were just as bad in 1900 as they were in 1850.  About 20% of infants aged 0-9 died between each decennial census: the death of young child was a normal event, experienced by all but the luckiest families.  Even the farmers had to cope with continuing plagues among their animals – foot-and-mouth raged widely, “cattle plague (rinderpest) and pleuro-pneumonia” broke out several times (Wilson 2002).  Likewise the “golden age” of capitalism was less visible in this rural backwater than in the large towns and cities where industry flourished, with one exception.  This exception was only the culmination of change that had started decades earlier, but it would eventually influence the environmental character of the area in a major way.  This was the demise of virtually all the common land.

 

The Loss of the Commons

 

"The Mores"

by John Clare c1831

 

Far spread the moorey ground a level scene 
Bespread with rush and one eternal green 
That never felt the rage of blundering plough 
Though centurys wreathed spring's blossoms on its brow 
Still meeting plains that stretched them far away 
In uncheckt shadows of green, brown, and grey 

Unbounded freedom ruled the wandering scene
Nor fence of ownership crept in between 
To hide the prospect of the following eye 
Its only bondage was the circling sky

One mighty flat undwarfed by bush and tree 
Spread its faint shadow of immensity 
And lost itself, which seemed to eke its bounds 
In the blue mist the horizon's edge surrounds

 
Now this sweet vision of my boyish hours 
Free as spring clouds and wild as summer flowers 
Is faded all - a hope that blossomed free, 
And hath been once, no more shall ever be

Inclosure came and trampled on the grave 
Of labour's rights and left the poor a slave 
And memory's pride ere want to wealth did bow 
Is both the shadow and the substance now

 
The sheep and cows were free to range as then 
Where change might prompt nor felt the bonds of men 
Cows went and came, with evening morn and night, 
To the wild pasture as their common right

And sheep, unfolded with the rising sun 
Heard the swains shout and felt their freedom won 
Tracked the red fallow field and heath and plain 
Then met the brook and drank and roamed again 
The brook that dribbled on as clear as glass 
Beneath the roots they hid among the grass 
While the glad shepherd traced their tracks along 
Free as the lark and happy as her song

 
But now all's fled and flats of many a dye 
That seemed to lengthen with the following eye 
Moors, loosing from the sight, far, smooth, and blea 
Where swoopt the plover in its pleasure free 
Are vanished now with commons wild and gay 
As poet's visions of life's early day

Mulberry-bushes* where the boy would run 
To fill his hands with fruit are grubbed and done

 
And hedgrow-briars - flower-lovers overjoyed 
Came and got flower-pots - these are all destroyed 
And sky-bound mores in mangled garbs are left 
Like mighty giants of their limbs bereft

Fence now meets fence in owners' little bounds 
Of field and meadow large as garden grounds 
In little parcels little minds to please 
With men and flocks imprisoned ill at ease

Each little path that led its pleasant way 
As sweet as morning leading night astray 
Where little flowers bloomed round a varied host 
That travel felt delighted to be lost

 
Nor grudged the steps that he had ta'en as vain 
When right roads traced his journeys and again - 
Nay, on a broken tree he'd sit awhile 
To see the mores and fields and meadows smile

 
Sometimes with cowslaps smothered - then all white 
With daiseys - then the summer's splendid sight 
Of cornfields crimson o'er the headache bloomd 
Like splendid armys for the battle plumed 
He gazed upon them with wild fancy's eye 
As fallen landscapes from an evening sky

 
These paths are stopt - the rude philistine's thrall 
Is laid upon them and destroyed them all 
Each little tyrant with his little sign 
Shows where man claims earth glows no more divine 
But paths to freedom and to childhood dear 
A board sticks up to notice 'no road here' 
And on the tree with ivy overhung 
The hated sign by vulgar taste is hung 
As tho' the very birds should learn to know 
When they go there they must no further go

 
Thus, with the poor, scared freedom bade goodbye 
And much they feel it in the smothered sigh 
And birds and trees and flowers without a name

All sighed when lawless law's enclosure came 
And dreams of plunder in such rebel schemes 
Have found too truly that they were but dreams.

* = blackberries

 

In 1850, 15% of the area of the parish was common land.  By that time there had already been incursions into local commons, especially in the Kiln Common area and the north part of Prestwood Common, with the establishment of privately-owned enclosed fields and homesteads of dubious legality.  During just five more years, however, beginning in 1851, virtually the whole of the rest of these commons (described in the deeds as “waste land” – economic-speak for “not producing a profit for an individual landowner”) were enclosed by a succession of orders of the Justices as agricultural land under private ownership.  All that then remained of the common land at Prestwood and Great Kingshill were two ponds beside Honor End Lane (one of them the Sheepwash), two ‘recreation grounds’ (although these were not properly levelled as such until nearly the end of the century) and four allotments.  On Denner Hill nothing was left at all.  This was the final act in a wave of Parliamentary Enclosures that began elsewhere in England about 1760 and had already taken Kiln Common in the name of "improvement" - more economic-speak for "making profit for the few at the expense of the many".  By 1870 one sixth of the area of England had been changed, through 4,000 acts of parliament, from common land to enclosure by what could well be described as legalised theft, providing no compensation for most cottagers' rights (Fairlie 2009).  Even those with smallholdings ("encroachments") generally found the costs of complete enclosure disproportionate and were forced to sell out to larger landowners.  While there were badly used commons that fitted Lloyd's condemnation (Ch. 7c, p.17), the main impetus for these enclosures was the need of current landowners to enlarge their holdings to maintain profitability and to be able to employ the latest techniques and innovations in farming methods, coupled with a more contentious desire on their part to reduce the independence of cottagers by making them totally reliant on wage-labour (articulated in moral terms as a denigration of lazy impoverished peasants "not inclined to work for wages") (Fairlie 2009).  What was also seldom pointed out was that overstocking of commons was often by neighbouring landowners enlarging their holdings by stealth where they could not do so by purchase (the labouring cottager in any case had no means to enlarge his number of cows or goats).

While this raised the agricultural output of the area considerably and enabled farmers to make investments to increae productivity and take advantage of the expanding markets for food in the manufacturing communities, it concentrated resources into the hands of a relatively small number of wealthy landowners who had the capital to invest in this new land.  The enclosures did not proceed without protest from local cottagers, culminating in rural riots in the 1830s in some areas of the country, although, as usually happens, “economic progress” won the day.  There was an accompanying consolidation of farm ownership with the loss of the smallest farms.  The local directories for the Great Missenden civil parish (which included something approaching a half of Prestwood parish residents) show a decline from 34 to 27 farmers from 1854 to 1864, and dropped to as few as 18 in 1877, only rising again in the 1890s, when there were 29 farmers in the parish at the end of the century.  Importation of cheap wheat and wool was pressing on English agriculture, but those farmers who weathered the storm and bought up the holdings of the less successful, while holding down labourers’ wages, came out of it even better off.

Customary rights of the rural workers to the use of this common land – the cutting of gorse and brush as fuel, winter flailing of grassland, raising poultry, growing vegetables, grazing and watering animals – were suddenly lost.  For families on meagre incomes this apparently minor loss was more serious than it might seem (Court 1962).  The loss of their smallholdings was often the difference between survival and going under (Hammond & Hammond 1920).  “ The labourers had to leave the land or starve ” (Wilson, 2002).  According to Neeson (1993) an average cottager's cow provided a gallon of milk a day, earning the equivalent of half a full-time labourer's wage.  An acre of gorse (derided by advocates of enclosure as worthless scrub) was worth 45 days' labour when cut and sold as fuel to bakers and operators of brick-kilns.  Cottagers received no compensation for these losses, although Acts of Inclosure handsomely compensated those gentlemen who could claim manorial rights in the soil and trees, even though they had made no input to the improvement of the land.  In the case of Denner Hill, Edward Grubb (who did not live locally) claimed compensation for rights in Denner Hill and Bryants Bottom commons, Denner Hill Coppice and Spring Coppice.

One improvement that did result from enclosure was the impetus it gave to improvement in the roads, as the new farmlands had to be more easily accessible, while the old commons tracks were treacherously rutted and pitted, often obstructed by scrub.  Thus Rolls Lane, metalled where it came up Denner Hill from Stony Green, had continued along the crest of the hill all the way to Acrehill Wood as a muddy track, but after enclosure of the commons through which it passed, it was cleared to a width of 20 feet, the central 10 feet filled with broken flints to an average depth of 6 inches.  Similarly the ancient tracks across Prestwood Common were laid with stones (providing some employment for labour), that along the northern edge eventually becoming Prestwood High Street.

Map of North Prestwood Area in 1900

 

 

Map of South Prestwood Area in 1900

 

 

 

 

 

Population

The population of the ecclesiastical parish is difficult to determine precisely, because its boundaries were different from those of the civil parishes used in the census, and addresses in the earlier censuses were sometimes vague.  Although the church parish included only part of Great Kingshill, it is impossible to know which of the households described as part of that hamlet were inside the parish.  For populations, therefore, I have had to take the combined total for Prestwood, Great Kingshill and the other outlying clusters of houses like Bryant's Bottom.  The number of occupied households, as best as can be ascertained, rose from about 190 in the two decades before 1860 to about 250 over the period 1861 to 1891, a rise of over 30% , after which it rose to 270 in the last decade of the century.  The population of individuals varied in exactly the same way, as there was no change in the average of roughly 4.5 persons per household over that period.  In 1861, 1,077 people of all ages were recorded by the census, this expanding to 1,189 by 1901, a 10% increase.  Prestwood Parish therefore experienced two fairly rapid periods of growth, the first 1850-1860 consequent on the enclosures, and, after four decades of relative stability, the second 1890-1900, after a sudden surge in new building, particularly the development of the High Street in Prestwood and the expansion of Bryant's Bottom (from 2 houses in 1851 to 16 in 1901) and Great Kingshill.  The number of households in Prestwood alone (omitting Great Kingshill and the outlying settlements), rose from 115 before 1861 to an average of 145 during 1861 to 1891, and then 155 by the end of the century.  Prestwood therefore saw a slightly lower rate of increase in the last decade (7%) than the rest of the parish.  The population of Prestwood had always been more dependent on agriculture than those of Great Kingshill and Bryant's Bottom, where woodland industries (and, to a small extent, stone-cutting) were more prevalent, so that Prestwood's fortunes waxed and waned with those of farming (see below).

 

Bryants Bottom nestles in the narrow valley between Denner Hill (left) and Piggots Hill (right). Seen from Spring Coppice Lane 2018

 

Chiltern Cottage (1870) was one of the first houses built along the new High Street replacing the traditional old flint cottages with houses made of brick.

 

The Roses (1891), another of the new houses on the High Street

 

The age distribution of this population did not vary significantly from 1851 to 1901, except for a slight increase in the numbers of persons aged over 60, which rose from 7% before 1881 to 10% in 1891 and 11% in 1901.  This appears to reflect reductions in the birth-rate, with 29% of the population in 1851- 1881 having been born in the previous decade, 27% in 1891 and 25% in 1901, showing the beginnings of a general reduction in family sizes that may reflect a change in ideology from a laissez-faire policy of parenting to one where people were beginning to exercise some control. 

Over two-thirds of the population of the parish had been born in that area throughout this time, the figure varying only between 69% and 73% between censuses, with no sign of any trend.  Immigration from neighbouring parishes, and even Bucks generally, did not increase, but there were slightly more arriving from further afield, rising from 7% on average from 1851 to 1881, to 9% in 1891 and 10% in 1901. 

These were the first tentative signs of the impact of changes in agriculture, the rise of industrial towns, and a general improvement in travel enabling greater mobility, that together would make a considerable difference in the next century.  But for the moment, Prestwood > had changed remarkably little socially over fifty years, despite the underlying economic changes that we shall look at next.  In some ways, indeed, the parish had become more stable in population than ever, because the role of migrant agricultural labour was declining. 

Of families represented in the censuses of 1841 to 1871, an average of roughtly 60% were still in the parish ten years later; whereas 70% of families represented in the parish in 1881 and 1891 were still there a decade on.  There was, however, much less domination of the population by a few families.  In 1841 and 1851, 13% of all households had the surnames of Mason or Nash (24 to 25 households), dropping to 9% in 1861 (23), 6.5% in 1871-81 (17), 5% in 1891 (14) and 4% in 1901 (12).   Other family names common in the parish at different times were Saunders (8 to 10 households 1861-71), Smith (10 in 1871 and 4 to 6 in subsequent years), Taylor (9 in 1881-91 and 4 in 1901) and Wright (7 in 1891, 4 in 1901).  (These statistics only represent descent in the male line - daughters of these same families were also represented under different married names, but they cannot be systematically traced.  The figures therefore under-estimate the full extent of the persistence of families in the parish, although this does not affect the annual comparisons.) 

Choice of personal names also became progressively less conservative.  For each census we can look at the given names of those born in the preceding decade.  In 1841 over two-thirds (68%) of boys aged under ten were called either William (78) or John (55).  The same names dominated in the next decade, but together they only accounted for 60%, a figure equalled in 1851-61, except that John had dropped to third place and George had replaced it.  William and George dominated for the rest of the century, but together they accounted for a smaller and smaller percentage, until in 1891-1901 they represented only 38% of all new names.  The same picture is shown by girls' names, where Mary and Ann dominated during 1831-51, accounting for over 60% of the total, followed by Mary and Sarah 1851-71 (about 54%), Mary and Ann again 1871-91 (44%), and finally Mary and Sarah 1891-1901 (but just 32% of all new names).  Apart from these common names (to which could be added Thomas, James, Charles and Frederick for boys, and Elizabeth for girls), children in the more religious families were often given biblical names such as Boaz, Job, Ezekiel and Hephzibah.  Fashion sometimes played a part.  The most dramatic instance of this was the rise of "Albert", not seen before 1841, occurring twice each in the next two decades, and then suddenly 15 times 1861-71, 6 times 1871-81, 15 times 1881-91, 33 times 1891-1901, and 9 times 1891-1901.  This can hardly be ascribed other than to the popularity of Queen Victoria's royal consort Prince Albert, whom she married in 1840 and who died suddenly in 1861.  His death was transmitted across the country via the ringing of church bells and it was seen as a national calamity, as well as a loss from which his widow never fully recovered.  Public mourning took on an intensity only witnessed over a century later with the death of Princess Diana.  Prestwood may have been a rural backwater, but it was clearly not unaffected by these events.  Interestingly, Victoria was never used as a girl's name in the parish during the nineteenth century (except once as a middle name): perhaps it was too presumptuous to name a child after the Queen.

 

Economic Activity

1. Farming

Some of the enclosures were large – the whole north-western quarter of Prestwood Common became the huge Sixty Acre Field (a name since enshrined in the road built across the middle of it around 1960 and now the centre of a large housing estate).  Larger fields provided greater opportunity for mechanisation, such as horse-drawn ploughs and mowing machines.  Although, for most of the latter half of the 19^th century, farming methods changed little and remained highly labour-intensive compared with today, this mechanisation had a direct effect on numbers of labourers employed in agriculture.  In 1851 40% of household heads were agricultural labourers, in 1861 38%, 1871 32%, 1881 29%, 1891 19%, and by 1901 only 11%.  Other local labouring opportunities (carriers, firewood-cutting, brick-works, road-making, latterly the railways) were only small in number and, although they increased over time, they nowhere near made up for the loss of agricultural work (from 1851 to 1901 the proportion of household heads in non-agricultural labour rose from 4% to 17%).  As a result, those in unskilled work of all kinds fell from 44% to 28%.  The loss was made up to a small extent by the more entrepreneurial of the labourers renting smallholdings and setting themselves up as independent small farmers with a few animals or vegetable crops, orchards or poultry (see below), sometimes supplementing meagre profits by running a beerhouse.  Apart from that there was only one place for the surplus labour to go and that was to the growing towns and cities, especially to the mill towns up north, leaving Prestwood altogether (a movement that was not reversed until the middle of the 20th century and later, when there was migration out of the crowded cities to dormitory towns).  In some cases this emigration took the extreme form of leaving for one of the growing countries abroad, and this half-century was a peak one for emigration to the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (often bolstered by land grants in the case of America and other subsidies from the receiving countries, which essentially made travel free, albeit still arduous).  By 1901, for the first time, there were more labouring jobs outside agriculture than in it, and a tipping point had been reached in rural communities, no longer dominated by a majority of agricultural labouring cottagers.

The C19^th was the age of "improvement" with all sorts of innovations, sensible and otherwise, promoted and experimented with.  Many new measures involved economies of scale, in which enclosure and the resulting large fields, or the destruction of hedgerows to the same effect, were integral to success.  New designs of machinery such as seed-drills, threshing machines and steam-ploughs also enabled the more cost-efficient use of labour.  There was great optimism at the time among the larger farmers that profits would burgeon, but these were actually more dependent on worldwide economics and the effects of wars and famines.  Many of the new large farms proved much less profitable than had been expected, especially given the inherent limitations of the Chiltern geology and topography.  Already, by the end of the century, some of these new agricultural enclosures were being sold off for building land, as they were never going to be sufficiently productive.  The most level-headed and scientific of the farmers however, could make a go of it and gradually tended to dominate the region.  In Prestwood the most successful farming dynasty was that descended from the Davis's on Denner Hill.  Their steady progress continued massively into the following century, coupled with the progressively-minded Stevenses.  Farmers are generally regarded as conservative by nature, but it is those with an open mind towards change and the ability to move with external economic exigencies who survived in the long term.

There were two major foreign events that had an effect on agriculture in this half-century.  They were the Crimean War (1853-55) and the Franco-German War (1872-73).  War was profitable for those who bred horses for the cavalry and grew corn for their sustenance.  At the same time surplus labour might well be drafted into the army, often leaving local manpower shortages.  The combination of increased demand for agricultural produce and limited labour supply kept labouring wages relatively high (although still not competitive with those offered by new urban industries like furniture-making).  According to Handford (2011) the average farm worker's wage rose steadily from 9s6d a week in 1824 to 14s5d in 1898.  The effect of these wars was to buttress farming from the full effects of changing world economics, which would be more fully felt in the next century.

Farming methods were self-sustaining, a mixture of animal husbandry on pasture land and arable cultivation, which were closely interlinked.  Dung from the pastures was used to fertilise ploughed land.  Crop rotation ensured that soils did not become exhausted, essential before the invention of artificial fertilisers.  The stalks of wheat remaining after harvest (longer than today’s varieties) were used for thatching.  Old hedgerows continued to be managed in the traditional way by laying, and new hawthorn hedgerows were created to mark the divisions between the plots of land.  Keen (1980) records that by the end of the century these hedges had grown sufficiently tall and thick to muffle the church bell at the other side of the former common!  Beyond the commons, too, fields were amalgamated, reducing the patchwork quilt effect of the narrow strips that had survived in places from medieval times.

All three of the main cereal crops were grown in this area: wheat, oats and barley.  They were sown after spring ploughing.  The wheat was grown for flour and bread-making, having been watered with a copper sulphate solution to prevent fungal diseases like smut.  There was a mill in Great Missenden for grinding the corn.  Oats were primarily animal feed, especially for horses.  Barley, particularly suited to the chalk fields, was grown for the breweries situated in the surrounding communities of Great Missenden, Amersham and High Wycombe.

The cereal crops were under-sown with grasses and leguminous plants, which helped to fix nitrogen in the soil and preserve its fertility.  After harvesting the corn in the late summer, it was piled in stooks to dry and the under-sown crops allowed to develop to be grazed by animal stocks or, in the case of grass, cut for hay the following summer.  This was followed by another sowing of cereals the next spring, after the harvest of which the land would be ploughed and harrowed in preparation for the sowing in the following spring of root crops: mangolds, turnips and swedes.  These again were grown for animal fodder, and animals like cows and sheep were taken from their summer pastures to graze the turnips from autumn to the end of the year and thereafter the swedes until April.  Between these two crops there was often an autumn-sown “catch crop” of vetch, rye or barley, also used as forage, and serving to further fix nitrogen as well as controlling the growth of weeds.  The root crops, while providing animal food, also served as a “cleaning crop”, regular hand hoeing between the rows serving to prevent weeds getting out of hand.  Farmyard manure was also applied at this stage to promote the growth of the crops, as well as contributing to the fertility of the soil in the subsequent year when cereals would again be grown.  (This account owes much to Stoate, 1995, supplementing local information.)  While mechanisation and artificial fertilisers were beginning to change farming radically in some parts of the country, the size and topography of local farms made this less easy, and major mechanisation occurred only after 1900.

Animal husbandry consisted mostly of cattle, pigs and sheep.  There had always been someone who dealt with the slaughter of these animals, but it was not a specialised role until the late 1870s when Alfred Stevens expanded his business to start employing a slaughterman.  By 1901 there were four people employed in this way, and the business continued to expand even more in the following century.  There were still four people employed as shepherds in 1901, so that there seems to have been no decline in the number of flocks kept in the parish, although sheep-rearing was to dwindle to virtually nil in the following century.  All these flocks were, however, relatively small.

The role of the agricultural labourer was integral to all these activities, and sometimes, at times of peak demand (fruit-picking, corn harvest, hay-making) their families would be drafted in too (although women and children were only paid a pittance).  Farm workers had to be able plough and sow, tend crops, feed and care for farm animals, milk cows, herd and shear sheep, trim and lay hedges, maintain farm buildings, fences, gates, tracks and ponds, harvest with a scythe (which replaced the sickle around 1850), construct sheaves and hay-ricks, and thresh corn.  It was not a simple job and involved a large range of skills picked up from older co-workers (especially their own fathers) and experience.  It was exacting work, long (most daylight hours), poorly paid, but healthy in the fresh air.  Rural workers had far higher life expectancies than their counterparts in the cities.  It reminds us that the countryside does not maintain itself and in the late C19^th it would have been full of people working on these various tasks, not the quiet empty experience we have today when crossing the fields.  As the use of machinery replaced much labour, this all began to change, but the full effects of that would wait until the years after 1900.

The essence of the local countryside in 1875 was captured by Robert Louis Stevenson, who took a walk that autumn from High Wycombe to Tring.  At first he was struck by the quietness of the roads and all he heard was overhead " a carolling of larks " such that he christened it "The Country of Larks".  But eventually, he continues, " I left the road and struck across country.  It was rather a revelation to pass from between the hedgerows and find quite a bustle on the other side, a great coming and going of school-children upon by-paths, and, in every second field, lusty horses and stout country-folk a-ploughing. "  From here he passed through a wood (which might well have been Angling Spring) and descended to Great Missenden.  Later, between Wendover and Tring, he describes how " The fields were busy with people ploughing and sowing; every here and there a jug of ale stood in the angle of the hedge, and I could see many a team wait smoking in the furrow as ploughman or sower stepped aside for a moment to take a draught.  Over all the brown ploughlands, and under all the leafless hedgerows, there was a stout piece of labour abroad, and, as it were, a spirit of picnic.  The horses smoked and the men laboured and shouted and drank in the sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect of large, open-air existence. "

  Woodland As stated at the end of Chapter 3, the old woodlands were already much reduced by the beginning of the C19^th, although the process continued piecemeal.  Woodland on Denner Hill was reduced to one small fragment, Acrehill Wood.  The line of woods along the valley followed by what is now Hampden Road was broken up by fields. The whole of the woodland on the west side of the road was felled, and, on the east side, virtually all of that north of Nanfan Wood disappeared and a large gap was created at Stony Green for the new Stonygreen Hall (see below).  Small plantations of conifers near Heath End and Stony Green were also clear-felled and replaced by pastureland.  Much remained, however, and the furniture industry in Wycombe still commanded the services of those turning chair-legs, like the Gurneys, of whom Victor, born in 1905 (died 1987 in Lincolnshire), was to become one of the last of the working ‘bodgers’ in Prestwood.  (The term "bodger" was a local term for a turner of chair-legs used in the Wycombe area only from the late C19^th onwards; in the censuses of this time the term is never used, such workers being called "(wood) turners".  While they worked in roughly-made camps in the woods during the day, they were not itinerant workers as some have inferred, and walked home to their cottages every evening.  They were in fact skilled manual workers and long-term local residents.  Although the origin of the dialect term is obscure, it has nothing to do with "botched" or unskilled work.)

In 1851 13% of household heads worked in woodland industries of some kind - carpenters, joiners, cart saddle-tree makers, sawyers and turners.  By 1861 this was 17%, 1871 20%, 1881 19%, and by 1891 26%, although thereafter a decline began (back down to 17% in 1901) that would would see these industries decrease in importance through the C20 ^th .  The largest rise was among the "turners", who increased from 2% of household heads in 1851 to 14% in 1891, falling back to 6% ten years later.  The peak of the timber-based economy therefore occurred about 1890.  These jobs were stimulated by the growth of the furniture industry in High Wycombe, which specialised particularly in chairs, for which the bodgers supplied the legs and other components on commission.  The rise in woodland industry, however, failed to compensate for the loss of farming jobs, and in any case agricultural families rarely moved into forestry employment.

A few woodsmen set themselves up as timber merchants, serving local demand, and this at least created some independence from the urban firms and supplied employment for sawyers, woodcutters and carters.  There were three local timber dealers in 1901.

 

Orchards

Another diversification from farming was the growth of fruit production.  In 1850 there were many orchards (all farms and some pubs - eg Polecat, Red Lion - had one), but they were small and intended mostly for domestic consumption and local sale of surplus.  Fruit goes off quickly and there was no means of reaching a wider circle of consumers.  It was the arrival of the railway from London to Great Missenden in 1892 that for the first time provided a rapid means of transport to get fresh fruit to a much larger population, supplemented by the Midlands in 1899 when a rail link to that region was established via Aylesbury.

By 1900 orchards were well established over much of the parish and many of them were very large.  Most of the Prestwood and Great Kingshill settlements themselves were surrounded by orchards.  They occurred also along the Wycombe road south of the church, at Heath End, on Denner Hill, near most of the farms and large houses like Peterley Manor, Prestwood Lodge and the White House.  Cherries were the local speciality in Prestwood and Hughenden, but there were also plums, greengages, damsons, apples and pears, including large apple orchards in the Kingshill-Holmer Green area.  Springtime would have been a glory of pink-and-white-blossoming trees and the buzz of bees:

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride

Wearing white for Eastertide.

(AE Housman, from “A Shropshire Lad”.)

Summer to autumn was a time of seasonal employment for fruit-pickers.  Tall cherry trees, some forty feet high, were accessed by long narrow curving ladders (up to 60 rungs), some of which survive (such as that on display at the Chiltern Open Air Museum).  They look decidedly precarious.  An experienced cherry-picker, moreover, would be able to balance on the ladder so as to leave both hands free for picking, by hooking one leg between the rungs and catching a lower rung with the foot.  These ladders were made in Holmer Green, using pine trunks split in half as the sides.  The migrant travellers were generally esteemed the best pickers, and they arrived in their caravans around the end of June.  One of their campsites was beside the Bryants Bottom Road near the Gate pub; they also camped to the east of Prestwood above Great Missenden (Hobbshill Lane) and towards Cobblershill (Maples Green) in similar open areas beside green lanes.  Whatever their origin these transient groups were all called "gypsies" by the resident population, and "Gypsy Lane" is still an alternative name for Hobbshill Lane, and one branch of Mapridge Green Lane near Cobblershill.  Their visits continued well into the C20^th and outside the harvest seasons they often gained employment removing stones from cultivated fields.  They also cut hazel sticks to make pegs to sell locally and cooked hedgehogs and rabbits (memories of Mrs Grace Higgin, née Tilbury, interviewed by Marilyn Fletcher in 2006, when she lived in Whitefield Lane, Great Missenden).  Other cherry-pickers came from the cities (Midlands, London) during the annual fortnight summer holiday when all factories closed down.  Employment by the fruit industry was too seasonal (bird-scarers in the spring and fruit pickers in short periods of the summer and autumn) and not sufficient to maintain settled cottagers unless they had the means to buy land and run their own orchards.  The most frequent local variety, Prestwood Black, was used for making dyes to colour cloth, being sent to mills in Oxford for this purpose.

  Poultry
Large-scale poultry farming began in 1875 when the Davis family started keeping pheasants on Denner Hill.  “[ W]icker baskets filled with pheasants’ eggs (each egg hand-wrapped in woodwool )” were sent by train to sporting estates all across England and even in Scotland.  Familiar to everyone today after over a century of “escapes”, these exotic Asian birds “strutting the fields” were a strange experience to residents at this time (Davis 2004).  In 1899 Arthur Davis married Kate Purssell, daughter of William Purssell, who had himself kept pheasants at neighbouring Little Hampden. Other pheasant keepers in 1900 were George Saunders (1841) at Peterley, Charles Hannell (1859) on the east side of Prestwood Common, Alfred Bedford (1873) at Knives Farm (his father Daniel being the principal keeper), William Ward (1856) and his son Ralph (1885) at Kiln Common, and Alfred Chandler (1867) from Wendover at Martinsend Lane.  In 1894 Alfred Tompkins (1871) purchased the defunct Golden Ball public house to start keeping a few hens, acting as a middleman for numerous other poultry-keepers.  By 1900, there was also a poultry farm at Prestwood Lodge, run by Henry Way (1863) from Gloucestershire, and two in Great Kingshill - Ernest Brown (1869) moving from West Wycombe and William Simmonds (1841) at the Royal Oak.  (Many of these were young men more able to adapt to the new entrepreneurial opportunities of the times; others branched out from other trades like inn-keeping.)  This line of agriculture would burgeon in the following century, building on what had until then been, like fruit growing, effectively a cottage industry – a few hens in the back garden.  While some of these were one-man operations, the larger ones offered employment for other local people.

 

Brickmaking

One activity that eventually took an upturn was the brickmaking industry, in support of the building boom in the region.  Avery’s declining yard was revived by Solomon Groom in 1876, as an addition to his shop business, and he lived beside it in Brick Kiln House until he died in 1907.  The yard was employing at least 25 by the end of the century, including his brother Henry (1858) and Benjamin Howard (1880), thus making a considerable contribution to the local economy.

Elisha Essex from Moat Farm set up another small yard with just one kiln, also at Kiln Common, in the late 1860s, but this was no longer operating by 1880.  Finally, a large new brickyard employing seven men was established by Samuel Howard in a new area north-west of Nanfans.  Samuel was born in Surrey 1874 but was later brought up in the little village of Bellingdon near Chesham, where his father ran a brickyard.  He may have worked for Solomon Groom initially (as his brother Benjamin was still doing in 1900), before setting up on his own, as both he and his brother lived in Chequers Lane in 1898, near Groom’s yard.  Shortly thereafter he got married and set up his own brickyard off Honor End Lane, erecting Kiln Lodge there as his residence.  Fancy brickwork as part of the entrance to the Lodge garden survives to this day.

Digging clay at Groom's brickyard, 1890s. Inset: Solomon Groom & grand-daughter Cissie

 

Stone-cutting
The small industry centred on Denner Hill continued through the rest of the C19^th, but was never sufficient to provide employment for more than seven parish men and a few others at its peak in 1881, declining to five men resident in the parish by 1901.  Stones were also dug from pits on the west side of Prestwood Common (corner of Sixty Acres and Wycombe Roads) and other places.

 

Women's work
Major changes were also evident in women’s work.  A lace-making machine had already been invented in 1820.  Originally the lace it produced (Nottingham lace) was poor and could not rival that of the cottage industries, whose products were in demand even from royalty.  By 1875, however, the machinery had been improved and good lace could be produced much faster and more cheaply in urban factories.  The rural cottage industry was no more.  In 1851, 151 women and girls in the parish were employed in lacemaking, in 1861 142, in 1871 207, in 1881 85, 1891 19, and in 1901 just fifteen. Straw-plaiting grew slightly in importance to a peak in 1871-81 (when around 30 parish women were so employed) but had disappeared completely by 1901, unable to compete with cheap imports of plaits from China and Italy.  This work may have been ill-paid and arduous, but it at least provided an important supplement to household incomes, so that its loss further disadvantaged the poorer cottagers.  Women turned to other occupations - laundry, dressmaking, beadwork, nursing - engaging around 60 women in the last decades of the century (20 in beadwork), but none were of sufficient extent to make up for the loss of lacemaking.  As always, a few of the younger women, mostly teenagers, found work as servants, and these posts increased from around 30 1851-1871 to around 40 1881-1901, but this in no way made up for the general loss of work.

 

Children's work

During this half-century school was only part-time and children were usually gainfully employed (for mere pennies) in haymaking, harvesting, fruit-picking, removing stones from fields, and bird-scaring in orchards.  Girls were also instructed in straw plaiting and beadwork.  From the establishment of the school at the parish church in 1850, children up to the age of 13 were able to obtain a rudimentary education, although ability to take advantage of this opportunity was dependent on the economic self-sufficiency of their families, and fluctuated seasonally according to the demands of farming.  Holmes (2010) calculated that in 1851 less than a third of eligible children attended the new school, but this increased to nearly three-quarters by 1891.

 

Trades
Prestwood remained largely an agricultural and woodworking community with relatively few facilities compared with the larger villages in the valleys.  We have seen how, apart from the beerhouses, the other commercial enterprises present in the parish around 1850 were basic ones like grocers, shoemakers, bakers, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths.  Most of these employed only family members.  In nearby Great Missenden at the same time there was a much wider variety of trades and businesses, including drapers, saddlers, corn dealers, land agents, watchmaker, builders, tailors, plait merchant, plumber, chemist, ironmongers, doctor, confectioner, weaver, brewer, tinplate worker, basket manufacturer, straw bonnet manufacturers, dressmaker, coach proprietor, and post office. 

Demand for these basic services would have varied little over the half-century.  In 1901 in Prestwood parish there were still four blacksmiths, three shoemakers, three bakers, and two shops (a general dealer's and a confectionery).  There was also one coal merchant, a stonemason, and a builder.

The increase in new building towards the end of century gave employment to a few bricklayers, painters, a plumber and other building tradesmen, while road improvements and the building of the railway to Great Missenden and beyond in the 1890s also saw more people employed as navvies.

  The Leisured Classes
While the numbers of propertied people in the Directories for Great Missenden (described as “gentry” or later as “private residents”) steadily increased from 12 in 1864 to 39 in 1903, there was little expansion in Prestwood, which remained largely a community of labourers and woodworkers.  The facilities in Great Missenden and its sheltered valley situation were more attractive to the well-to-do than the cooler, wetter and socially more primitive hilltop village.  There were eight people described as having "independent means" in the 1901 census, the same as in 1881, and only two more than in 1861-71. Similarly, white collar roles were very limited; apart from the vicar and schoolmaster, in 1861 there was a registrar of births and deaths, Thomas Ward (1828), resident in one of the church buildings which also acted as a post office, of which he had been postmaster since 1858 (see below for more on the local post office).  There was also a police constable stationed in Great Kingshill (George Page, just 26-years-old at the time).  In 1871 there was also a barrister and magistrate living in Great Kingshill, although being 71-years-old he was probably mainly retired.  By 1900 there was neither registrar nor policeman in the parish.

 

Stonygreen Hall

During the fifty years to 1900 only one gentrified house was to be built in Prestwood.  This was Stonygreen Hall, erected in 1871, just above the isolated Stony Green cottages, with an impressive view across the valley to Denner Hill and with mature woodlands around.  The owners, however, changed regularly.  In 1881 this was the residence of 63-year-old Charles Townsend, a farmer from Witney , with his wife Matilda, a 17-year-old grandson helping with the farm, and a servant girl from Bledlow.  They worked 120 acres and employed 6 labourers.  They also employed a gamekeeper, Henry Short from Hampshire (but born in Dorset) with his German wife Zelie.  Their son Ambrose (15) worked as stable-boy on the farm.  In 1891 the Macfarlanes were in residence at the Hall with a housekeeper and a housemaid, but the farm was now occupied and run by 23-year-old Ebenezer Grange, newly arrived from Bledlow with a wife and son.  By 1901 the  Williams family had been in occupation for a couple of years, the wife from Jersey, with four servants (cook, parlourmaid, nurse and between-maid).  None of these employees were from the local area.

Nearly a kilometre of new road was built from the old Wycombe road, starting from beside the Mill House, just to serve this new residence, with an avenue of trees planted regularly the whole way.  Perhaps it was its isolation that encouraged stories such as the ghost of a lady galloping round the Hall on a white horse, head in hands; others have told of hearing a Roman soldier marching by Stony Green in hobnail boots, and of a jilted lady who walks up the road towards Great Hampden Church in a cloak (Nanton 1987).

Stonygreen Hall (at top) above Stony Green

Prestwood Lodge

There was some attempt to create the fashionable parklands of the Victorian age, of rolling grass and exotic trees, although here on a small scale.  Tree plantings occurred, for instance, at Peterley Manor and Prestwood Lodge.  At the latter a new drive for carriages was created from the new Nairdwood Lane, laid down when the arm of common-land, Peterley Common, on the east boundary of the house was converted into fields, preventing one just driving across the common to the Lodge.  The new drive came off the Lane just north of Church Path, and curved through lawns and trees to finish in front of the house, which overlooked a large pond.  One of the black-painted carved wooden gateposts that flanked the entrance to the drive was revealed by scrub-clearance in the late C20^th, but this now seems to have disappeared.  Peterley Lodge was in 1871-91 the residence of Emily Watson (born in Somerset), who in 1851 had been at Chestnut Farm with her husband James the spirit merchant.  She had come back to Prestwood after moving to her London house on her husband's death.  She had her own independent income and in 1871 kept a servant, cook, gardener, and dairywoman, the last three all members of the Hannell family who resided in a cottage by the Lodge.  The Hannells remained in her employ until she died in 1895, when the house and grounds were taken over by Henry Way, a poultry farmer, who had previously lived in Gerrards Cross and before that in the United States, although he had been born in Gloucestershire.

 

Prestwood Lodge early C20^th(when the original flint-built house had gained a 3-storey extension and conservatory)

 

Holy Trinity Church and Prestwood Park

The largest expanse of trees, however, was created by Re vd. Thomas Evetts on the glebelands behind the church, where the old pasture was planted with a scattering of foreign limes, turkey oaks, horse chestnuts, pine, and wellingtonia, as well as native beech.  At its northern end he planted a speciality of the age, a Lucombe oak, a hybrid of turkey and cork oak that had first been propagated at Lucombe in Devon in 1762 and was commonly planted in the south of England in the ensuing century.  His “pleasure grounds” (Keen, 1998a), part of which subsequently became known as Prestwood Park, were open to the public for picnics and festive events, such as the annual commemoration of the church’s consecration and the Harvest Festival introduced in 1857.  They were also used by Evetts and his friends for their favourite sport of shooting game.  A track that in 1850 had traversed this field from the south to the chalk-pit at the north end, and then continued down the eastern side of the field to the Polecat, was now diverted west so as to skirt the southern edge of the park and head directly towards the Polecat.  As part of the glebelands Evetts was also in charge of Knives Farm, on whose land the church had been founded.  He installed a bailiff Daniel Stadhams there.

Evetts was still curate at Holy Trinity in 1861, when he and his wife Elizabeth, still only 40 and 36 years old, having married at Headington, Oxford, in 1844, now had eight children, aged 7 months to 14 years.  The servants had largely changed, as is the nature of such posts that mostly employ young people in their mid-teens and early twenties, except that local girl Elizabeth Redrup (25) was still employed, having now risen to "lady's maid".  Her younger brother John (18) had also been recruited as a footman.  Five of the nine servants had been born elsewhere, but two other local people were now employed as kitchen maid (Susannah Janes) and nursemaid (Martha Pearce).  In 1851 Evetts's widowed mother was living with him, but she died in 1857 and he dedicated a stained-glass window in the church to her memory depicting "entombment and resurrection" (made by F.W.Oliphant).

Evetts left Prestwood in 1864, although in 1871 his son Basil Thomas Alfred, then 13, was a pupil at Revd. Arthur Hussey's school at Peterley Manor.  In 1881 he graduated from Trinity College, Oxford, like his father, and became a historian, an authority on the Copts (Christian descendants of the ancient Egyptians).  He wrote several books about the Coptic Church published between 1888 and 1915, including translations of Coptic works from the original Arabic.  He died as a single man in 1919.

In 1864 Evetts was briefly succeeded by Revd. William Wood, but in 1866 the curacy devolved to Revd. William Thorley Gignac Hunt, a native of Bath, educated at Christ Church, Oxford 1856-62, who had previously been vicar at Dinton and Princes Risborough.  He had married Mary Eliza Burgess in 1862, the daughter of Revd. William Joshua Burgess, who had held the incumbency of various parishes around Prestwood - including Sarratt, Great Missenden, Aston Clinton, and Lacey Green. 

Revd. Hunt moved on in 1871, to be succeeded by John William Boyd (1871-75), who went on to become Master of Magdalen College School, Brackley in 1879. 

He was followed by Harry Morland Wells, then just 34 years old, who held the post for a more substantial time, until 1892.  He employed seven servants at the Vicarage, but none were from Buckinghamshire.  Revd. Wells was the son of the Hon. Frederick Octavius Wells, a Chief Justice in the Bengal Civil Service.  His brother was Admiral Sir Richard Wells, while a sister Mary Julia married the Rt.Hon. Sir Thomas Frederick Halsey, 1st Baronet; so he was remarkably well connected.  Of his own sons living at home at the time of the 1881 Prestwood census, Harry Lionel (then 5) joined the Royal Navy at the age of 13, was made a Lieutenant in 1896 and later a Commander (captain of HMS Handy in 1902), Richard Busk Paterson (then 7) followed his father into holy orders, and Frederick Neville (then 10 months) went off to try ranching in South America (1899-1902), returned to Guernsey to become a fruit-grower (1902-16), enlisted as a Lieutenant in the Army Service Corps (Horse Transport & Supply) during the First World War and died in 1918 on active service at Le Havre, where he is buried.  A later son, John, was knighted.  Harry Morland Wells himself graduated at Cambridge and married Frances Ellen Paterson Busk, the daughter of Joseph Busk, a Justice of the Peace in Hertfordshire.

From 1892 to the end of century, the vicar was John William Watney Booth from Surrey, who had been vicar of South Darley in Derbyshire.  He was perhaps closer to the people than Harry Wells must have been, and certainly, of the six servants recorded in the 1901 census, five were from Buckinghamshire, one West Wycombe, one Tingewick, and three from Prestwood - the sisters Mabel and Elsie Janes (parlour- and house-maid respectively) and May Ridgley (kitchenmaid).  He was very popular with his congregation, as the ornate tombstone in the churchyard and the stained glass window in the church itself, paid for by members of the church, testify.  He had graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford.  (Revd. Booth later became curate at Monks Risborough, where Thomas Evetts was rector before him.)  His wife Alice Margaret was from Lancashire.  With them in 1901 were two children, Margaret (1893) and Ralph Hugh (1895), and his unmarried sister Mary Isabel (1864) who had a private income.

A small farm attached to the vicarage had been set up by the 1890s, with outbuildings of timber and slate, flint-work stables, and a pond, where the then vicar Revd. John Booth “kept four cows, pigs, poultry, ducks, turkeys and guinea fowl”.  This along with a kitchen garden, protected from inclement seasons by a high wall like that at Peterley Manor, helped keep the household well supplied with food.  Booth also bred pheasants and partridge (perhaps in Lawrence Grove Wood where this practice was revived for a while in 2001) for his many shooting parties.  He was also a keen foxhunter and played cricket for Kingshill.  He was helped in all this labour by just one man, Tom Cummings, who lived in the schoolmaster’s cottage and acted as “ coachman, gardener and gamekeeper – and he sang in the choir on Sundays! ” (Keen, 1996b).  Cummings came from Monks Risborough, and had perhaps been recommended by Evetts.

 

Peterley Manor

Peterley Manor continued to be occupied by tenants of some distinction, largely a succession of scholarly clergymen, as recorded by Keen (2001 & 2002).  Peterley House was first tenanted by Mr Wildman Yates Peel in 1852 (then aged 24), after his marriage to a distant cousin Magdalene Susanna Peel in Cheltenham.  Mr Peel was a son of Bolton Peel of Staffordshire, while his wife was the daughter of Jonathan Peel of Culham, Oxfordshire and probably known to Evetts.  In 1853 and 1854 a son (Reginald William) and then a daughter (Eliza Isabella) were born to them at Peterley, and Wildman Peel was appointed churchwarden.  They were well connected, with family in various parts of Britain, including Scotland and Wales, and were related at some remove to Sir Robert Peel, prime minister 1834-35 and 1841-46, the energetic founder of the London police force and the Conservative Party.  They moved in about 1856 to Herefordshire and were living in Caernarvonshire in 1870, when he is described as an army captain or "adjutant of volunteers" in the Clackmannan Rifles, and was listed as a subscriber to a monument to Lord Byron.

Revd. Frederick Young, curate of Great Missenden, resided here with five servants from 1858 to 1864.  Like Evetts, he had been the first vicar in a newly created parish at Monk Fryston in North Yorkshire in 1846. To supplement his income he once more set up a boarding school for six pupils, mostly sons of colonial administrators living abroad.  In 1861 their "private tutor" was Leon Klein (33), who had been born in Poland.  Young also continued the management of the surrounding estate, breeding cows, pigs, horses and growing wheat and oats.

The next tenant was Revd. Thomas Fenn, 1865-67, who sometimes assisted at Holy Trinity, including at the marriage of the local builder William Parsons.

From 1867 until 1872 Revd Arthur Hussey, of Eton College and Oxford University, who had taught Thomas Evetts’ son George at St Peter’s College, Radley, near Oxford, took over the lease and re-established the boarding school for ten boys.  Pupils were the sons of other gentry, including Evetts’ second son Basil and two from Hampden Rectory.  By the time he left, says Keen (2002), “ the house consisted of an entrance hall, dining room with linked conservatory, library, ten bedrooms and dressing room, WC and two staircases.  It also boasted an ‘excellent kitchen’, housekeeper’s room, cellars, larder and domestic offices .”  He also built a fives court and a cricket pitch, and the school was able to field a side (including Hussey himself) that played other village elevens such as Great Marlow School and Prestwood Church Choir!  The Choir eleven in 1871 included sons of several families prominent in the parish in 1851 – blacksmith William Hildreth’s son Owen (15), wheelwright William Janes’ son Peter (29), and Polecat publican Isaac Timpson’s son Herbert (just 10).  Cricket continued to be a popular local pastime, with the vicar, John Booth (above), being a particularly noted exponent (Keen, 1996b).

When Hussey left Peterley Manor, the school was closed and it reverted to being a ‘country seat’ of some renown in socialite circles under the energetic tenancy of Sir Charles Lawrence Young, 7th Baronet, for some six years.  Among visitors at that time was Sir Henry Irving in August 1874, the year he consolidated his reputation with an acclaimed performance of "Hamlet" in London at the age of 36.  Young, a barrister, writer and amateur actor, was formerly resident nearby in North Dean and later in London.  His father Sir William Lawrence Young was MP for High Wycombe, and his mother Lady Caroline was co-heir of Hughenden Manor.  He succeeded to the baronetcy after the death of both his elder brothers in 1854 during the Crimean War, one at the Battle of Alma and the other contracting cholera at Sebastopol.  He was 32 when he arrived at Peterley and a widower, his wife having died very young.  He did not remarry until 1881, after he had left Peterley.  He co-authored "A Stable for Nighmares; or, Weird Tales" with Sheridan le Fanu and others in 1867, and wrote six plays, including " Jim the Penman ", first performed in New York in 1886 and later made into a silent film starring Lionel Barrymore in 1921.  He converted to Catholicism, the Dormers' faith, in 1886, less than a year before he died in 1887.  An early photographic portrait done in 1863 by Camille Silvy resides at the National Portrait Gallery.

Tenants thereafter came and went regularly, with four residing there between 1878 and 1900, although each played their part in bestowing patronage on the parish church and social events.  Such patronage made a good deal of difference to church funds and local charitable causes.  Mrs Agnes Lluellyn, wife of Raymond Lluellyn, for instance, who resided there, after being widowed, for over ten years 1888-98, supported education and “the coal and clothing clubs” (Keen 2002), while holding a celebration of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897 at the Manor for local schoolchildren, each receiving a jubilee mug.  At the time of the 1881 census the tenancy was held by John Rochfort Blakiston, son of Major John Blakiston of Mobberley Hall, Cheshire.  His wife Georgina was the daughter of Revd. Francis Cubitt, Rector of Fritton.  The Blakiston coat-of-arms is described as "Argent, two bars gules, in chief three cocks of the last. Mantling gules and argent. Crest - On a wreath of the colours, a cock gules. Motto - 'Do well and doubt not'". 

 

Blakiston/Rochfort coat-of-arms

 

In his twenties (in 1863 and 1865) Blakiston played cricket for Cheshire, being principally a bowler.  Whether he continued with cricket in his forties at Peterley is unfortunately not recorded.

 

Community life

With few propertied residents, and the common land gone, a slow decline of rural traditions began.  In 1850 spring and autumn fairs were held annually, one on Easter Tuesday and the other on the Monday after Old Michaelmas Day.  By 1887 these regular fairs were no longer held, although smaller carnivals continued on and off into the next century.  There was, for instance, a harvest festival organised by Revd. Thomas Evetts in September each year for farmers and their labourers.  This consisted of a service and sermon, followed by an assembly in a large tent made out of the large cloths used to cover ricks and decorated with laurel branches.  There they enjoyed roast beef and plum pudding, punctuated by "jovial toasts", songs and speeches. (Records of Bucks, II, p.47.)

Prestwood could not, however, overlook the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria on Midsummer’s Day in 1887, when the whole country celebrated.  The Bucks Free Press at the time reported that Cornelius Stevens took on the organisation of this big event, which was funded by a local collection.  It opened with a church service by the vicar Revd. HM Wells, the choir provided by children from the “National School” at the church, and then the national anthem was sung, accompanied by Mr Groom on the drum and Mr Bristow on cornet.  The Prestwood Brass Band led a procession from Holy Trinity “around Prestwood Common” to Chequers Inn, whence Cornelius Stevens was carried in a chair at the head of the procession to a meadow at Theophilus Beeson’s farm, Andlows (probably Orchard Close or Home Close).  Here tea was provided for all the local residents, 600 it is said, with sports and games (tug-of-war, cricket, races) for prizes funded by the collection and donations from Revd. Wells and Lt. Butler Carter, RM.  The fun continued until dusk approached at 9.30pm.

The Travellers Rest public house was built in the early 1850s at the eastern end of what was to be the High Street across the north side of Prestwood Common, and the new Chequers Inn at the same time at the other end (with the new Methodist Chapel, see below, fending both off in between).  The growth of Great Kingshill was similarly accompanied by the building, around 1860, of two new public houses, the Red Lion and the Royal Oak, both beside the main route from Prestwood to High Wycombe.  (Arthur’s Cottages along this lane had been built in 1856.)  A growing community at Bryant’s Bottom also gained its first public house, The Gate, in 1864, ultimately leading perhaps to the demise of the Weathercock on Denner Hill, where the community did not grow as it did in the sheltered valley.

The 1874 Ordnance Survey map shows part of the by-then enclosed Kingshill Common as a designated elm-fringed cricket ground, while part of the recreation ground at the remnant Prestwood Common was similarly used.  The Kingshill ground was used from the 1860s onwards, although the local team was originally known as "Brand's Fee", from the old name for Kingshill (see Chapter 3).  Later on they were known as "Kingshill Blue Star".  Matches were arranged with all neighbouring villages within walking distance (Hazlemere, Hampden, Naphill, and even as far as High Wycombe) in the period August to October (after haymaking).  The tie between Kingshill and Prestwood was a particularly fraught local derby.  Nearby pubs cashed in on the popularity of the sport by providing refreshments and betting facilities.  The unevenness of the pitches, not to mention the odd plantain and daisy, or nettles and bracken at the boundary, no doubt added to the speculativeness of the latter.

The same villages involved in cricket also fielded football teams over the winter, possibly playing on the same fields.

For more everyday communal entertainment the churches were central, providing a context for music and readings, although mostly dominated by religious concerns, and also harvest festivals with free food, children's games and sports.  All the churches were well attended throughout the second half of the C19^th: Anglican, Wesleyan Methodist (since 1863), Zion Baptist, and the small Primitive Methodist Church at Bryants Bottom (since 1871). 

Methodist chapel at Bryants Bottom (right) 1999.

 

They were the centres of social as well as religious life.  Around the 1860s "penny readings" became popular, providing, for the payment of one penny, more secular opportunities to hear readings of poetry and other texts, songs and so on.  Although these largely died out by the end of the century, they were indicative of a broader social concern with public education exemplified by the growth of schooling from 1850 (and much more so in the following century) and the growth, in the towns, of Mechanics' Institutes.

 

Communications

One attraction of Great Missenden, consequent upon its situation in the valley, was communications.  The Victorian age was one of rapidly increasing mobility (for those who could afford it), the golden age of the railways and road improvements, and the invention of the bicycle.  A major road came through Great Missenden from London and Amersham to Wendover and Aylesbury.  In 1850 the horse-drawn coach from Wendover arrived in Great Missenden at 7am to take passengers into the great city, returning therefrom at 7.30pm, the journey taking about five hours.  Goods carriers (who also provided a cheap option for passengers if they did not mind sitting among the parcels) operated between Great Missenden and London twice a week.

There was a post office in Great Missenden at Willmore’s ‘grocers and drapers’ with deliveries of letters by the penny post once a day between Great Missenden and both London and Aylesbury (possibly carried by the passenger coach).  By the early 1860s a goods carrier was also operating between here and Aylesbury and High Wycombe.  Around 1875 the post office was moved to Maximilian Eggleton’s shop, also a grocers and drapers, and an agent for Gilbey’s wines and spirits.  By this time telegraphic and postal order services were also on offer.  Ten years later the shop business and post office were taken over by Henry William Langton, and pillar letter boxes were being established at outlying villages.  Increase in passenger traffic necessitated a much larger horse-drawn omnibus to replace the stage-coach to London.

In 1890 the Metropolitan railway had been built out from London as far as Chalfont, and the omnibus was able to travel twice daily to Chalfont Road station, passengers continuing their journeys from there by train.  By 1892 the train was operating as far as Great Missenden itself and the omnibus was no longer needed.  There might have been another line from High Wycombe to Great Missenden, too, but Disraeli would not sell land along the Hughenden Valley at a price they could afford, at the same time protecting Prestwood from a direct incursion of the industrial age (Druce 1926 several times refers to the "devastation" caused to the countryside and its flora by the construction of the railways) and condemning it to remain an economic backwater.  At this time, too, a full sub-post office was established with its own postmaster and three deliveries a day (much facilitated, of course, by the railway).  By the end of the century the horse-drawn carriers to London were redundant, all goods being conveyed much more easily and quickly by rail.

The rapid expansion of communications naturally drew into Great Missenden more businesses and residents.  The growing middle class and leisure time brought into existence such businesses as the “fancy repository” (a store for decorative, as against “useful”, goods) which existed from about 1875 to the end of the century, and a taxidermist.  More mysteriously, for this very inland area, a “marine store dealer” operated there through 1877 to 1891.  By 1895 there was a coffee house, a dairy, a laundry, a coal merchant, a residential hotel, and, a real sign of the times, an electrical engineer and the British Volta Electric Glow-Lamp Co Ltd!  At the end of the century a tobacconist and an antique shop had come into existence.

Almost all of this passed Prestwood by.  The main route up the hill from Great Missenden to Martins End was still a narrow cart-track and it continued as such across what was once the old common, rutted and puddled.  Even so, new houses had sprung up along its route, constituting the beginnings of the current High Street (then Middle Road).  Wesley Villa was built there at the beginning of the new century, named after the nearby new Methodist chapel.  It was occupied in 1901 by the carter William Peedle, who was also Superintendent at the chapel.  The edges of the old Prestwood Common also became new routes, with the construction of Nairdwood Lane on the east side and Moat Lane along the north-eastern edge.  New cottages had been built at the corner of the High Street and Moat Lane by the 1880s (now demolished for sheltered housing).

Cottages at corner of High Street and Moat Lane; opposite them is still a field with an orchard beyond that. Late C19^th

Similarly the road along the top of Denner Hill followed the eastern edge of the old common there, close to the Weathercock, rather than the old track through the middle of the common past Denner Farm.  Generally the roads followed the same routes as previously, however, with the exception of two tracks that disappeared, one being the old Blind Lane to Rignall that set out from Long Row, and the other a track on the western side of Citers Wood.  None of these roads were metalled, however, and it was not until a few years after 1900 that the parish even got its first bicycle repairers, William Anderson at Heath End.

A contract for handling post was granted in 1858 (Sheahan, 1862), when the school house at the Church was used.  Thomas Ward (just 33) ran the Post Office there until after 1871, as well as being the Registrar of Births and Deaths.  His young family kept a servant, Hannah Reeves, who was described as a "letter carrier".  In 1871 Thomas Ward was also a land surveyor and rate collector, while his wife Ellen and eldest son Thomas Jr (17) were employed as assistant registrars.  Ellen died shortly after this and Thomas eventually re-married and moved to Great Kingshill, where he continued to act as Registrar, his daughter Mary (21) employed as Clerk, and the Royal Oak public house was used as post office.  By 1891 the post was handled by the Henry Grover at Collings Hanger Farm, which he had farmed since 1865, letters arriving “ by foot messenger at 8.20 am ”.  After his death, Henry's son Arthur took over the farm and the role of postmaster until 1902, along with his uncle Walter.  It was not until 1902 that Prestwood obtained its own post office and the postal service was transferred to Morren’s newly built general stores and post-office in the High Street, including a public telephone!  (This was on the site of what was to be Draffan’s store, subsequently Rusts supermarket, and now the Co-operative stores.)

  Religion

Modest as the increase in population was in this half-century, it was sufficient to create demand for places of worship from what was apparently a growing number of non-Conformists (who had always formed a significant part of the population, as we have seen in Chapter 3 from accounts of the Quaker meetings there and the foundation of the Baptist chapel in 1824).  In the early 1860s two Methodist chapels were built, one (Wesleyan) in the midst of the new development along the High Street in Prestwood, the other (Primitive Methodist) in the newly expanded community at Bryants Bottom.  Shortly afterwards, in 1871, the Zion Baptist Church was also enlarged to accommodate as many as 250, on the original site on the north side of Kiln Road (not, as now, on the south side).  (For more information on the Baptist Church and its activities at this time, see Keen, 1996a.)  By 1885 the Parish Church also needed enlargement.

                The history of the first Methodist chapel was recorded in the leaflet published by Prestwood Methodist Church (1963) on the occasion of its centenary celebration.  Those of this persuasion in Prestwood in the middle of the C19^th held meetings in their own houses, much as the Quakers had done.  T hey then moved to premises at the Traveller’s Rest (run by a Methodist Jabez Taylor), meeting in the skittle alley there.  (Wesleyans, at least at this date, did not frown on drink as some do today.)  This was obviously seen as a temporary arrangement only, as a vacant site was soon obtained a hundred metres away, part of a field owned by William Cartwright, who had been living at Piggots Farm just outside the parish in 1851.  He donated the land legally on 15 April 1863.  (His grandson Councillor WO Haines, appropriately, chaired the centenary celebrations in 1963.)  By 8 September 1863, in just five months, the church was built and ready for worship!

 

Prestwood methodist Church c1900

The speed of building depended both on a great deal of voluntary help (women, for instance, gathered stones from fields round about to make up the shell alongside bricks) and on parsimony.  The basic structure cost just £130 – under a tenth of the cost of Holy Trinity.  There were no pews or pulpit: people sat on forms placed on the trodden earth strewn with straw.  (This was the traditional church floor-covering from early times – old “rush-bearing” processions still held in some rural English villages reflect the annual renewal of this “carpet”.)  Flooring, pews and a small pulpit were finally added in 1865, having to wait until the extra £60 could be raised.  Further additions in 1869 were a gallery, a larger pulpit, and decorative ironwork donated by the blacksmith Benjamin Hildreth.  A Sunday School room was built in 1872. 

A harmonium was bought for £5 in the 1890s.  Until then music was, like the building, a matter of self-help, several members of the church (who included a good number from outside Prestwood, as far away as Speen) being able to play the violin, and at times there were also viols and clarinets.  Even when there was an organ this tradition of violin accompaniment continued into the latter half of the C20^th.  The choir toured the village carol-singing at Christmas, collecting for the Royal Bucks Hospital.  (In these days, music was a major pastime of villagers, so that there was no shortage of talents – see Keen, 1998b, on other musical activities at this time.)  The Methodist pastor for several years from 1896 was, appropriately, Mr G Church, who lived in Chesham.  He walked all the way to Prestwood, a distance of some 10 kilometres, and back each Sunday.  On one occasion the snow was so deep that, although there was no evening service and he could get an afternoon start, he did not arrive back home, by the grace of God, until after dawn the following day!

Building in connection with the new church of Holy Trinity continued into the next decade.  The architect Lamb was asked to draw up plans for another building, a two-storey house for a new assistant curate, to be built in 1852 on the north side of Prestwood Common (now Flint Cottage).  It was built of flint with quoins and dressings in different colours, a fish-scale pattern tiled roof and large distinctive flint crosses set in the gables.

Flint Cottage, upper storey, 2018, clearly in the style of Holy Trinity church

 

Although most families identified primarily with one church or another, they were not separate communities, sharing social life and even sometimes using churches other than their own, often as a matter of convenience.  The blacksmith Benjamin Hildreth, for instance, remained staunchly Methodist but some of his children attended the new Sunday school at Holy Trinity (just across the lane from his forge) and many members of the Hildreth family are buried at that church.  Rivalry, as far as it existed, was between church leaders rather than their congregations.  While the churches remained important to the end of the century, belief was weakening in many parts of the population and there were signs that secularisation was beginning to become more widespread by the end of the century (Holmes 2010).  This most probably reflected a loosening of social and economic ties generally, which began with the Enclosures and gradually eroded the reverence and fear that ordinary workers traditionally showed to their employers.  The social contract was becoming economic rather than feudal, as shown by the rise of Trade Unionism in the next century.  The churches, especially the Anglican church, was associated strongly with the wealthy residents who dominated leadership, and as respect for the latter declined, so did that for the former.  Insofar as the churches remained important at this time, it was increasingly for the social opportunities they provided, the celebration of critical life-events like birth, marriage and death, and, in the case of the new church school at Holy Trinity, educational benefits.

The Families

Gentry

These noble families were not really part of the ordinary community life of the parish, although they would have been well known by repute, while their power, including land ownership, would have been evident to all the local inhabitants.  A few of the more favoured of the latter, as girls in their teens, were temporarily employed as servants in the large houses surrounding Prestwood, so that the life going on within these walls would have been much talked about.

 

The Hampdens

Donald Cameron of Lochiel died in 1858 and was succeeded by as head of the estate by George Hampden Cameron, while his older brother Donald succeeded as head of the Cameron clan.  In a letter in December Benjamin Disraeli wrote to Lord Carrington in favour of George becoming a county magistrate:

"He is a young man of abilities & breeding; & has seen the world.  He was private Secy. to Lord Elgin in China, and has been attached to several Missions."

George, who attended Magdalen Collge, Oxford, died unmarried at the early age of 33 in 1874 and was buried right next to the church.  His sisters Albinia and Mary Anne Louisa had already died in 1861 and 1864 respectively.   The two other sisters had married: Sibella Matilda to Revd. Henry George John Veitch of Eliock in 1865, and Julia Vere to Major-General Hugh Mackenzie in 1870.  Sibella died in 1890 but her sister outlived the century.

The succession moved collaterally to George's mother's brother Augustus Edward Hobart, 6th Earl of Buckinghamshire, who was already 80 in 1874.  He had already succeeded to his earldom and two baronetcies in 1849 and was a staunch Conservative.  Now a widower and retired from a career as a rector after graduating from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1815, he had been married twice, the second time to a first cousin on his mother's side, siring 14 children altogether.  In 1878 he obtained a royal licence to change his name to Hobart-Hampden.  He assumed residence at Hampden House with three unmarried daughters in their forties and spent much money on restoring the mansion.  One of his sons was Charles Hobart-Hampden who had an international career as a navy captain, including the American wars and with the Duke of Wellington, before retiring in 1863, only to resume it in 1867 as a buccaneering admiral in service to the Turks, gaining the nickname "Hobart Pasha".  Just after his death in Milan in 1886 his memoirs "Sketches of My  Life" were published, with many tales of adventures, some perhaps true and some certainly not.  Augustus died in 1885, leaving property valued at £32,747.

The heir to the estate was then Sir Sidney Carr Hobart-Hampden, the son of  Augustus's son Frederick John Hobart-Hampden, who had died in 1875.  He married Georgiana Wilhelmina Haldane-Duncan Mercer-Henderson in 1888.  (Both her mother and her father had the surname Mercer-Henderson.)  He followed a career in the army and parliament.

In 1863 a monument was erected to John Hampden just outside the northern boundary of the parish beside Honor End Farm (allegedly in the field for which he refused to pay tax).  As all will know who have struggled up Honor End Lane towards Prestwood, the monument was positioned at the crest of the steepest part of the road, with an excellent view across the Hampden valley.  Trees – oak and sycamore – were planted beside it.  It is currently cared for by the Chiltern Society.

 

Hampden Monument c1930, trees, cow parsley & Honor End Farm behind

Hampden Monument 1995

Bovill

Lavinia Anne Bovill (1821), the widow of barrister William Bovill, had lived in London (32 St James Street, Westminster) before she bought Michaelmas Farm and Claremont House (later Clarendon House Farm) in 1894.  At this time Buckland and Sons, surveyors, reported "We have surveyed the Property known as Claremont House, Prestwood, Great Missenden, Bucks.  The House is a small country Residence built of bricks flints & slate, standing on high ground, and surrounded by about 12 acres of meadow & orchard land, attached to which is a Farm-yard & buildings the whole forming a complete holding, and being only 1½ miles from the railway station, it is capable of improvement & should increase in value ."  She lived here with her son Arthur John (1856), gentleman farmer, who had trained as a mechanical engineer, and was still a bachelor.  The property was conveyed to Arthur in 1898.  The household also consisted of Arthur's sister Edith, his brother Wheatley (an architect), a cook and a housemaid.  (Two other brothers were surgeons in London.)  Lavinia died in 1905 and Arthur seems to have returned to his London home in 1907 when he got married, as the Prestwood property was leased to tenants until it was sold in 1919 to Henry Beesley, at which time Arthur moved to Salisbury, Rhodesia, where he died the following year.

Carrington

The elder George Lord Carrington died in 1855.  He was succeeded by his son George, who had been educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, and had been called to the Bar in 1836.  Having married in 1855, he died in 1862 and was in turn succeeded by his son George (1856) (born like his father on their Barbados estate) when he was only 6 years old.  He also attended Eton and Trinity and joined the Inner Temple in 1877, but was never called to the Bar.  The Carringtons continued to live at Missenden Abbey until 1946 (when it was sold to the County Council and was eventually used as one of the sites for the Bucks New University).  The women of the family occupied themselves with local "good works" but acted in an autocratic manner - when riding down the cobbled dung-strewn High Street of Great Missenden they expected women in the houses to stand in their doorways and curtsey!  Men they passed removed their hats.

 

Disraeli

Through the second half of the C19 ^th the Disraelis remained at Hughenden Manor .  In 1900 the head was Benjamin's nephew Coningsby Ralph (1867), Tory M.P., and his wife Marion.  They kept a general servant, butler and gardener, along with the gardener's family.  He was born in London, the son of Benjamin's brother Ralph and named after Benjamin's novel Coningsby.  Coningsby's grandfather was the writer Isaac D'Israeli.  Coningsby inherited the Hughenden estate in 1898 on the death of his father, who had inherited from his older brother.  At that time Coningsby was an officer in the Buckinghamshire Yeomanry, becoming a Second Lieutenant in 1900, as well as having been MP for Altrincham since 1882.

 

Harris

James Harris (1826) was a man of independent means, previously of High Wycombe, who bought Mill House on the west side of the former Prestwood Common in the 1870s.  His wife was Louisa (1831), also from High Wycombe, and they had an adopted daughter Madeline Johnson (1872) - Louisa's niece - who had been born in Oxfordshire.  He died in 1885, but his widow and her niece continued to occupy Mill House until the end of the century.

 

Honnor

Joseph Honnor died in 1856 and Rignall Farm changed hands.  After the death of his first wife Thomas Honnor (then living at Mobwell) got re-married in 1864 to Jane Evans (a servant with the family in 1851, but the daughter of a Great Missenden blacksmith and with rents from land of her own).  He survived until 1875, living in Great Missenden at Rose Cottage on the High Street.  Jane continued living there until she died in 1883.

 

Hussey

Revd. Arthur Law Hussey was born in  Kent in 1832 as a member of the noble Hussey family of Scotney Castle, with a simple coat-of-arms, "Or, a cross vert".  The family had ties by marriage with the family of Archdeacon John Law, hence his second Christian name.  He attended Lancing College, Sussex, and Christchurch College, Oxford, earning a BA and taking holy orders.  He was elected to membership of the Oxford Architectural Society in 1850.  It was here that he became acquainted with Revd. Thomas Evetts, and it was the latter who no doubt encouraged him to come to Prestwood.  Around 1871, still single, he resided at Peterley Manor as a clergyman sine cure and ran a school there.  He was assisted by his sister Emily (1828), who was also unmarried.  They employed an assistant master, cook, housemaid (Ruth Wilkins) and parlour maid.  In 1871 they had nine boarding pupils, one of whom was a son of Thomas Evetts.  By 1881 he was living in Folkestone as headmaster of Grange School.

 

Lluellyn

The occupant of Peterley Manor at the time of the census in 1891 was Agnes Harriet Lluellyn (1843), a widow from Limerick in Ireland.  She kept a grand household of a manservant, cook, housemaid and kitchen-maid.  She had been married to the barrister Raynard Lluellyn and in 1881 lived at Rayners Farm, Hammersley Lane, Wycombe.  She died in 1898.

Matthie

John Matthie, who lived in High Wycombe and London, bought up a considerable number of pieces of land on the west side of Prestwood Common in 1825, including Michaelmas Farm and Clarendon Cottages.  These lands were inherited in 1836 by his son John Charles, a merchant in Mincing Lane, London.  The latter was declared bankrupt in 1864 and all these lands had to be sold off to pay creditors.  He died in 1868.

Macfarlane

The occupants of Stonygreen Hall in 1891 were the Macfarlanes.  They kept a housekeeper (a widow with a 12-year-old son) and a housemaid.  The head of the household was absent on the census date in 1891, there only being his wife present, Mrs Janet Boyd Macfarlane (1840), and their daughter Mary (1876).  Mrs Macfarlane and her daughter shortly left for Edinburgh (again no husband present in the 1901 census), which was perhaps where the family were from originally.  Her husband may well have been a military officer, which would explain his absences.  What is not explained is why they should have come to live in Prestwood at all.

 

Watson

Emily Watson (1808) took Prestwood Lodge from some time before 1871 until her death in 1895.  She was born in Bridgwater, Somerset, and had married Thomas Howell Watson.  They then moved to London, where Thomas died in the 1850s.  It was not until after 1861 that Emily came to Prestwood.  The couple seemed to have always lived on an inheritance and the rents from some small parcels of land.  In 1871 she employed a domestic servant, dairywoman and cook (Charlotte Hannell, also from Somerset), assistant cook (Charlotte's eldest daughter Agnes), and a gardener (Charlotte's husband William).  Agnes lived in the Lodge, while the other Hannells occupied a cottage in the grounds.  By 1881 Agnes had become the cook and her sister Sarah Jane was a housemaid, both living in the Lodge.  William Hannell was still gardener and still lived in the neighbouring cottage.  In 1891 Sarah Jane had risen to become cook and her younger sister Amy Charlotte was housemaid.  William and Charlotte Hannell continued to live next door, he now being described as "steward".

Weller

Springfield House at the southermost tip of Great Kingshill was occupied in 1871 by the farmer John Malaneck, who had been born in Liverpool.  In 1881, however, it was occupied by William Weller (1840), a man of leisure and a sleeping partner in the major brewery firm in Amersham, which supplied several of the public houses in Prestwood area - the White Lion in Great Missenden became one of their tied properties in 1822.  He and his wife Louisa Charlotte (née Coyle from Surrey) lived with a niece Gladys Weller, a cook, housemaid and footman (William Brindley, 1864, of High Wycombe).  William and Louisa were still living there in 1891, with two other relatives - Louisa's unmarried sister Harriet Coyle (then aged 48) and another niece Minnie Coyle (aged 26).  They had a different cook and housemaid, but Brindley was still footman.  In the 1901 census the Wellers were living in London, but this may have been a town house, because there was no other family in Springfield, which was maintained by three domestic servants (including local girls Laura and Lizzie Smith).  Brindley had married and was now living in an adjoining cottage as the coachman.  He played cricket and football for the Kingshill teams in the 1890s and even into the 1920s.

William Weller was the great grandson of William Weller (1727), a High Wycombe maltster, who bought a share in the Amersham brewery in about 1771.  After his death in 1802 the business was taken over and expanded by his sons John (1759) and William (1764).  The two brothers both died in 1843, when John's son Edward (1791) and William's son William (1797) jointly ran the brewery.  In 1851 the brewery employed 45 workers and 12 draymen.  After Edward died in a hunting accident in 1859, William was left in sole possession.  Although it fell at his death in 1859 to his three sons William, Edward and George, the last was the only one who continued to play an active part in the business.  Edward died in 1890.

 

 

 

Wells

Rev. Harry Morland Wells B.A. (1841) was vicar of Holy Trinity, Prestwood, 1873-92, afterwards moving to Kent.  He had previously been rector at Denton in Huntingdonshire.  He came from a wealthy noble family.  His father was the Hon. Frederick Ocatavius Wells of Scarletts, Twyford, Berkshire.  His brother Richard became an admiral and was knighted.  Harry attended Cambridge University and became ordained.  He paid most of the £300 it cost to enlarge the chancel at Holy Trinity in 1885.  Many of his children went on to illustrious careers. Richard Busk Paterson was ordained like his father.  Harry Lionel became a Commander in the Royal Navy.  Arthur Reginald was ordained and his son John Julius was knighted in 1984 (he had been Conservative MP for Maidstone in 1957 and was Deputy Lieutenant for Kent).  Frederick Neville, however, had his career cut short by the First World War, being killed in France in 1918 when serving as Lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps.  In 1881 Rev. Wells kept a domestic establishment of eight - governess, nursery maid, nurse, cook, housemaid, kitchen maid, footman and gardener.

Williams

May Williams (1874) was head of family at Stonygreen Hall in 1901, in the absence of her husband.  She was from Jersey and had a son Leslie of 2 years old and a daughter Phyllis of 8 months.  She employed a cook, parlourmaid, between-maid and a nurse.  They had only been there 3 years at this time.

Wingrove

Nanfans Grange had been acquired by Robert Wingrove before 1860, but in the 1861 census it is described as uninhabited.  In that year Wingrove is known to have lived at 6 Market Square, Amersham, in a property owned by the Tyrwhitt-Drake family and previously rented out (1841) to William Weller the brewer.  I have not been able to discover anything else about Mr Wingrove, who seems to have been at Nanfans for just a few years.

 

Young

Revd. Frederick William Young (1830) was the curate at Great Missenden, and around 1861-64 he lived at Peterley Manor.  There he ran a school for a small number of scholars, mostly from colonial families whose parents were abroad.  The six in 1861 included two born in Bombay (Constance and William Impey), one in Ceylon, one in the USA, and two brothers born in Westminster.  They had a private tutor, Leon Klein from Poland, and the rest of the establishment comprised a nurse, cook, page and two housemaids.  Young was the son of a land surveyor in Surrey and married to Eliza Rumsey, but she was seriously ill in 1861 and they went to stay with her brother Henry Rumsey in Worcestershire.  She died in 1864.  In 1867 Young married Jane Catherine Young and he took a post as clergyman at Malvern, where he ran another school, firstly Etonhurst and latterly Cherbourg House.  In 1891 he left Cherbourg to one of his assistant masters and moved to Eastbourne, Sussex, where he became chaplain at a girls' school.  His connection with Prestwood was therefore short and slight.

 

White-collar class

Cowdery

The first schoolmistress at the Church School, Holy Trinity, in 1849 was the widow Sarah Cowdery (1802) (or variously Cawdery, Cowdrey or Cowderoy), who from 1851 acted as a teaching assistant to her daughter Miss Mary (1832).  They resided near the school in a house by the King's Head, remaining there until Sarah's death in 1872.  They appear also to have taken a few private scholars, as the 1861 census records two female scholars lodging with them, one from Marlborough and the other from Gloucester.  They were both born in Oxford and Sarah was living in the St Mary Magdalen district, Oxford, in 1841, a widow with Mary (then 9) and a son William (1834).  She seemed to be keeping a boarding-house, as there were four lodgers.  It was presumably there that Revd. Evetts got to know them and recruited them to start his school in Prestwood.  Mary got married in 1880 after leaving the parish.

 

Pitt

William Henry Pitt (1867) was the schoolmaster at the Church School in Prestwood in 1901 and 1911.  His wife Amy Charlotte (1871), née Hannell (supra under Watson), was assistant schoolteacher.  William was born in Hampshire, the son of a mariner, and came to Prestwood after marrying Amy in 1900.  Mrs Pitt (addressed at school as "Miss Pitt") is seen at the left in the following photograph of the "Group B" school pupils taken about 1902.  William Pitt himself appears in a 1905 school photo (see next chapter).

 

Prestwood Church School c1902

Left: "Miss" Pitt; Right: Miss Pethrum; teachers

Back row: ?, Rocky Wright, Albert "Titch" Taylor, Frank Timpson, Ralph Peedle, William Saunders, Fred Bristow

4th row: Lucy Timpson, ?, Dora Parsons, Florrie Buckland, ?, Harry Timpson, Edith Parsons

3rd row: ?, Ivy Cummings, Frank Taylor, Chum Parsons, Ship Peedle, Bert Saunders, John Peedle, Fanny Parsons

2nd row: Groom, John Cummings, ?, George Parsons, Aubrey Parsons, Ethel Hildreth, Wyn Saunders, Eva Saunders, Tressy Adams

Front row: Fatty Gibbons, Bristow, Ralph Hildreth, Ted Timpson, Bill Timpson, Ernest Redrup, ?, ?, Connie Groom, Bertha Groom

 

Ward

See under "Woodworkers".

 

Major Farmers

Bedford

In 1861 the widow Mary Bedford (1806) ran Upper Warren Farm (85 acres), assisted by three sons - Daniel (1837), David (1840), and Joseph (1846).  They had originally come from Berkhamsted.  They had four live-in employees, a domestic servant, labourer, carter and ploughboy.  Joseph married in 1869, but remained to help his mother on the farm until she died in 1876, when he moved to a farm in Little Missenden.  Daniel, meanwhile, had married Alice Stevens, the daughter of Joseph Stevens, in 1861 and taken over Piggotts Farm, while David married in 1866 and took on a small farm in Great Kingshill.  On his mother's death, David returned to take over Upper Warren, while Daniel left Piggotts to run his brother's small holding in Great Kingshill!  David rented out Upper Warren in the 1880s, to Esau Stone, and then transferred to Piggotts, while Daniel moved to Knives Farm in Prestwood in 1889, where he remained to the end of the century, his sons Daniel (1863) working as his cowman and Alfred (1868) setting up a pheasant-breeding business there.  His other son Joseph (1866) also worked for his father at Knives until he married in 1900 and took over Nairdwood Farm.  Daniel Bedford suffered from rheumatism towards the end of his life (he died in 1907 and was buried at Holy Trinity), but still frequented Wycombe Market.  His funeral was attended by his own family and his wife's relatives, the Stevens's (infra).  One of the floral tributes was also from Allan Cameron Gardner of the Chestnuts (see next chapter).

Daniel Bedford Jr

Boug
Fanny Boug was born in 1795 in Great Missenden, and remained single throughout her life.  She had a business in the High Street, finishing straw bonnets, the products of a thriving home-industry at the time occupying most of the women of Great Missenden not engaged in the equally laborious lace-making.  She was still there in 1871, but died two years later.

Fanny's brother George, born in Great Missenden in 1806, began life as a butcher, but by about 1840 was a substantial gentleman farmer, occupying Bloomfield Farm , which by 1851 covered 500 acres and employed 26 agricultural workers, while at home he kept three domestic servants.  He built (c.1840) the terrace of cottages constituting Long Row (also known as Boug’s Cottages) in Prestwood, on the edge of his estate, to house six of his labourers and their families.  His wife Sarah had also been born in Great Missenden in 1810.  They remained at the farm for the rest of their lives, George dying in 1873, his wife in 1877.  They had at least ten children, all born in Great Missenden.

The youngest, Alfred (1852) succeeded his father at Bloomfield Farm (now Broomfield House), although by 1881 it was reduced to 160 acres, with 7 agricultural workers and one domestic servant.  He was unmarried and jointly owned the farm with his unmarried sisters Julia (1832), Ellen (1837) and Catherine (1845).  He had died by 1887, leaving the “Misses Boug” in charge, until 1895 when the family name disappears from the Great Missenden directory.  Julia had died in 1895 (having been described in the 1891 census as “paralysed”), but we do not know what happened to the younger sisters.

Alfred's older brother George Jr (1833), when only 18 years old in 1851 was farming a large (200 acres) farm at Little Kingshill, with 8 agricultural workers.  Later in the 1850s he married Sarah Ann of St Leonards, and they moved to the even larger Burtons Farm, Chalfont St Giles (620 acres, 23 labourers), where they remained the rest of their lives, with one domestic servant.  George died in 1895, his wife in 1901.  They had at least 8 children, all born in Chalfont St Giles.  The eldest, George Alexander (1859) remained single throughout his life.  In 1881-91 he was farming 233 acres with 6 agricultural workers at Hertfordshire Farm, Coleshill (later known as Herts House).

The remaining son of George Sr was Arthur (1843), who by 1877 was in charge of a farm at Potter’s Row.  He had married Charlotte, of The Lee, in 1868.  By 1881, however, they had moved to a house in Bloomfield Lane beside his late father’s farm, and he was described in the census as a former farmer.  It appears, then, that he had given up his own farm and returned to help with the family farm some time after the death of his parents.  He had at least 8 children, all born in Great Missenden.

By the end of the century the name Boug is not mentioned in censuses or directories on the area, or indeed the county. Several questions remain.  Why was the original 500 acre farm reduced to 160 acres in 30 years?  What happened to the remaining land after the departure of the Misses Boug?  What happened to the many descendants of George's three sons?

Chambers

Herbert Chambers (1864) from Cambridgeshire held Honor End Farm at the end of the century.  He employed a coachman and a groom.

Darville

William Darvill(e) (1784) rented land in the Amersham, Chesham and Wycombe areas.  His son Richard (1823) farmed at Aston Clinton and Monks Risborough before taking over Nanfan Farm around 1863.  This was a large farm of 350 acres, employing 14 labourers.  By 1881, however, he was at Manor Farm in Great Kimble.  His last child Charles Henry (1864) was the only one of his family born in Prestwood.

 

Davis

The younger of the two Davis brothers on Denner Hill in 1851 (by one year), Arnold at Newhouse Farm had moved to a farm at Lower Bacombe near Wendover by 1861 (and eventually settled in Surrey), but Edward remained at Dennerhill Farm until his death in 1891.  In 1858 he married Ann Morris from Saunderton, who was 14 years younger, and by 1861 they had two daughters, Mary Ann and Amy Jane.  Local girl Mary Ann Ridgley (1844) was their housemaid at that time, but the other live-in servants who acted as carter (aged 22), shepherd (aged 17) and ploughboy (aged 16) all came from further afield in Bucks.  A third daughter Emily was born in 1862, but died as a baby, so that when a fourth daughter was born in 1864 she took the same first name, becoming Emily Gertrude.  Edward was born in 1866, Herbert in 1868 and Arthur in 1869.  In 1871 they employed a governess (24) who haled from Berkshire, a general servant Mary Ann Slater (1850) and a farm servant William Saunders (1855), both born locally.  Later that year Edwards' wife died, only 38 years old, and Edward continued to work the farm with the help (in 1881) of his daughters Mary Ann and Emily, and his son Edward, with no live-in servants.  By April 1891, Edward Junior had taken his own farm in the Amersham district, and Dennerhill Farm was being run by Edward Sr and his youngest son Arthur, assisted by a housekeeper and a live-in farm labourer, until Edward died later that year and Arthur took over the reins by himself.  In 1899 he married Kate Emily Purssell (the daughter of Prestwood baker Jesser Redrup's daughter Emma Sarah, who had married William Purssell, a farmer at Great Hampden) and in 1900 they had a son, Arthur Wren Davis.  Throughout this period the size of the farm hardly changed (about 150 acres) and its boundaries were the same as they had been in 1851.

Mary Ann married William Clarke in 1881.  He took over Moat Farm in Prestwood, his family having run Prestwood Common Farm.  In the same year Amy Jane married farmer Thomas Fisher from Aylesbury district, but she died the next year giving birth to a daughter Henrietta Amy.  In 1884, however, Thomas Fisher married his late wife's younger sister Emily Gertrude and they went to live on a farm in Northamptonshire. 

In 1893 Edward Jr married Maggie Vyse from Hertfordshire and they settled at a farm in North Dean, just west of Denner Hill, where he was helped by his younger brother Herbert.

Marriage links between different local farming families were creating a wide dynasty, to be furthered in the following century by links with the other growing farm family, the Stevens (see below).

Dwight

David Dwight lived at View Cottage in 1854, just outside the parish beyond Andlows Farm.  He was a pheasant breeder.

Edmonds

John Edmonds, who was at Atkins and Sedges Farms in 1851, died before 1860 and his widow Sophia (1800) was left in charge of the farms with eight employees, assisted by three unmarried children, Evan (1833), James (1838) and Jane (1839).  Sophia died in 1867, when another unmarried son, Frederick (1842) took on the reins at Atkins Farm (104 acres in 1871).  Jane continued to help, along with her sister Anne (1847).  They eventually sold the farm to Richard Page, although Frederick and Anne continued to live there and to help with farming as employees.  By 1891, however, Frederick and Anne had moved to a farm at Plomer Hill, West Wycombe.  Another son, Thomas (1834) became a farmer at Chalfont St. Peter.

Greaves

Leighton Greaves (1857) took over Peterley Manor Farm in 1883 and remained there until 1924.  He had been born in Great Missenden, his father being the vicar, Rev. Joshua Greaves (1821), who was also a county magistrate and originally from Devon.  Although he was blind, before 1883 Leighton was in charge of 264 acres at Great Missenden owned by his father, with 8 employees.  He married Katherine in 1885 and had a son Leighton Maurice in 1890.  They kept two servants, a nurse and a labourer.  In 1886 he was listed as a Great Western Railway shareholder, supporting the growth of the railway that would greatly affect the local economy.

Grover

Henry Grover (1817), a native of Hertfordshire, married Elizabeth Muspratt from Marlow in 1850, and held a farm at Chesham before moving to Collings Hanger Farm in 1865, although he already had some connections with the parish, as his father William (1780), who had a 250-acre farm at Sarratt in Hertfordshire, was given as the owner of Atkins Wood in Prestwood in 1841.  In 1871 Collings Hanger comprised 130 acres and employed three men.  The family then comprised his wife Elizabeth, daughter Kate (1857), and two sons Archie (1861) and [Charles William] Harold (1869). 

Kate was living in Marylebone in 1881, as a domestic servant for a retired army officer, and in 1891 in Hambleden, near Henley, again as a servant.  She died in 1895. 

Archie - whose middle name was Muspratt after his mother - moved to Chalfont St. Giles after 1881.              Harold could not be traced after marrying in 1888 and probably joined the army, as he was involved in the First World War. 

The second eldest son Arthur (1860) - also middle name Muspratt - was working as a farm servant near Windsor at this time, but in 1881 had returned to join his brothers working on their father's farm. 

The oldest son Walter (1856) could not be traced for some time after his parents moved to Prestwood and he may also have been in the army, but he had returned to his father's farm by 1891, where he worked for his father and with his brother Arthur (now recently married) as a hay dealer.  By this time Prestwood's first post office had been established at the farm, and Henry Grover was the first postmaster.  He died in 1894 and Arthur succeeded him, managing a mixed farm and dealing in hay, straw and corn.  Walter continued as Arthur's partner and as postmaster, but remained single.  Their mother died in 1901.

 

Harding

William Harding (1818) was from outside the parish, marrying Lydia Puddiphat in 1838, a member of a Chesham farming family, and running his first farm in the Amersham area.  He was presumably from a farming background himself, although we know nothing of his origins.  He next moved to the 80-acre Speen Farm from 1847 into the 1860s, but had taken over Great Kingshill Farm by 1865.  This was still a modest-sized farm of 74 acres, but he also ran a corn-dealing business and employed three men as well as being aided full-time by his five youngest children - Joseph (1848), Ann Maria (1850), James Jonathan (1854), Alfred Benjamin (1857) and Charles Thomas (1861).  He had greater ambitions, however, and by 1881 had expanded his holdings to 200 acres, employing seven men.  He also bought land elsewhere in the parish, such as cottages facing the Chequers, including what are now Eden Cottages.  Alfred was still single, living and working on the farm as well.  Lydia died in 1887, and William got re-married the next year to a widow Ann from Radnage and they continued to live at the farm until he died in 1898.

William's oldest child was Sarah (1840), who married Daniel Hawes in 1865.  He made chair-backs and they moved around the area near Prestwood, finally moving into a house on Denner Hill for the last decade or more of the century.

The second child, Mary Ann (1842) married in 1861 but did not live in Prestwood parish. 

George (1845) married in 1865 and moved to Chalfont St Giles, where he was a farm labourer. 

Joseph married in 1871 and he took over the Red Lion (a Wellers house) as innkeeper, while also working as a wheelwright.  Some time after 1881 he moved to Cryers Hill, but ended the century at Cholesbury, where he died in 1905. 

Ann Maria in 1874 married George West, who became a farm bailiff (infra). 

James married in 1876 and took over Nobles Farm at West Wycombe (108 acres). 

Alfred married in 1884 and moved to Deep Mill Farm, Great Missenden. 

Charles had died at the age of 13 in 1874.

Ives

Thomas Ives had been a major farmer in Prestwood, but his son William moved to Hampden Bottom Farm , just north of the parish.  Thomas's widow Elizabeth (1792), living off the sale of his land, was in Prestwood Hall [White House] from 1851 with her daughter Martha (1828).  Martha died in 1874 and Elizabeth in 1875.  At this time William had moved to Malt House Farm, Stoke Mandeville.  William's family, however, still had local connections.  His son Thomas (1840) married Ann Essex in 1864 and lived in Prestwood as a farm labourer until he died in 1884.  Both Harry (1845) and Fred (1851) lived in Monks Risborough, the first as a wheelwright and the second as a grazier on 11 acres of land.

Thomas Ives's brother Samuel (1806) was a butcher in the High Street, Great Missenden, up to the 1850s, but in 1861 he was living in Prestwood, where he operated as a castrator.  Only his widow Rebecca was living there in 1871, lodging next door to her son Abel who by then was married and a bodger.  In 1881 Abel was employing two men to work with him, his wife and eldest daughters being dressmakers.  By 1891 they had moved to Martins End and Abel was also the wood bailiff for Angling Spring Wood.  He died in 1898, but his wife, and daughter Ellen, continued living there to the end of the century as dressmakers.

Children of another brother of Thomas Ives, Job (1796), were butchers in Great Missenden 1864-1915.

 

Lane James Lane (1807/10), from a farm at Lee Common, was at Collings Hanger Farm in 1861.

 

Mason

(1) A brief background to this extensive farming family was given in Chapter 5 under "Yeoman farmers".  They played a major role in farming in the area for at least fifty years, but only one descendant continued as a farmer in the second half of the C19th, while the rest did labouring jobs.  Very few members of the family remained in the parish by 1900 and none of them were farmers.

George (1778), who had run Hoppers and Hatches Farms and had retired by 1851, died in 1855.  His son George (1808), who had been doing farm work at Kingshill, by 1861 had taken over the Red Lion pub, a beerhouse particularly frequented by the sawyers and other wood-workers prevalent in that village at the time.  He died before 1881 leaving no progeny.

George's older brother John (c1770) had been a stock-keeper and grocer on the west side of Prestwood Common, but he died before 1861.  His son John (1791) was employed as a farm labourer in Great Kingshill and in 1861 he lived in the cottage next to the Red Lion, where he died later that year.  He left no children in the parish except Joseph (1806) who lived at Prestwood Cottage [later Chestnuts], where he had a few meadows for stock and earned money doing farm work for others, but he had died in 1853, leaving his wife Mary (who was originally from Oxfordshire) to bring up her children alone, working as a lacemaker and later a charwoman.  His son Thomas (1831), also a farm worker, eventually became a full-time shepherd.  In 1861 he married Mary Essex, from a smaller, but notable, local farming family (infra).  They had no children.  Other sons of Joseph included William (1834), Alfred (1837) and George (1849).  William stayed with his mother at Prestwood Common until she died in 1888 and worked as a general labourer, a stonecutter and a shepherd, remaining single his whole life.  Alfred married Sarah in 1861 and they went to live in a cottage attached to Fry's Farm, where he worked for William Mason (see next paragraph).  He continued to live and work in Great Kingshill for the rest of the century.  At that time his two youngest sons William (1876) and Albert (1884) were still living with him, the first a labourer in a brickworks, the second a saddletree-maker.  The eldest and only other son Herbert (1859) had died in London in 1882, leaving behind a daughter Alice born that same year, who was brought up by Alfred and Sarah.  George married Charlotte and lived in Prestwood as a farm worker until some time after 1881, when he moved to Little Missenden.

George and John's eldest brother Thomas (1766) rented Fry's Farm [later Cherry Tree], where he had been joined by George in the latter's retirement.  This was only a hundred yards from the Red Lion.  Thomas died in 1852 and was succeeded at Fry's by his son William (1815), married to Maria Fountain (infra).  From 1861 through 1871 he was working 100 acres with five or six employees, but later moved to Knives Farm, a kilometre further north, where he managed 120 acres.  Maria died in 1880 and William in 1890.  They had only one son, Robert William (1847), but he had died at the age of eleven.

 

(2) Unrelated to the above family, Harry Mason (1872) was a farmer in the Kiln Common area in 1900.  He was the son of George and Eliza Mason from Great Missenden, but he was born in Turville and in 1881-91 lived at Little Marlow, where his father was a farm labourer.  He married Minnie in 1892 and moved to Chesham until 1898, when they came to Prestwood.  Four of their sons, William, Edward, George and Morris, appear in a 1905 school photo (see Chapter 10).

Mullett

Thomas Mullett (1823) farmed at Wycombe and, from some time just after 1861, Little Kingshill.  In 1865 he bought up a considerable amount of land west of Prestwood Common, around Michaelmas Farm.  He died in 1876 and his estate was inherited by his son Frederick James Bunyan (1862) who, not being of age, was represented by his guardian Thomas Wheeler, a Wycombe banker.  On coming of age, by which time he was miller at Ash Mill, Wycombe, he sold all this property in 1885 to Thomas Glenister, a Wycombe chair manufacturer.  This family therefore had only a short and tenuous relationship to Prestwood parish, as their land was leased to tenants and not occupied by themselves.

Redding

George Redding (1850) was a farmer of 135 acres at Coleshill, near Amersham, in 1881, having previously worked land at Ellesborough.  He and his family (a wife and 4 children) moved about 1884 to Honor End Farm, remaining there through 1900.

 

Stevens Joseph Stevens, who had farmed at Wycombe Heath, and whose daughter Georgeanna and son Cornelius had run Peterley Corner Farm on lease from Joseph Biggs in 1851, took over the neighbouring Kings Head inn (owned by Wheelers brewery) from John Janes in 1851 and remained there as publican until he died in 1860, when Janes's daughter Martha briefly resumed as publican after the death of her father.  Joseph Stevens' son Alfred (1832), however, took over the pub in 1862 until after 1871.  In 1865 he acquired a small farm on the west side of Prestwood Common, previously the home of George Pearman, the pig dealer, where he resumed farming and set up a butchery business.  The King's Head was then taken over by Henry Cowley and his wife Jane Hall, née Stevens, the latter being Alfred's sister, the oldest daughter of Joseph and his wife Alice.  Jane had been born soon after their wedding and it was rumoured that she was really the daughter of Lord Dormer, for whom Alice had been a personal maid.  It may be significant that she was sent back to Worcestershire to be brought up by her maternal grandparents. Georgeanna continued farming at Peterley Corner until 1875, when she married Edmund Haynes, publican of the then Beech Tree Inn at Holmer Green.  She died in 1895.  Cornelius continued at Peterley Corner with Georgeanna until 1861, leaving when he married Mary Ann Cartwright of Speen in 1862 and moving to Chalfont StPeter, where he died in 1901. Of the remaining five in Joseph Stevens's family, the eldest, William, married Jane Denham and eventually took on a farm at Holmer Green, where he was succeeded by his son Eli; Arthur became a farmer, timber dealer and publican of the "New Stag and Hounds" at Little Missenden; George (who worked as a tailor)  married Mary Reynolds, the daughter of small farmer William Reynolds, and went to live with his in-laws at Hampden Farm, but he died in 1864, leaving a daughter Mary Ellen (see Reynolds infra ); Alice married farmer Daniel Bedford in Great Kingshill, and in 1889 they moved to Knives Farm in Prestwood; Edwin, who had lived with Georgeanna in 1851, took over his father's old farm at Wycombe Heath after his marriage to Sarah in 1870 and later moved to a farm at Four Ashes. It was Alfred Stevens's family who would eventually play a major part in the history of Prestwood parish.  The story is redolent of the spirit of the ‘New World’ and entrepreneurship in the Victorian age, and brings the outside world directly into Prestwood to remain enshrined there forever in one of the strangest of local names, Idaho Farm.

Alfred and his wife Sarah (née Denham, the sister of Arthur's wife Jane), having married in 1853, bore eight children: Joseph Alfred (1854), Sarah A. (1856), Frederick Alfred (1858), Cornelius (1862), Job (1864) who died at birth, Mary Ann (1865), Edwin (1867), and Florence Jane (1870).

Joseph, after working with his father in the butchery business, got married to Lizzie in 1877 and took over at Peterley Corner, continuing to work with his father and as a cattle dealer. Around 1890 he set up independently as a butcher and bacon curer at Bassetsbury, High Wycombe.  At the front of his father's house a new garden wall included a brick carefully inscribed “Flora Stevens 1881” (still clearly legible today), in commemoration of his then 3-year-old daughter.

Sarah married farmer James J. Harding from Speen in 1876 and then lived in West Wycombe parish - Cooks Hall (1881) and Nobles (1891) Farms.

Cornelius, after a spell working for his older brother Joseph, married his second cousin Mary Ellen Stevens (George's daughter, above) in 1882 and took over the Peterley Corner Farm business in his own right when Joseph left.  In the 1891 and 1901 census Richard Paxton's sister Amy (1878) (Cornelius's aunt) was staying with them.

Mary Ann left home in 1884 to marry James Harding's brother Alfred Benjamin.  They went to live at Deep Mill Farm, Great Missenden.  Their first child was Alfred, born in 1886.

Edwin remained with his parents until 1901 when he got married and started his own building business.  Florence married and left home in 1898.

The remaining son was Frederick Alfred Stevens, born in Prestwood in 1859.  With an unusual streak of adventure, Frederick emigrated to America at the age of 24.  We can let “The Press-Times” of Wallace, Idaho, USA, in its edition of 19^th May 1912, take over the story from there:

He came to America in 1883, and was attracted to the Coeur d’Alene district soon after.  His first business was that of freighting, which he carried on for a number of years, hauling supplies to Murray.  During the intensest period of the excitement due to the discovery of gold in the North Side camp, he resided in the vicinity of the Old Mission, and while living there was married, in 1884, to Mrs Mary Taylor.

During one of the rushes to the new camp, Mr Stevens purchased a beef animal, which he slaughtered and, with the aid of Indians, transported it to the crowded camp, where it netted him $192.  This was the first fresh meat other than wild game ever sold in the district, and the success of the venture led Mr Stevens to follow the business.  He succeeded beyond his expectations, and while carrying on this industry in connection with that of freighting, he also did a great deal of prospecting, with varying success.  Some of the claims located by him sold for good figures, one netting him $7,000.  He packed the first ore out of the Bunker Hill mine, and did a great deal of similar work for other producers.

In 1886 he purchased the Osburn ranch which was the nucleus of his extensive realty holdings in the county.  Then he engaged in the meat business, later adding freighting and devoting himself to these and his farming occupations...

(He also set up meat and game markets in the towns of Wallace and Mullan.  The son of his sister Mary Ann, Alfred Harding, joined him to assist with the Wallace operation.)

... The Stevens plant is now one of the biggest business institutions in Shoshone county, and its trade has grown to the point where nearly a thousand head of stock, to say nothing of poultry and other market supplies are required every month to satisfy it.

With the accumulation of a fortune, Mr Stevens’s generosity and liberal good nature found frequent expression in his donations to those less fortunate than himself, though his acts of charity were done so quietly and unostentatiously that few ever knew of them, save the beneficiaries.  He was public spirited, and not only watched the growth of his home town with pride, but stood ever ready to assist in its upbuilding.

The amount of the fortune accumulated by Mr Stevens is variously estimated at considerably more than $100,000 …

For nearly a year past Mr Stevens has been in poor health …He was stricken with … illness … on April 23^rd, and underwent an operation for tumour of the liver at a local hospital May 8^th.

Frederick Stevens never recovered and died on May 18^th 1912, aged just 53.

According to local law, half of his property belonged to his wife.  The other half he was allowed to will to his children or parents, but not to brothers or sisters.  Having no children, he made out a will, shortly before he died, in favour of his father, who was fortunately still alive, although over 80, requesting that his brothers and sisters be remembered by him.  With various legal and business management complications, it was necessary for one of Frederick’s brothers (his father now being too old to travel) to visit Idaho with power of attorney to sort matters out.  This duty fell to Cornelius, who duly left with his wife Mary for the USA in April 1913, providing both of them with a unique opportunity for the holiday of a lifetime, of which Cornelius left an account in a booklet entitled “From England to the Golden West”. 

(Compare Honour 1975 "The New Golden Land".  Goethe in 1827 had exclaimed "America, you are better off than our old continent" and Hegel in 1830 had referred to the US as " the land of the future" .  The 1851 Great Exhibition in London had displayed American products to Europeans for the first time.  The inventor Samuel Bing, inventor of the term "Art Nouveau", pronounced that in America "yesterday no longer counts while today exists only as a preparation for tomorrow".  It is difficult to over-emphasise the fascination in Europe at this time in the United States and the belief that it showed the way to the future.  It would be some time before that image would become tarnished by subsequent history.)

They left on 12^th April and arrived in New York on the 18^th in good humour, despite having been seasick.  They sailed on a Cunard ship, the Mauretania.  This was the sister ship of the Lusitania which was torpedoed only two years later off Ireland by a German U-boat with the loss of 1,200 passengers, an act which helped to bring America into the first world war.

The couple were plainly impressed by what they saw.  “All around us were gigantic skyscrapers, marvels of architecture and engineering.”  They visited “the richest church in the world”, the “best and largest aquarium in the world”, and “the most unique, wonderful, gigantic thing of its kind in the world – the New York Hippodrome”.  They walked “over the finest and largest suspension bridge we ever saw, the Brooklyn bridge”.  They “saw New York lit up with its myriads of electric lights, giving us a sight we shall never forget.”

But it was with a connoisseur butcher’s eye that Cornelius, without Mary, took a tour of the Chicago stockyards, and this was plainly a highlight of the whole trip for him, as well as an insight into modern industrial methods.

They are tremendous, covering 500 acres.  They employ over 57,000 employees. … We first visited the hog dressing rooms, and there witnessed such wholesale slaughter as our eyes had never witnessed before.  The hogs were drawn up on to a hoist by the hind leg, and then as they passed the killer with one deft stroke he despatched them, and they passed on still suspended, to the next man.  After they are at once put upon the hoist the hogs are kept moving all the time.  Every man has one thing to do, and he does that one thing alone.  He is an expert in his line. …It was a great spectacle. Eight hundred hogs an hour pass the skilled despatcher, and so at this rate they travel through the hands of dozens of men to the cooling rooms.  We next visited the smoked meat department where the hams and bacon are inspected, branded and packed for shipment.  Leaving this building, we passed to the right the great office building, five stories high and containing over 1,000 office employees, on to the loading platform, then into the beef, sheep and calf coolers. … The animals are constantly inspected and stamped by US government inspectors.  Everything was as clean as it possibly could be, and the conditions under which the people worked were as bright and cheery as you could imagine in a place where the slaughter of animals is the occupation.  Then we passed through the oleomargerine factory and watched the process of the manufacture of thousands of pounds of this substitute for butter. … Next the great plant of Libby, McNeil & Libby awaited us, and here we watched in this largest establishment of its kind in the world, the manufacture of all kinds of tinned meats and preserves.

The magnitude on which the American people do things was clearly exemplified by this great packing house, and altho we thought that no place we had seen was equal to our own home place in Prestwood, in the land beyond the sea, we were forced to acknowledge that for size and the business of things in general we had to take off our hat to Uncle Sam.

           > When they finally arrived at Idaho, Cornelius went to see his brother’s grave at the Greenwood cemetery in the suburbs of Spokane.

A large beautiful stone was at the head of the grave and on it was a suitable inscription.

They went on to visit his brother’s business concerns and his two ranches of 360 acres.

They arrived back in Liverpool on May 27^th.  Their daughter Emily recorded in her diary that

Father and mother were met by Alfred, Charlie & Annie.  They then came home, having their dinner in London, reaching Prestwood about 5pm.  Flags were flying to welcome them home, and I am sure they were very very glad to be home after their wonderful voyage of over 14,000 miles.

Alfred Stevens, a proud father though saddened by the death of his son, named his farm Idaho Farm in the latter's memory, and that is the name by which it is known to this day.  Cornelius used the inspiration of his visit to America to found a major meat business in Prestwood in the twentieth century.  (I am grateful to the late Rex Davis for access to the documents quoted above.)

 

Townsend

Charles Townsend (1818) was the owner of the newly-built Stonygreen Hall in 1881.  He farmed 120 acres, employing six men, and kept a servant.  He came from Oxfordshire, his wife from London, and they did not remain long at Stonygreen.  He was succeeded by Ebenezer Grange (1868) from Bledlow, but he also failed to put down roots.  Townsend's daughter Matilda (1842), however, had married Edward T. Maxwell, a Brixton-born builder, and they lived in 1881 in the cottage beside the Golden Ball, while their son Edward C. (1864) worked on his grandfather's farm at Stony Green.

 

Way

Henry C.H. Way (1863) was the occupant of Prestwood Lodge at the turn of the century.  He was a poultry farmer but obviously had a great deal of wealth, for he employed a large domestic staff of governess, nurse, cook, parlourmaid, and housemaid.  He was from Gloucestershire originally.  He married a British woman born in the USA and lived there for a while before coming back to England at Gerrards Cross and eventually Prestwood about 1895.

 

Small Farmers and other Businesses

Avery

The brickmaker William Avery (1785) was still running the brickyard beside his home Overholme in 1861.  He died in 1866, at which point Solomon Groom took over the business (infra).  His second wife, Elizabeth, had died in the 1850s and he was now married to Lucy.  These two wives and his first, Mary, who died in the 1840s, all haled from Hampshire and may have been three sisters.  Lucy died in 1875 at the age of 88.  William's son John (1813) was a brickmaker at Bledlow Ridge, where his uncle Thomas (1779) followed the same trade.  One of John's daughters, Eliza (1845) was lodging with her grandfather in 1861, but then married Thomas Taylor, a farmer at Radnage.  John's son William (1849) became a timber merchant at Walters Ash.  William's second son Robert (1817) was a small farmer and chairmaker at Bledlow Ridge and then Radnage.  Apart from William Sr's sojourn in Prestwood, the family therefore predominantly remained in the Bledlow-Radnage area.

Babb

From a Great Hampden farming family, William Babb (1796) was at Old Fox Cottage Farm, Heath End (formerly occupied by James Nash, infra) in 1851, having lived at Little Hampden 1824-31 and then run the Chequers pub in Prestwood in the 1830s.  He was still at Heath End in 1861, but in 1871 there was just his widow Ann, who was originally from Hampshire.  She put up the retired farmer Aaron Parsons (infra).  Most of their children left the parish (Benjamin, 1823, was at Piggotts in 1851 and later a brewery worker in Wycombe).  Thomas (1824), however, who was a master carpenter married Hannah in 1846 and lived in Whiteacre Cottage, Prestwood, until some time after 1871, when they moved to Heath End.  He died in 1899.  Thomas was a major figure in Prestwood at that time, sufficient for the lane beside Whiteacre Cottage to be named Babb's Lane in his honour.

Many of Thomas and Hannah's children moved out of the parish, but some still played a part.  Sarah (1844) married the agricultural labourer Edward Spittles.  They lived several places around Prestwood, briefly living on Knives Lane 1877-81 before moving to Widmer End Farm.  Samuel (1847) married Sarah Buckel and lived at Halton.  George (1852) became a baker, married Sarah Brown from The Lee, and replaced the Redrups at Kiln Common in running the Prestwood bakery from 1875 to the end of the century.  John (1853) became a chair turner and set up a small business employing one boy as a helper.  He married Sarah Nash, the daughter of the saddle-tree maker William Nash, who worked in the Little Kingshill and Cryers Hill areas, himself the son of Henry Nash of Prestwood (infra).

Gravestone of George and Sarah Babb erected in 1910/11 in Holy Trinity churchyard

Beeson

(1) Theophilus James Beeson (1851) was born at The Lee.  He first appears in Prestwood as farm bailiff at the 225-acre Andlows Farm in 1871, in charge of a couple of labourers.  He got married in 1876 and by 1881 he had three live-in farm-servants and three other labourers, as well as having fathered three children.  In 1891 he was recognised as the tenant farmer there and had three more children.  The family remained at the farm well into the next century.  At the end of the century his younger son George (1881) worked for his father.  His older son Gilbert James moved to the Watford area, where he married in 1906, but he was to return to Prestwood later.  It was Theophilus Beeson who made the ornamental ironwork gates at the back of the farmhouse, featuring an heraldic plate said to be a Seal of Missenden Abbey (whose land this was long ago).

 

(2) Maria Beeson (1833) from Hertfordshire was married to Charles Beeson (1835) who ran Glory Farm at Penn in 1881.  After her husband died in 1898 she moved to Upper Warren Farm with an unmarried daughter Sarah Ann (1860) and a backward son Thomas (1874).  She remained there until she died in 1919.

 

Beeson's gates in 2006

 

Autumn Cottage c1910

Clarke

William Clarke held the lease on Prestwood Common Farm on the NE edge of Prestwood in the 1840s and still held it in 1861, when he and his wife were both 70.  The farm had grown by a further 10 acres to 50, but was still small enough to need the help of just two labourers.  William died in 1863 and his son Samuel took over the farm, which by 1871 had further increased to 60 acres with three men employed, as well as the help of a growing family of 4 boys and 3 girls.  In 1881 the farm encompassed 66 acres.  Samuel's daughter Martha lived next-door in Autumn Cottage with his unmarried sister Ann.  Samuel continued to farm here right to the end of the century, by which time he and his wife Martha (née Puddiphat, a Chesham farming family) were in their seventies.  They were helped, however, by their son Samuel Jr (1866) and his young wife Kate.

Meanwhile, his son William (then 23) had married Mary Ann Davis from Dennerhill Farm in 1881, having just taken over Moat Farm from the Essex family, neighbouring his father's farm.  They had help initially from his sister Sarah as housekeeper and his brother James.  This was another smallish farm of 60 acres employing two labourers.  They were still there in 1900, being assisted by sons Herbert (then 17) and William (then 16).

Two more of Samuel's children continued to live nearby.  Sarah (1857) married William Ripley at Spurlands End.  James (1859) married Emma Penn (whose family lived at Martin's End) and they ran a bakery in High Street, Great Missenden.

The Clarkes were one of Prestwood's prominent Methodist families, whose local roots go well back to the beginning of the C18^th or further.

Collins

William Collins (1811) held Hoppers Farm (120 acres) and other properties at Great Kingshill from 1851 to 1871, employing four labourers.  The 1871 census reveals that on the night it was taken there was an itinerant labourer sleeping in his barn.  His son William (1841) moved to Little Marlow (where his father came from).  There was no further involvement of the Collins family in the parish.

Cope

John C. Cope (1845) moved from High Wycombe in 1866, when he married Charlotte, and set up a grocer's in Great Kingshill.  Charlotte died in 1874, aged 37, and Cope re-married the following year.  The grocery contined until the 1890s, when he moved to Little Missenden.

Cowley

Henry Cowley (1814) ran a pub and grocer's at Primrose Farm, Wycombe Heath, for many years before taking over at the King's Head in Prestwood shortly after 1872, running this establishment into the 1890s.  His wife Jane Hall from Hyde Heath was the half-sister of Georgeanna Stevens (see under Stevens) who married Edmund Haynes, publican at the Beech Tree in Little Missenden around 1851-1881.  Jane died in 1893 and Henry in 1898.  Their son John, who worked as a labourer, married around 1882 and went to live in his wife's town, High Wycombe, but moved back to Prestwood to live next door to the King's Head around 1888, to support his parents in their old age.  After they died he moved away again.

The Chequers c1900, looking east along High Street. At this time Ruth Cox (below) was landlady.

Cox

James Cox (1795) had been a farm bailiff at Sladmore Farm in Great Kingshill in 1851.  His son William (1815) was a farm labourer who settled in Wycombe Heath.  William's son Charles (1840), however, became a turner and cabinet-maker.  He married Ruth Essex in 1863 and they lodged at her father Elisha's house, where the latter ran a timber business (see below under Essex).  By 1881 Charles Cox was a "master chair turner".  On top of this, by 1891, although an observant Methodist, he had taken over as publican at the Chequers.  He died in 1892, leaving Ruth as innkeeper, assisted by her daughters, Ruth (1869), Priscilla (1871), Zilphah (1877), Orpah (1879), Elsie (1882) and Sylvia (1886).  Ruth and Sylvia became dressmakers, and Ruth was organist at the Wesleyan chapel.

 

Elliott

Joseph Frederick Elliott (1857) was born in Fingest.  A few years after marrying in 1884 at Thame he took over Pipers Corner Farm, but he stayed there little more than a decade.

 

Essex

In 1851 Elisha (1793) and Hannah (1800) Essex held both Greenlands and Moat Farms, although they only kept a staff of servants at the latter.  By 1854 they had moved back into Moat Farm (where they had lived in 1837), where they managed 60 acres and employed five labourers from the village and a live-in ploughboy.  They had formerly run a grocer's shop, but now, in their sixties, seemed to have concentrated on running the farm.  They were still there in 1871 but died shortly afterwards.  Elisha's cousin's son James (1812) lived next door in Autumn Cottage and worked on the farm.    

The Essex family were Zion Baptist,and had long been settled in the area.  The brothers Richard and William both lived in Prestwood in 1798 according to the Posse Comitatus (see Chapter 4).  William was a grocer and he was the father of Elisha.  Richard was a "haggle carter" and had five horses, a wagon and a cart.  A haggle carter was originally one who cut rough wood ("haggles") for transporting to sell as firewood, but the term eventually subsumed the carting of all sorts of miscellaneous goods.  Elisha had a elder brother James (1791), who was a farm labourer and lived nearby in the Kiln Common area until he died in 1864, and a younger brother Thomas (1795) who was publican at The George for some time.  James's son Thomas (1845), also a farm labourer, lived with his family in Prestwood in 1871, but then moved away from the area.  Elisha's daughter Eliza (1832) married William Ward, a farm labourer in Speen, and they moved into Moat Lane.  Another daughter Ruth (1836) married Solomon Groom, who had taken over the Kiln Common brickyards, and they formed a prominent family in the Kiln Common area for the rest of the century, as were their descendants into the next century.

Richard's son John (1783) had become a soldier and lived as a Chelsea pensioner in Prestwood in 1851 and until his death in 1863.  His daughter Hester (1785) long remained single, looking after her widowed mother Hannah, but eventually married Thomas Peppet and lived at Moat Farm in 1851, which she managed for William's son Elisha. 

Another son, Elijah (1786), took over his father's business and became a timber dealer and haggle carter, living in the Kiln Common area originally and then moving to the east side of Prestwood Common (what is now Nairdwood Lane) around 1850.  He was still there in 1861, then a widower, working as a "carter for hire".  His son Elisha (1818) never married and lived with Elijah, working for him.  He later took over the timber-dealing business, also becoming a small farmer and starting a small brickmaking concern with a single kiln, off what is now Kiln Road, in the 1870s.

Many of Elijah's other children also played a part in the Prestwood community over the rest of the nineteenth century.  James (1812) married local girl Maria Hearn in 1831 and worked on Moat Farm until he died in 1885.  Many of James's children continued in the area: Eliza (1832) married Sam Tompkins; Mary Ann (1833) married Thomas Mason; Ann (1841) married Thomas Ives; Sarah (1842) married George Fisher; Frederick (1844) married Fanny Wright of Little Missenden and continued to live in the Moat Lane area, mostly working as a shepherd (a sign of the times was when his son Albert 1869 was the first Prestwood resident to become a railway navvy in 1890, as the world of steam reached as far as Great Missenden); Thomas (1845) married Jane Yarrington of Great Missenden and they lived in Prestwood for several years; Edmund (1847) married Caroline Rackley of Little Kingshill and, when she died about 1882, Jane Buckland of Prestwood, remaining throughout in Prestwood, working for a time at his uncle Elisha's brickworks and later as a carter on a farm; James (1851) stayed single and lived with his father until the latter's death; William (1849) married Julia King of Prestwood and worked locally as a farm worker and shepherd, variously in Little Hampden, Little Kingshill and Prestwood, being found in 1891 in Lady Bois cottage, Prestwood,  Two of William's sons, Alfred 1877 and William 1879, worked in the brickworks of Solomon Groom at the end of the century, although William married about 1900 and became a carter on a farm, going to live in the expanding community of Bryant's Bottom; their younger brother Lawrence can be seen in a 1905 school photo, see Chapter 10.  Most of these families were still represented in Prestwood parish in 1901.

Among Elijah's other children, William (1819) became a butcher and publican at the White Lion and the Black Prince in Great Missenden; Mary Ann (1851) married the sawyer William Stacey, who worked for her brother Elisha; Elijah Jr (1828) was a farm labourer and sawyer in Little Kingshill in 1851, moved back to Prestwood 1857-71, and lived later in Little Missenden and Wycombe Heath (his son Charles 1857 continued to live in Prestwood); Ruth (1844) married Charles Cox, and they were publicans at the Chequers in Prestwood 1865-1901 (by the end of which time Ruth was a widow and helped by two of her daughters).

It may also have been another brother of Richard and William, Edmund, who in 1798 lived at Combs Farm in Hughenden, a farmer with four horses, a wagon and cart.  His son Thomas (1797) continued as a farmer there in 1851.  Combs Farm included the site of a gypsy encampment.

 

Fleet

John Fleet (1869) held Sedges Farm at the end of the century.  His father was a hay binder in Church Street, Great Missenden.  He ran the farm in partnership with Ralph Turner (q.v.), who also lived at the farm.

Franklin

James Franklin (1815) was a plumber and publican of the Black Horse, Mobwell, in the 1850s and 1860s.  he died in 1867.  His widow Martha (1818), who came originally from High Wycombe, chose to purchase a large cottage on Moat Lane (The Laurels) in Prestwood and to live off the rents of other property they had purchased.  In 1891 she had been joined by her daughter Ann Elizabeth Bliss (1847), the widow of a grocer in Totternhoe, Bedfordshire; the latter's daughter Lucy (1881); and another grand-daughter Annie Franklin (1875) from London; perhaps needing domestic help, being aged 72.  She died in 1897 and her relatives then left the parish.

Free

William Free (1817) had a shoemaker's in Cryers Hill in 1851, coming from a long line of small farmers and artisans in this area and Princes Risborough.  In 1861 he had moved his business to Great Kingshill, helped by his wife Sarah (a shoe binder) and two apprentices.  They had no children.    Sarah died in 1869 and the next year he married Julia Wilkins from Little Missenden.  By 1881 William had also taken on a small (2.5 acre) plot to farm.  In 1891 he was retired, living on his savings, and he died in 1896.    Julia survived him and lived alone until the end of the century.

Groom

William Groom (1802), in the same house as in 1851, was a master shoemaker.  By 1861 he had lost his wife and he was supported at home by one of his sons, Arthur (1829), who worked as a labourer.  William re-married in 1865, the widow Jane Tilbury (née Bristow), who had been living next door, but he only lived another four years, so that Jane was left to earn a living with lacemaking, supported by children from her previous marriage who came to live with her.  William's brother Henry (1794) was a baker in Rickmansworth from before 1841 to his death in 1867.  His older sister Mary (1797) married John Bryant (q.v.).

William's daughter Rachel (1826) first married Benjamin Mason, the Great Kingshill grocer, who died in 1853, and then Charles Redrup (q.v.), who took over the grocery and later became a small farmer in Great Kingshill, remaining there until the end of the century, as well as regularly attending the Baptist chapel in Prestwood.  A younger daugher Sarah Ann (1833) married the sawyer George Ward in 1853, by which time she had chosen to become an Anglican, having been one of the first to be baptised at Holy Trinity in 1850.  They moved to Amersham.

William's son Solomon (1835) had taken over the Kiln Common Brickyards by 1861 and lived beside them with his wife Ruth, née Essex (q.v.) and two young sons, Henry (1858) and Herbert (1859).  In 1871 Henry was with his grandparents on his mother's side at Moat Farm.  Solomon's brother Arthur, still single, was also working at the brickyards in 1861.  He married in 1862 but his wife died soon afterwards and he boarded from 1865 with Solomon's partner Alfred Saunders (1846).  He died in 1875 and was buried at Holy Trinity.  Saunders, who was from Chesham, did not stay long in the area.

Meanwhile Solomon and Ruth had by 1871 also started up a grocery shop, making bread and farming a little land.  They went on to have many more children: Alfred (1863), Walter (1864), Elizabeth (1867), Miriam (1869), Ellen (1871), Owen (1873), Kate (1876), Florence (1878), and Sarah Ann (1879, but died as a baby).              Their son Henry married Emma from Little Hampden in 1880 and settled by the brickyards, where he worked as a brickmaker along with his brother Alfred, who briefly went to live with him.  Henry was elected chairman of Great Missenden Parish Council in 1897.  Herbert lived in the same cottage, but he had now become a baker.  They all remained at the brickyards to the end of the century.  Emma worked as a "fancy wire- and bead-worker" and they had one son, Rupert (1882).  Alfred got married in 1884, to another daughter of the Bristow family, Alice, and they had a daughter Hilda (1886).  By then he had moved from Kiln Common to set up a bakery in Great Kingshill and was also operating as a mealman, continuing there beyond the 1800s. 

Herbert married Helen in 1886, continuing as a baker at Ivycroft, Kiln Common.  His son Hubert  Stanley (1890) did well enough at the church school to be chosen to be a master there at the age of just 15 (see 1905 school photo in the next chapter, which also includes - as a pupil - his sister Kathleen 1895). 

Owen worked on his father's farm and got married in 1898, setting up as a small farmer and general dealer next to the George pub in 1898, shortly before taking over Hotley Bottom Farm in 1901.

Walter, who initially lodged with them, married in 1892 and moved into Glebe Cottage with his wife Charlotte; he had worked as a labourer at the brickyards and on his father's farm.  (Walter's daughter Nettia/Neater Ruth Groom (1900) married Harold Hall of Berkshire in 1956 and their only child Barbara married Reginald Frank Ridgley. Barbara remembered her mother's funeral in April 1994 - " the wild cherry blossom and bluebells were adorning the Glade as we followed her coffin up to the church [Great Hampden] ... Dad followed her in February 1995, it was cold and grey, but there were a lot of people ".) 

The work ethic and entrepreneurial spirit associated with those of Nonconformist persuasion is demonstrated well by this family's gradually building up a series of successful businesses in the area.  They continued to play a major part at the Zion Baptist Chapel, where Henry was the organist for 53 years (according to his gravestone in the Baptist cemetery).

 

Groom brickyard c1900.  Solomon Groom in centre with his grand-daughter Cissie (born 1897), who also appears in a 1905 school photo (see next chapter).  Henry Groom stands at the left.  The man at the right is Harry Tyler.

 

Ruth Brown, future wife of Owen Groom, at age 18, in 1888

Honnor

Agricultural worker Henry Honnor (1837) moved to Bryants Bottom in 1868 when he married Mary Ridgley from Princes Risborough, whose previous husband had just died leaving two children.  The boy Thomas of this previous marriage was only three at the time his father died; by 1886 he was in prison and he did not return to the parish.  Henry and Mary, however,  stayed to the end of the century.  In the 1880s Henry opened a shop and also made chair legs, Mary was a beadworker, and by 1900 Henry had set himself up as a small farmer.

Howard

Just before the end of the century, in 1895, Samuel Howard (1873) set up a major brickyard off Honor End Lane.  He had been born at Farnham, Surrey, the second son of John Howard (1837), a master builder.  John Howard was originally from Chesham, the eldest son of builder and tile-maker John Howard Sr (1812).  John's wife Elizabeth was born at Wycombe.  They lived at one time in Surrey, but moved to Berkhamsted about 1875, and to Chesham by 1891.  From 1891 to 1895 John Howard Jr was described as a beer retailer and brickmaker at Bellingdon (where a major brickyard survives today).  Samuel Howard married Lily (also from Chesham) in 1896, just after establishing his new business in Prestwood.  At that time he employed seven men and there were seven kilns producing high-grade facing bricks and specialist bricks, all hand-made.  One of his men was his brother Benjamin (1880), who had just married and was living along Middle Road (now High Street) in Prestwood.  By 1900 Samuel had two young daughters, Dorothy (1898) and Gladys (1900).

Lisley

George Lisley (1834) was a chairmaker who came from Seer Green to Great Kingshill with his family just before 1880.  He rented Sladmore Farm and continued to run that beyond the end of the century, assisted by some of his many sons.  Reuben (1860) became a chairmaker, married in 1895, and moved near High Wycombe.  Peter (1863), an agricultural labourer, died in 1893.  John (1873) was still single in 1900, but had taken a small farm on the other side of Great Kingshill, where he kept a servant to manage the house (a 70-year-old widow).  Joseph (1876) worked on the farm for his father and continued to do so after he married Edith in 1900, moving to a cottage next door.  Frank (1880) was also single in 1900 and still living at home, having earlier worked as a chairmaker, but now a farm worker for his father.  In the 1890s George Lisley also enmployed two relatives from Seer Green as farm workers, but they did not settle in the area.  The Lisleys were Zion Baptists.  John Lisley played with both the Kingshill cricket and football teams in the 1890s and 1900s.  The farm was still run by the Lisleys as late as the 1930s.  By chance I met a descendant of this family in Devon nearly 20 years ago, where he was running a taxi service!

Nash

John Nash was a farmer and wood-worker (making cart saddle-trees) from Monks Risborough who had retired to Great Kingshill in 1841 and owned several fields and cottages.  He was dead before 1851 but the families of four sons were active in the area at that time - John (c1775), James (1781), William(1789), and Henry (1798).  James, already widowed, had a small farm and orchard (later Old Fox Cottage) at Heath End before 1851 and his son James (1810) occupied another small farm, Cockpit Hole Farm in Great Kingshill.  By 1861 both had died but the younger James's son, again James (1834), continued at Cockpit Hole until some time after 1871, when his younger brother William (1851) succeeded him as farmer there until the end of the century.

Of the other three original Nash brothers, the oldest John had died by 1851, while both William and Henry were saddle-tree makers at Heath End.  By 1861 they had all died, although descendants still lived in the parish.  These included:

William's son Samuel (1823) who continued his father's work, but had left the area by 1871;

John's son Charles (1820) who became a publican and small farmer like his father, being at the Green Man from 1851 to 1860, but then moving to a cottage in Moat Lane and working as a farm labourer.  His widow Sarah (1821) was still there 1881-91 with no income and on parish relief, while his farm worker son John (1851) lived in Long Row with his wife Elizabeth, a washerwoman, until the end of the century;    

John's son John Jr (1829), a short bearded man, who became a publican and chairmaker nearby in Hughenden, eventually returning to take over the Red Lion in Great Kingshill by 1891, where his widow Elizabeth was still publican in 1901;

John's daughter Mary (1793), a lace-maker, who remained single and was housekeeper to her uncle James in 1851, still there in 1861 with James's daughter Emma (1841), and finally on her own in 1871;

Henry's son David (1832) who took over his father's business and also ran the White Horse pub from before 1881 to the end of the century (his sons Enos 1861 and David Jr 1864 continued the saddle-tree trade, the latter also taking on the White Horse, right into the following century);            

James's son William Jr (c1820), who died very young and left a widow Mary in 1851 who continued to live at Heath End with her daughter Elizabeth (1837) and her son James (1840) - the last remained at Heath End Cottage until the 1880s as a saddle-tree maker, having married his second cousin Emma (supra) and was in turn succeeded by his son Lawrence (1866) in 1891 in the same house and occupation;

James's son Charles (1813), a small farmer (20-odd acres) and a publican (like his cousin and namesake above), firstly at the Polecat until 1850, then at the White Horse at Heath End from 1851 to 1877, retiring with a smallholding at Great Kingshill with his widowed daughter-in-law Mary (1836) as housekeeper.  (Mary's husband John 1839 had died at the age of 32 - he had perhaps always been unsuited to agricultural labour, as he worked as a land measurer and a local preacher.

Nash was a freqent family name among Nonconformists in the region at that time.  The history of this family is a good example of the situation of many small farmers in the C19^th, men who have an artisanal skill handed down from generation to generation (in this case the making of saddle-trees), whereby they are able to amass sufficient money to buy a little land and supplement their income by farming, and in some cases also manage a public house.  Such activity outside the mainstream was typical of Nonconformist families who had the education (often home-based) and ability to acquire skills to take them out of the dominant local population of agricultural labourers.  It was difficult, however, to make the make the leap to into the next stratum of large farmers (or yeomen, as they were known at the time), which required the sort of capital impossible to acquire through manual skills.

 

Payton

William Payton (or Paten) (c1801) from Ford near Aylesbury was briefly in occupation at the 80-acre Ninneywood Farm around 1861.

 

Pearce

John Pearce (1838) came from a Lee Common family.  In 1861 he was living on Dennerhill Farm, where he worked as a carter.  He married Emma Wilkins in 1863 and they went to live in Prestwood.  In 1871 he is described as a carter jobber, while Emma worked as a lacemaker.  By 1881, however, they had set themselves up as grocers, while John supplemented this with working as a stonecutter.  Before another ten years were up, however, they left the county and moved far away, leaving no children.

Pearman

George Pearman (1801) was the farmer at Ninneywood Farm in 1851, having just moved from Hertfordshire, but in 1861 he held what was later called Idaho Farm on the west side of Prestwood Common, where he kept pigs.  By 1865 he had moved back to Benington, Hertfordshire, where he was born, farming 60 acres and acting as publican at the local "George and Dragon".  He died in 1872, but the family were still farming there in 1920.

 

Peedle

The Peedles were a long-time Prestwood Methodist family.  There were two families in Prestwood in 1851 - those of the brothers John (1801) and William (1808), both farm workers.

In 1861 William and his wife Ann lived near what is now Whiteacre Cottage in the main Kiln Common community.  Their oldest son Charles (1837) was unable to work and always had to be cared for; he died later in 1861.  Their second eldest had died in 1853.  Still at home were David (1841) and Simeon (1847), both farm workers.  William and Ann were still living there in 1871, but Ann died the following year and William in 1880.  Their children, however, went on to become successful entrepreneurs and made an important mark on the community.

In 1867 David had married Mary Ann Webb from a shoemaker's family and become a bodger.  In 1871 Mary Ann's brother Robert, a shoemaker, was lodging with them.  By 1881 David had managed to set himself up as a timber dealer and was already employing five men.  This enabled him to rent a farm at Stokenchurch (Round Farm), where the couple were in 1891. By 1901 he had retired from farming and returned to the edge of Prestwood Common, near the current High Street, living on the income he had accrued.  They never had any children, however, and his line ended there, Mary Ann dying in 1909, and David surviving until 1926, living alone in Prestwood assisted by a live-in housekeeper.

Simeon got married in 1875 to Charlotte Page and set himself up as a coal dealer and "higgler" (travelling dealer).  He regularly carried goods from Great Missenden to Aylesbury.  Living near David in 1881, Simeon and his wife had by then already had four children, three living with them.  In an adjoining cottage lived his unmarried sister Martha (1845) who made a living lace-making and his eldest son William (1876).  By 1891 Simeon was also established as a grocer and fruiterer for the Kiln Common community (run by Charlotte from the house, which became known as the Prestwood Shop), and all eight of their children were able to live with them in a larger cottage, William and the second oldest (Frederick 1877) helping with their father's business.  In 1901 Simeon's sons Albert (1881) and Frank (1886) worked for their father delivering coal by horse and cart, while their mother weighed out the sacks.  A few years later Ralph (1890) would join them (he appears, with his younger brothers John and Rupert, in the 1900-01 school photo, see Pitt supra).  By this time building had already begun along the old commons track that would become the High Street, currently called "Middle Way", and Simeon's eldest son William was married and living in the newly-constructed Wesley Villa.  He had his own business as a carter, delivering goods to local people, including groceries and fruit.  He had recently married Rose Hildreth, the blacksmith's daughter, and they had a year-old son, Ernest.  His wife's nephew Alfred Hildreth (1879) was lodging with them at this time, working as a gardener.

To return to the other Peedle family resident in 1851, John moved to Martin's End and his descendants remained there as farm workers.  His wife died in 1865; the eldest child Eliza stayed to look after her father until he also died.  The second eldest, Sarah, married in 1873.  The third, George (1848), married in 1870 and settled at Kiln Common.  He was a farm labourer and his wife Elizabeth a lace-maker.  George and Elizabeth stayed in Prestwood until 1900, when, their children Miriam and Annie both getting married that year, they moved to a small cottage in Great Kingshill.  John's fourth child was Daniel (1851) was also a labourer, at one time working at Hotley Bottom Farm.  By 1881 he had moved to Mobwell Cottage near the source of the River Misbourne and his sister Eliza went with him as housekeeper.  He stayed there until he died at the beginning of 1901, when Eliza moved to Amersham, where she stayed until her death in 1916.

Redrup

In 1861, as ten years before, Jesse Redrup (1803) ran the bakery for the north part of the parish, resident in the large house Carmel at the tip of Prestwood, at the north end of what is now Kiln Road.  He had the assistance of his wife Sarah, two sons Robert (1833) and Alphonse (1840), and daughter Emma (1845).  His oldest son, Henry (1827), had by then left home and set up his own bakery on the west side of Prestwood Common, in Prestwood Cottage (next to the Golden Ball, not the present house of that name in Clarendon Road).  His second eldest Charles (1831) had also just got married (to Rachel, daughter of William Groom (q.v.) and was working as a carpenter in Great Kingshill.  Two more children were at that time living in the Parsonage: Elizabeth (1836) as lady's maid, and John Jesse (1842) as a footman.

Jesse died in 1867, ending the bakery business at Carmel, his widow remaining there alone with a maidservant and, in 1871, a granddaughter Elizabeth Goddard (1869).  This was the daughter of Elizabeth (the former lady's maid), who had married James Goddard from Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire in 1867.  They ran a grocery and sub-post-office in Goddard's home town.  James Goddard may have been one of the parson Thomas Evetts' home county contacts.  Elizabeth died quite young in 1878, although not before her daughter, who died in 1874.  Sarah Redrup lived to 1877.  Henry therefore remained as the main baker for Prestwood through 1871 and 1881.  By 1881 he had moved south to Polecat Lane and his son Leonard (1857) was his chief assistant.  A daughter Elizabeth (1864) was a dressmaker and son Richard (1866) an apprentice wheelwright.  It is rather a surprise to find that in the 1891 census, although still at the same address, Henry is described as an agricultural labourer (along with his son Edward George, 1872), and his wife Anne as a laundress.  He died in 1897.  In 1901, however, his widow is described as running a confectioner's at this address and it is apparent that the 1891 census is in error and the shop had continued until Henry's death.

Henry's son>Edward married in 1892 and moved to a nearby cottage by Hildreth's smithy; he was then described as working as a hay binder.  His son Ernest (1894) appears in the 1900-01 school photo (see Pitt supra), and, along with his younger siblings Ada, George and Frank, in a 2005 photo (see Chapter 10). 

Henry had other children too.  John Jesse (1854) was a baker and then a farmer.  He married Evangeline Aldridge in 1874 and moved to her home town of Beaconsfield, took over Sladmore Farm to the south of Kingshill through 1878-81, then moved to Amersham and Denham.  He eventually became bailiff at Manor Farm, Little Hampden.   John's brother Leonard (1857) ended up as the farmer at Cottage Farm, Little Hampden.  Another brother Charles had set himself up as a "dealer" (unspecified) in Kingshill, later as a farmer, having moved back into Carmel after his mother's death.  He now managed 105 acres, employed 5 men and a servant (Alice Bristow, q.v.).  In 1881 he and his wife, who had no children of their own, were looking after his sister Elizabeth's remaining children, George (1871) and Ada (1874) Goddard.  Here they remained until the end of the century, with George Goddard having learned to become a baker and restart his grandfather's business at Carmel.  Charles's wife died in 1895 and Ada stayed on as housekeeper.

Of the other children of Jesse and Sarah, Robert joined the army; Alphonse died in London in 1874; John seems to have moved to London and eventually to Cambridgeshire; and Emma married William Purssell, a farmer at Little Hampden, eventually moving to a farm at Weston Turville.

 

Gravestone of Henry and Anne Redrup, Holy Trinity churchyard, erected 1897/1906

Reynolds

As in 1851, William Reynolds (1806) held 70-acre Hampden Farm , that his father had owned before him, increasing it from 16 acres to over 70, and employing four or five men.  He rented the land across the road from his farm which now contains Grenlands Lane allotments.  He continued there until he died in 1878, but his wife Fanny (Frances) (1802) carried on managing it until she also passed on in 1884.

Their son William Jr (1833) married Elizabeth Bates in 1853 and ran The George pub nearby, farming a little land around it, until the late 1880s, when Joseph Sills took over the pub.  He died in 1898.  His wife Elizabeth (1833) worked, according to the 1861 census, as a home dressmaker, and her widowed mother Mary lived with them until 1870 when she died.  But something must have happened to Elizabeth, as she does not occur in the Bucks census after that time, and there are no more children after a son Acton born in 1866.  William is not described as a widower until the 1891 census, so that his wife must have left home and been living elsewhere, perhaps because of illness.  So in 1871 we find the oldest child Charles (1854) with his grandparents at Hampden Farm.  The third oldest Wilfred (1861) remained with his father, along with the two youngest James (1864) and Acton.  (The second oldest Alice Mary 1859 had died as a toddler in 1862.)  I can find no trace of Charles or Wilfred after 1871, but James and Acton were still with their father in 1881, helping to run the farm, while a single woman of 51 years from Ellesborough was employed as housekeeper.  James stayed through 1891 and then moved to Wendover after his father died, but Acton had married in 1889 and moved to Wycombe.

William Sr's daughter Mary (1839) married George Stevens (1840) in 1860.  He was a tailor from Princes Risborough.  They initially lived with her parents.  Their first child Walter died in 1861 when less than a year old, but a second, Mary, was born in 1863.  Unfortunately George Stevens died the following year and Mary moved in with her brother William Jr until she remarried in 1871.  Her daughter remained with her grandparents and becoming a dressmaker, getting married in 1889.  Mary Sr's new husband was Richard Paxton and she moved to his farm at Green Hailey in Monks Risborough parish.  They had twins in 1878, adopted first by Fanny Reynolds, one, Amy, subsequently joining the family of Cornelius Stevens, while the other, Mary, disappears from the record.

Rogers

James Rogers (1823) and his wife Hannah moved to Newhouse Farm as bailiff in about 1867 from Princes Risborough, having earlier lived at Brill and Boarstall.  He had been born in Oxfordshire, Hannah in Whaddon.  By 1881 their son Charles (1858) had taken over as bailiff.  His mother remained as housekeeper, along with a sister Rhoda (1863), a dressmaker, and Thomas (1866), who looked after the sheep on the farm.  I could not trace James Rogers's whereabouts at this time, nor his older son John (1856).  Hannah died in 1890, and none of the family were left in the parish in 1891, although Thomas was lodging nearby at Upper North Dean with the carpenter David Martin, having married his daughter Jane.  He was working as a bodger and stayed there through 1900.

Rose

According to the 1861 census, George H. Rose (1823) took over 105-acre Newhouse Farm from Arnold Davis in the 1850s, employing three men, including a carter and a ploughboy.  He and his wife Ann had no children.  They had left by 1867 and I can find no trace of them either before or after.

Saunders

Farmer William Saunders (1853), who had been born in Saunderton, moved from his farm in Lacey Green some time before 1891 to take over Newhouse Farm, but he did not stay for long, returning to Lacey Green by 1901.  He was succeeded at Newhouse by his younger brother Jabez (1861), who was there in 1901.

Smith

From before 1861 to after 1871 Thomas Smith (1833), a master corn miller, employing one assistant who lodged with him, lived in what was then called "Windmill House" (now Mill House, but rebuilt) on the west side of Prestwood Common.  The windmill was a separate building at the end of the garden, on the western boundary.

There is much speculation about whether there was a windmill in Prestwood, but this is fairly concrete evidence of its existence, although by 1881 it was purely a private residence as it is today.  This period coincided with the peak of wheat-growing in Prestwood, and demand for the service was later inadequate to support a local business - the water-mills at Deep Mill and at Little Missenden having a more enduring history and a wider catchment.  There is mention of a smock-mill in the area in 1773 which burned down and was rebuilt in 1832, but burned down again in 1871 and was not replaced.  The later building was said to have a " red-brick base, 2-3 wooden floors, 4 sails and fantail " (Bucks County Council website).  There was another windmill just outside the parish at Widmer End and others at Great Hampden.

Thomas Smith was born in Hertfordshire and appeared to move around the country (he was in Owlswick, Buckinghamshire in 1854, and in Leicestershire in 1856), and no miller is mentioned for Prestwood in any other census, so perhaps outside the 1861-71 period the mill relied on occasional visits by itinerant millers, which accords with the house apparently being a private residence at these times.

 

Stone

Esau Stone (1845), who remained a bachelor, was a farmer in Radnage and Turville before taking over Upper Warren Farm around 1890, but shortly returned to Radnage.  His mother Caroline (1823) and sister Julia (1867) kept house, while his young brother Edward (1869) helped on the farm.

Walker

Joseph Walker (1816) from Little Missenden appeared in the 1861 census as a farmer of 30 acres at Heath End.  He was still there in 1871 (now apparently with only 16 acres), but the whole family vanish from the census after that, Joseph having died in 1872.

 

Ward

William Ward (1856) held Lower Warren Farm at the turn of the century.  His son Archibald (1879) worked for him.  Ward was born in Great Hampden and in 1881-91 the family lived in Hampden Row, where he then worked as a bodger.

West

The farmer John West in 1851 was nearly 70 in 1861 and had taken over as publican at the Golden Ball, where he and his wife Elizabeth remained until 1871 when John died (Elizabeth followed him in 1873).  Their sons George (1836) and John Jr (1839), who were still single, lived with them and worked their father's remaining fields.  In 1874 George married Eliza and set up his own home.  He continued working as a farmhand and John Jr, who was still single, moved in with him.  By 1891, however, George and Eliza, who never had children, had moved to Great Missenden, and by 1900 to Chartridge.  John Jr also moved out of the parish.

John Sr and Elizabeth's eldest son Thomas (1820) and his wife Sarah, however, took over Gibbon's Farm (now Stockens) in 1856, working 40 acres and employing three men as well as his oldest sons Thomas Jr (1846), George (1847), Walter (1855) (who acted as shepherd in 1871 when he was 16) and Albert (1860), plus his daughter Ann (1849).  They remained there until after 1871, when they took over the neighbouring and larger (86 acres) Fry's Farm (now Cherry Tree), which they managed until Thomas died in 1892.  In 1881 Thomas Jr took on Hatches Farm (75 acres), immediately south of Fry's, and married shortly afterwards.  He continued there until after 1891.  George married in 1874 and took a cottage in Kingshill, working for his brother on Hatches Farm.  He later moved to Lower North Dean, where he became a farm bailiff, but he eventually moved back into the parish as farm bailiff at Stony Green.  At the end of the century his sons, still living at home, worked as carters on a farm (Albert Edward 1877 and Ernest 1881), Denner stone digger (Sidney Percy 1879), and errand boy (Walter 1888).  Around 1896 George's brother Albert married and began working for himself as a carter.

Another of John West Sr's sons, Joseph, lived in Great Missenden and his daughter Charlotte married John Keen, a chair manufacturer in High Wycombe.  Joseph's son Thomas, born in 1842 before Joseph married in 1845, was brought up by his grandparents and worked on farms outside the parish as a young man, but returned to the area when he married Prestwood girl Mary Charge in 1867.  He worked as a farm labourer and carter in Kingshill (to 1874), Bradenham (1876), Lacey Green (1878), Speen (1880), Kingshill again (1881-84) and Prestwood (Polecat or Knives Lane) 1885-1901.  They had several sons.  William (1874) was a shepherd in 1891, got married in 1900 and moved to another part of Prestwood, working as a general labourer.  James (1876) was a farm labourer and carter.  Alfred (1880) was a gamekeeper.  Sidney (1885) was a farm cardman (combing fleeces).  Alfred and Sidney are shown in a photograph taken in the early part of the 1900s at the Polecat, along with two of the Hildreths (infra).

Of John West's daughters, Ann married one of the Clarke family, also small farmers, and Isobel married Benjamin Bryant, infra.

 

Wilkins

(1) William Wilkins (1825) was born in Gloucestershire.  He first appears locally in the 1861 census, having taken over Knives Farm, probably around 1858.  Part of this farm had been sold for the foundation of the new parish church, but there were nearly 100 acres left, enough to employ three or four men.  He lived there with his wife Elizabeth, who was born in Berkshire, and two sons, Oliver (1859) and William (1860), with a servant girl of 16 from London.  They stayed there for over ten years.  In 1871 they had 8 children and two servants, one of them a monthly nurse, there temporarily at the time of the census, the youngest child being just two weeks old.  By 1881 there is no census record for the family in Britain - they vanished as mysteriously as they came.

 

(2) George Wilkins (1801) was local born.  Through 1861-71 he was a small farmer with a herd of cows at Peterley Corner Farm, which he took over in 1851.  He died in 1878.  He seems to have had no children.

Wright

The Wrights - John (1797) and Fanny (1796) - had kept a grocer's shop and chandlery (ie selling candles and soap) in a cottage near the Green Man from the early 1820s and continued to do so almost until their deaths in 1873 and 1878.  Fanny also worked as a lacemaker.  The Wrights had been a respected and literate Methodist family in the Great Missenden parish far back into the C18^th.  In 1861 their son Jabez (1824) lived next door and worked as a sawyer and wood turner, but by 1871 was supporting his aged parents in running the shop and eventually took it over, adding the selling of fruit to the business.  Jabez's daughter Eliza (1855) lived with her grandparents to keep house (and also working as a straw plaiter) until she married in 1874, while her siblings remained with their parents, except her eldest sister Sarah (a lacemaker like Fanny and her own mother Louisa) who had married Free Smith in 1869.  Her oldest brother William (1852) began as a wood turner and eventually became a carpenter and wheelwright, getting married in 1873 and moving into a neighbouring cottage.  By the end of the century he was also a Wesleyan preacher and his wife Mary (daughter of Jabez Taylor who ran the Travellers Rest pub), formerly a straw plaiter, had set up a confectionery business.  His oldest two daughters were then married.  The third, Emily (1879) worked as a cook at Prestwood Lodge in 1900, and she taught at Prestwood Methodist Sunday School.  Four younger children were still living at home in 1900, including Evan (1882) working as a painter and the youngest Florrie (1895) who appears in a 1905 school photo (see Chapter 10).  Meanwhile, Jabez's other daughters, Ruth (1857) and Ann (1859), got married in 1877 and 1879, leaving the three youngest children still at home in 1881 - Walter Enos (1861), a turner, Albert Edward (1864), then an apprentice wheelwright, and Oliver (1869).  Walter married and, living nearby in the Moat Lane area, became a timber dealer and remained in Prestwood to the end of the century.  Albert took over Pankridge Farm on Moat Lane after marrying Alice Brown from Lee Common in 1886, but he died in 1893.  In 1901 their only child Albert Jr (1890) was lodging with Owen Groom, who had taken over Pankridge Farm.  Albert's wedding is pictured below.  He is also seen at the age of 10 in the 1900-01 school picture (Pitt, q.v.).

Oliver was still with his parents in 1891, working as a wood turner, but, on the death of his mother in 1892 and his father in 1894, took over the grocery shop, after which the cottage would remain known as "Oliver Wright's House" until the present day.  As well as the shop, Oliver employed men making chairs at the premises.  His daughter Daisy (1895) features in a 1905 school photo (see Chapter 10).

 

Wedding of Albert "Rocky" Wright to Gertrude Taylor in 1922: the reception at the Travellers Rest.  Gertrude has the bouquet of flowers, Albert is to her left.  Owen Groom is third from left in middle row, standing behind his wife Ruth.  Gertrude was the daughter of Charles and Caroline Taylor who ran the Travellers Rest: they are seated at the front next to the bridesmaid (Nettia Groom?).  Her oldest brother Rupert is in the middle of the back row, fifth from right.

Yeates

George Yeates (1827) was born in Wiltshire.  He married Jane from London in 1867 and they moved to Hambleden near Henley.  In 1880 he purchased a small farm at Honor End, remaining there until the end of the century.  His eldest son Francis (1872) worked for his father and was not married before 1900.  His second son Claude (1876) also worked on the farm in his teens but then moved to Eton.

 

Publicans

Public houses were essentially the only centres for socialising, gossip and taking part in leisure activities (clubs, board-games, skittles).  They might be purpose-built premises (sometimes with rooms to put up temporary lodgers, such as drovers and casual labourers) or beerhouses, no more than ordinary cottages serving drink on the side in small poorly-ventilated rooms, probably not very well maintained.  Poached game or stolen goods could often be exchanged in these places for the price of a pint or two.  Publicans rarely stayed long and profits were small, so that most had to do other work on the side.  The better class of pub (usually those that had a proper name) was so essential to the community that there was no stigma against them among the religious - indeed many pubs were run by staunch church members.  It must be remembered that water supplies in those days were not always of the healthiest quality and alcohol - cider or beer - was often a safer drink, especially as it was quite weak by today's standards.  The temperance movement that began at about the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign did not not affect religious attitudes, at least in this rural area, until towards the end of the century, the problems of alcoholism being largely an urban phenomenon and mostly associated with spirits like gin and rum.  The fact that public houses were the predominant social centres made them natural venues for those of Nonconformist persuasion before they had any dedicated meeting-houses.

 

Batson

Edmund Batson (1805) was a brewery labourer in Amersham before becoming publican at the Royal Oak in Great Kingshill, aided by his wife Jane.  They also ran the sub-post-office for Kingshill from the premises.  He died in 1879 and his son Edmund Thomas (1837), a dye printer married in 1872, took over the pub.  His mother died in 1882.  Edmund Thomas Batson remained at the pub until the 1890s, when he moved to High Wycombe.

Brackley

David Brackley (1816) had been a beerseller at the Golden Ball for two years in 1851 and remained there until the 1860s (when it had been renamed The Crown).  He and his son David and nephew Henry Wilkins all worked as carriers.  The family ultimately left the parish.

Humphreys

Farm labourer William Humphreys (1833) and his wife Mary moved to Bryants Bottom about 1864, occupying the newly-built Gate pub (owned by Wheelers).  They were both originally from Cambridgeshire, but had lived after marrying at Bledlow and then Great Missenden.  He worked additionally as a stonecutter on Denner Hill.  In 1881 his oldest son William James was 17 and worked as a bodger.  William and Mary kept the pub until the end of the century.  Their other sons also took up the wood-turning trade - George Herbert (1870) and Arthur E. (1876).  Wiliam Jr married Ruth in 1893 and they moved into a cottage near the Gate.  George married Sarah Jane and moved to North Dean, where he worked as a brickie's labourer.  Arthur was still single and living at home in 1900.  There was one daughter, Elizabeth Annie (1868), who married a Mr. Shaw in 1892, but died in childbirth the following year, leaving a son Fred Humphrey Shaw to be looked after by her parents.

 

Lacey

Obadiah Lacey (1825) was born in Princes Risborough and moved from there, when he married about 1851, to live at the Weathercock beer-house on Denner Hill.  Apart from selling beer (the house had been licensed in 1842) he was described in the census as a timber dealer and sawyer.  The family stayed there after he died in the 1880s, his widow Sarah (1820) running the pub.  In 1881 most of her family, if not all, were still with her, including Thomas (1854), described as doing "odd work", George (1857) and Oliver (1862) both bodgers, Lucy (1864) and Amy (1868) both beadworkers.  Lucy married Thomas Saunders (q.v.), a labourer from Bryants Bottom, and they moved into a cottage next to the Weathercock.  In 1891 Thomas, George and Oliver were all "general labourers", while Amy had a one-year-old baby to care for.  Sarah died in 1896 and, apart from Lucy, all the family split up, moving to surrounding towns like Princes Risborough and Saunderton.

Parsons

(1) Aaron Parsons was born 1799 in Great Hampden.  In 1851 he had a 225-acre farm at Penn Bottom, having variously lived before then at Princes Risborough (with his parents), Great Hampden and Hughenden, but in 1861 he and his family occupied a 200 acre farm in the north of Prestwood (probably Pankridge).  His wife died, however, and by 1871 he was retired and paralysed, perhaps by a stroke, lodging at Heath End with a nurse in attendance.  He died in 1872.  In the C18^th there had been a Parsons family at what was later called Atkins Farm (it was then Parsons' Farm), but it is not known whether Aaron was connected with this family.  It is possible that Joseph Parsons, publican at the old Chequers1835 to his death in 1857, just two years younger, was Aaron's brother.

When Joseph Parsons died, his widow Joyce (née Beeson) carried on his other business dealing in timber, while their son William (1830), then working as a master bricklayer, took over the Chequers with his wife Ann.  His brother Daniel (1840) lived with them early in 1861 and helped William with his building work.  As a Methodist family, they helped build the new chapel in 1860s.  Both William and Ann died while still quite young in 1869 and 1865 respectively, and the inn was taken over by John Tofield, who was new to the area.  Daniel stayed on a while, working as a builder, having married Rebecca from Little Hampden later in 1861, but by 1881 had left Prestwood and was living at Walton Road in Aylesbury.  William's son George(1855), however, an orphan at theage of 14, went to lodge with Christopher Hester (wheelwright), with whom he became apprenticed, working as a wheelwright in Prestwood and marrying a local girl, Sarah, in 1877.  By 1887 he had taken over both the Green Man and his father's thriving building business, employing several men, for this was a time of major new house-building in Prestwood, especially what was to become the High Street.  By then he had a fine family of seven children.  He was still there at the end of the century, by which time he had had 13 children, 11 of them still living with him, including his eldest Florence (1878) who worked at the bar.  His son Ralph (1879) had just married and lived not far away, working as a house painter for his father's business.  His daughter Fanny, however, had died at the age of 11 in 1891.  A number of the younger children can be seen in the 1900-01 and 1905 school photos (see Pitt supra and Chapter 10).

 

(2) A small farmer called William Parsons (1786) lived at Sly Corner, Great Missenden 1840 and then Ballinger 1851.  His son Ephraim became publican at the Barley Mow (a Wheeler pub), north-east of Great Missenden, from 1851 onwards.  After his death in 1871 his wife Mary was licensee there.

 

Sewell

John Sewell (1854) was publican at the Polecat at the end of the century.  His son Henry (1881) was a painter.  He had married Marion Downing from Guernsey, but was from Norfolk himself.  In 1881-1891 he had been a gardener in Walton-on-Thames.

Simmonds

The innkeeper at the Royal Oak in Kingshill at the turn of the century was William Simmonds (1841), who also had a poultry business.  He was from Reading originally and in 1881 was a baker in Goring, Oxfordshire.  Some time after 1886 he and his family moved to High Wycombe, before moving after 1891 to Great Kingshill.

Taylor

In 1851 Jabez Taylor (1822), originally from Little Missenden, was the farmer at Hotley Bottom, but by 1861 he was selling beer on the north side of Prestwood Common in the Travellers' Friend pub in 1861 (Travellers' Rest from 1881).  (The pub was owned by the Aylesbury brewers Wroughton & Co.)  He did farm work on the side, as the beer trade was insufficient to provide a full income and his wife Eliza could cover the work at the beerhouse in his absence.  She was also a dressmaker.  Jabez was a fervent Methodist and he set up the first meeting-place for worship in Prestwood in the Bowling Alley at the Travellers Friend, before the chapel was built in 1863.

Their children were Susan (1846), Harriet (1848), George (1851), William (1853), Mary (1854), Thomas (1858) and Charles (1860).  After doing labouring work William became a bodger, married in 1873, and set up home in Prestwood not far from his parents.  They had one son, Charles William (1877), who married in 1901.  Mary married William Wright and they set up a grocery shop (see Wright supra).  Thomas and Charles, who both became bodgers, married in 1880 and moved into nearby cottages.  Thomas had five children: Kate (1884), Amy (1887), Albert (1890), Frank (1892) and Gilbert (1900).  Albert and Frank appear in the 1900-01 school photo (see Pitt supra).

Charles's wife was Caroline Tilbury (1861), who had a daughter Bertha (Tilbury) at around the time of the marriage; her mother Sarah was staying with them in 1881, perhaps to help look after the baby, leaving Caroline some time for straw plaiting work.  They later had further children: Owen (1883), Rupert (1885), Charles (1887), Gertrude (1890), Hilda (1893) and Alfred (1895).   

The oldest son of Jabez, George, continued longer in agricultural work.  After marrying in 1872 he moved into a cottage at Collings Hanger Farm to work for Henry Grover.  By 1881, however, he had also moved to other employment, having moved into the centre of Prestwood near his brothers and become a stonecutter's labourer.  He and his wife had no children, but in 1891 a 13-year-old boy from London, John Taylor Robinson, was staying with them and was eventually adopted as their son.  He married and left home in 1901.  Meanwhile George had moved on in the stone-working business to set himself up as a self-employed contractor for road and paving work and the family moved to Manor Farm in Little Missenden, where they put up several lodgers.

Jabez and Eliza both died in 1897 and the Traveller's Rest was taken over by their son Charles who at the same time started up in business as a timber merchant.  His sons Rupert and Charles worked for their father as timber carters (his oldest Owen had died at the age of ten in 1893).  Their young sister Gertrude later married Albert Wright of the shopkeeping family (see wedding photo above). 

At this time, at the end of the century, William was still a bodger and lived near Oliver Wright's grocery shop at the east end of Middle Road [now Prestwood High Street].  His only son married in 1901.  Thomas was then a sawyer and lived in the row of cottages adjoining the Green Man pub.  His daughter Kate lived in Prestwood Lodge as a housemaid.

Jabez's father James (1796) owned Hotley Bottom Farm and another one in Holmer Green in 1851.  Before that he was a farmer at Kingsey in Oxfordshire and then Surrey.  When Jabez became a pub landlord, James took over the 96 acres at Hotley Bottom and worked it with his son William (1824) and William's sons James (1847) and Mordecai (1849), the latter, still a lad, acting as the shepherd for the flocks grazing the slopes there.  He also employed a carter and four other labourers.  His wife Mary was about 25 years younger than him, probably a second wife.  James Sr stayed here until his death in 1878.  William had moved to another cottage nearby by 1871, but he and Mordecai still worked as labourers and shepherds on the farm, along with a younger son William Jr (1856).  James Jr married Emma Bignell (q.v.) in 1870 and they moved in with her parents in Kiln Common at first, but then left the parish.  In 1873 Mordecai married Sarah Page (q.v.) and they moved to a cottage at Stony Green, later to a cottage next to The Stag in Great Kingshill.  By 1900 he was working as a stonecutter.  In 1891 Mordecai's two sons Frederick (1879) and Albert (1883) were living with their mother's widowed mother Mary, but by 1900 they had moved to Wycombe.  William Jr married in 1876 and changed career to chairmaking, still living in the Kiln Common area in 1881, but then moving to Little Hampden in 1884.  William Sr died in the 1890s.

Timpson

Isaac Timpson (1827) and Eliza (née Easton, from London) were in charge of the Polecat Inn in 1851 and remained there until after 1871.  Isaac also did building and carpentry work (in 1870, for instance, he carried out restoration at Great Hampden Church).  In 1861 his widowed mother-in-law was staying with them, helping out in the pub.  By 1871 two sons, Walter (1851) and Edward (1857) were also working as carpenters.  Isaac died in 1880.  Edward got married soon after and took over the pub while pursuing carpentry work.  Walter remained at the house, concentrating on the carpentry business.  Edward relinquished the pub in 1883 and first moved into The Lodge at Great Hampden as a carpenter (he helped restore the chancel at Holy Trinity in 1884) and then Great Kingshill.  His mother lived with him and his young family until she died in 1904.  Walter married in 1888 and set up as a carpenter and joiner in Little Kingshill.

Wilson

John Henry Wilson (1851), originally from Ipswich, was publican at The Stag in 1891.  He was still a bachelor at 40 and an unmarried sister Adelaide (1856) lived with him as domestic support.  Before taking over The Stag he had been a clerk at Camberwell in London, living with his widowed father and three sisters.  In a few years, before 1900, he and Adelaide had departed for Birmingham.

 

Skilled trades

Skilled workers included blacksmiths, shoemakers and builders.  Many were Nonconformists, literate, and mobile, settling wherever there was demand for their services.  Skilled woodworking trades are covered in a separate section below.

 

Anderson

Ebenezer Anderson (1833) was a boot- and shoe-maker from Cryers Hill.  He lived in Little Hampden and then Cryers Hill before moving to Bryants Bottom, where he and his family were living in 1881.  One son William (1866) married Ann in 1884 and moved to nearby Piggotts Common at the top of the hill-ridge to the west. The second son Arthur George (1869) married Sarah Chilton (q.v.), who had been born in Bryants Bottom.  Arthur and Sarah moved to a cottage near her parents in Bryants Bottom and he worked first as a bodger and later as a saddle-tree maker.  Ebenezer's wife, a dressmaker, died in 1890, but he remained in the same cottage until the end of the century, while his married sons continued to live nearby. His youngest son Alfred Thomas (1874), a bodger like Arthur, stayed with his father until 1896, when Arthur married and moved a little further away to Princes Risborough.

Ayres Thomas Ayres (1841) was born in Penn Street.  He became a journeyman blacksmith in Amersham and in 1863 married Julia Cox.  They moved to Great Kingshill, near Hatches Farm, in 1869 with his widowed mother.  They only stayed there, however, for five years and by 1874 they had moved back to Amersham.

Thomas Ayres at his smithy in Amersham in the 1880s

Beeson

Richard Beeson (1818) was a brazier who lived in Penn Street.  His wife was Betsy, the daughter of Free Turner, who then lived in Prestwood near Hildreth's smithy in Knives Lane.  Richard and Betsy's son James (1843) came to Prestwood around 1861 to work as an apprentice blacksmith for George Hildreth (q.v.).  In 1864, when he was a qualified blacksmith, he married Harriet Wilkins, whose mother was another daughter of Free Turner (who was therefore ancestor of both spouses).  They lived near the Kings Head and he continued to  work for Hildreth.  By 1881, however, he had set up his own smithy in Great Kingshill, near the Royal Oak.  At this time he had nine children spanning 15 years, and the oldest boy William Richard (1867) was working as a blacksmith for his father.  William married in 1888 and moved to Beaconsfield.  By 1891 Richard had had two more children and Oliver (1875) was working for his father in place of William.  Harry (1871) was a farm labourer at Upper Warren Farm, just outside the parish.  During the 1890s James and Harriet moved to Bisham in Berkshire, while Harry moved to Berkhamsted and Oliver to Wycombe.

 

Biggs

John Biggs (1767) was a bricklayer who lived at Peterley Corner in 1851.  He died a few years later but left a son John Jr (1806) who followed the same trade from a cottage on the south side of Kingshill Common.  John Jr's wife Dinah was a dressmaker from Chesham.  They received rent from a couple of orchards they owned.  John Jr died in 1879 and Dinah in 1887.  Their daughter and first-born Emma (1842) lived with them until she married in the 1870s.  They left three sons who continued in the building trade.

Charles (1831) married Emma in 1852 and lived in the next-door cottage in Great Kingshill for the rest of the century.  Emma died in 1893 and Charles in 1901.  Two unmarried daughters Ada (1862) and Eva (1873) remained with them all this time.  Of their other daughters, Mary (1853) married in 1873, Eliza in 1881, and Ruth in 1886.  They had one son Owen Ernest (1866), who was also a bricklayer.  He remained at home until he married in 1895 and moved to Princes Risborough.

George (1836) married Sarah in 1860 and also lived nearby in Kingshill at first.  By 1871 he had moved a little way to Heath End and become publican at the Forester's Arms [Primrose Farm], although his primary business was as a builder, with a builder's yard at Hoppers Farm (just outside the parish boundary).  He employed a labourer Thomas Pearce who lodged in the house.  In 1881 he was also the farmer at Hopper's Farm.  He remained there until the end of the century, when the household consisted of his wife Sarah, daughters Kate (1863) and Lizzie (1875), and sons Leonard (1870), an agricultural labourer, and Albert (1877), a carpenter working for his father.  His first son George (1865) married Ruth in 1889 and they also took a cottage in Great Kingshill.  He worked as a carpenter and joiner for his father for the rest of the century.  His second son Herbert (1866) worked as a plumber for his father, getting married to Alice in 1900 but continuing to live close by.  About this time the building business became known as George Biggs and Sons and it went on to build many public buildings in the centre of High Wycombe as well as local housing, and in 1884 made alterations to Holy Trinity church.

Joseph (1847) married Ellen in 1869 and in 1871 lived next-door to his brother George, for whom he then worked, although he shortly moved to Hazlemere.  His oldest son Frederick George (1870) returned to Kingshill when he married in 1893, living in the cottage between those of his uncles Charles and George.  He had not trained as builder like most of his family, but as a chairmaker.

Dean

George Dean (1827) was the son of Thomas (c1781), a labourer in Little Kingshill who lived near Stonyrock Plantation.  Originally working as a farm labourer, he married Kate in 1853 and moved into one of the Stonyrock Cottages.  In 1861 Kate was also employed as a schoolmistress.  They were in the same cottage in 1871, but by then George had a job as a game-keeper.  By 1881 they had moved to Cowans Wood, Naphill, where he was still a gamekeeper, remaining there for the rest of the century.  None of his brothers lived in Prestwood parish and none of his sons remained there, either.

Evans

George (1799) and his son James (1839) were blacksmiths in Great Kingshill in 1851 up to 1861.  George died in 1861 and his son moved to Chesham.  Another branch of the Evans family included blacksmiths in Great Missenden and Chesham.

Gurney

William Gurney (1828) came to Great Kingshill from Little Missenden in 1851 when he had just got married, although his mother came originally from Kingshill.  He was a shoemaker and his wife Rebecca did lacemaking.  They remained there until after 1881, from 1872 also running an inn (The Stag).  Rebecca died in 1890, and in 1891 we find William was unemployed and lodging in the centre of Wycombe (3 Phillips Row) with his fifth daughter Maria (1860), who was married to the chairmaker Henry Nash.  With him were two single children, Frederick (1872) who worked for Nash, and Ann (1874).  William died the following year.  Four older daughters were already married by 1881 and Kate (1867) was married in 1886.  His oldest sons, John (1862) and Owen (1870) also become chairmakers and moved to High Wycombe.

Hildreth

The blacksmith William Hildreth (1808) died in 1853.  He had run the smithy across the road from the new parish church in Prestwood (variously Knives Lane, after the farm there, or Polecat Lane, after the pub).  He was succeeded by his eldest son George (1830), who had previously worked in Amersham, where his wife Elizabeth came from.  In 1861 their eldest child Louisa (1851) was attending the new school by the church.  Their other children were William (1852), Owen (1856), George (1857) and Alice (1860).  He employed one young blacksmith and an apprentice, James Beeson (1844), who lodged with them.  In 1871 the household was the same, apart from Louisa, and the workforce consisted of George Sr, William and Owen.  At this time Louisa lived in the Vicarage as a nursemaid.  (This was very close to the smithy, although the family were not Church of England but Methodist.)  By 1881 George ran the smithy with the help of the third son, George Jr, while Louisa had returned and worked as a housemaid until she married in 1884 and left home.  In 1882 George Jr got married and both families lived at the smithy from then until the end of the century - George Sr and his wife, and George Jr with his wife and three children - Harry (1883), Kate (1887) and Clarrie (1889).  By this time Harry was also working as a blacksmith for the firm.  Meanwhile William Jr had married in 1872 and eventually set up his own smithy in Little Kingshill, while also running the Rising Sun public house.  He already had seven children in 1881: Robert William (1873), George E. (1874), Agnes J. (1875), Emily M. (1877), Oliver C. (1878), Nora L. (1880) and Stanley C. (1881).  In about 1890 the family moved back to Prestwood and established a second smithy near George's, on the west side of the common north of Collings Hanger Farm.  By then they had four more children: Alice M. (1883), Roland S. (1885), Daisy E. (1887) and Newman O. (1889).  By the end of the century, however, William and his family had moved once more, this time to High Wycombe.  Owen had got married in 1879 to a woman from Maidenhead, and it was to there he moved and remained blacksmith through 1900.  In 1891 Agnes was kitchen maid at Hampden House.

William Sr's second son Benjamin (1833) was also a blacksmith and when he married Ann Bowdrey (q.v.) in 1852 he set up a smithy on the north-east corner of Prestwood Common, at the junction of what is now Blacksmith Lane and the High Street, where he was assisted by an apprentice.  In 1869 he made the ironwork for the new Wesleyan chapel in Prestwood High Street.  Benjamin remained here until he died in 1899 (his wife died in 1891), when his son Albert took over the business.  They had eight children:  Charles Thomas (1853), Ellen (1857), Lucy (1859), Ruth (1864), Albert James (1868), Elizabeth (1870),  Reuben (1873), and Rosa Mabel (1877).  They also raised a grandson, Alfred (1879).  Ruth - the first person to be baptised in the new Methodist chapel in Prestwood in 1864 - married John Benning (q.v.), the chair turner, in 1889 and they lived in Kiln Common, with a baby son Fred Victor, a previous child Charles Murray Hildreth (1884), and her sister Elizabeth.  Reuben married in 1892 and moved into one of the Long Row cottages.  He worked at the Kiln Common brickworks.  Rosa married William Peedle (q.v.): Alfred (then a gardener) was living with them in 1901 in Wesley Villa on the High Street.

A younger brother of George and Benjamin was Simeon (1840), who lived briefly in Prestwood after marrying in 1862, but left in 1870, moving in quick succession to Naphill, Latimer and Amersham, where in 1881 he was blacksmith in the High Street.  He died in 1888 at Norwood.  Five of his nine children emigrated to Canada in the 1890s.  Many of them continued in the same trade in their new country.

In the picture below, two of the Hildreths are seated on the bench outside The Polecat, Harry son of George (with the pipe) and Harry son of Albert at the right; c.WWI.  The two people standing at the right are the brothers Alf and Sid West, gamekeeper and cardman respectively, the sons of Thomas West (supra).  By this time most were married.  This picture is the only evidence we have of dog ownership at this time - apparently quite regular young men's companions.

 

 

Ives

James Ives (1816) was a shoemaker who lived at Stony Green in 1841 and then moved to Great Hampden, where his wife Jane had been born.  They were back in the parish near the Golden Ball in 1861 and then moved to Great Kingshill by 1871.  Jane died in 1879, leaving him with one unmarried son, George (1838), who was a farm worker.  When James died in 1885, George boarded in Kingshill, but there is no trace of him after 1891.

Newell

Joseph Newell (1819) was working as a saddler in Egham, near Windsor, in 1881.  He lived with his wife Lydia.  They moved in the 1880s to Great Kingshill, when he retired from work.  Lydia died in 1896 and Joseph moved into a cottage at Kiln Common, where he lived until his death in 1905.

 

Page

In 1861 England (1800) and Charlotte (1803) Page were still running the grocer's shop at Pound House in Great Kingshill, as they did in 1851.  England also did farm work and his wife lacemaking, so it was apparent that the shop was not enough to support them on its own, probably opening only on certain days or by demand.  England died in 1874 and Charlotte, who continued as grocer after his death, in 1887.  England, who was born in Kingshill, and Charlotte, who was from Penn, had married in 1822.  Through the means of the shop and much hard work besides, the Pages saved enough to set up three sons with farms.

Their son William (1822), who ran the Stag Inn in Kingshill in 1851, had by 1861 moved to Rotherfield Greys near Henley, in Oxfordshire, and then to nearby Ipsden, where he farmed 220 acres and was a timber merchant.  His daughter Catherine (1860) moved in with England and Charlotte, her grandparents, from about 1870 to 1887, to look after them as they grew old.

The second son John (1827), who was an agricultural labourer, had married and moved to Hertfordshire, although he moved back to the county at Penn by 1881; he died in 1886.

Another son, Benjamin (1835), married to Rose Willis in 1857, was living near his parents in 1861 with two young children.  He was a farm labourer.  Rose died in 1882, short of her 50th birthday, but Benjamin continued living and working in Kingshill to the end of the century.  Benjamin had several sons.  William (1859), also a farm worker, married Kate in 1885 and they lived near his father.  George (1865) also remained in Great Kingshill.  Frederick (1868) moved to High Wycombe after he married in 1891.  Herbert (1872) was an apprentice chairmaker in 1891 and then moved to Chartridge.  Benjamin's daughter Sarah (1850) married the farm labourer Mordecai Taylor and they settled at Stony Green (see Taylor).

The next of England's sons was Richard (1837),who also lived in Great Kingshill working as a bodger in 1861, having married in 1856.  He moved away to Stokenchurch but returned to take over Atkins Farm (232 acres, employing seven men) before 1881 and was still there at the end of the century.  (This farm, along with neighbouring Sedges, was owned by the trustees of the estate of Miss Ann Daniel, and an account of 1888 showed that the rents, due traditionally on Lady Day, were £52-10s for Atkins and £57 for Sedges along with 20 acres of other land.  Along with property taxes, poor rate and highway rate contributions, the rent for both farms came to £122-5s in total.)  Richard and his wife Susannah never had any children.  Their niece Lizzie (1875) stayed with them from 1886 to 1900.  Born in Hertfordshire, she was probably the youngest daughter of John Page supra, her parents both being dead by 1886.

After Richard came Thomas (1844), an agricultural labourer, who married in 1862, moved to Rickmansworth until 1870, returned to Great Kingshill until 1878, and then settled in the High Wycombe area. 

Edwin (1846) was a ploughboy on Newhouse Farm in 1861, at the age of 15.  He married about 1870 and moved to Hertfordshire, returning to the county at Chalfont St Giles in 1880.  Five years later he returned to Prestwood, taking over Sedges Farm, next door to his brother Richard.  About this time his first wife died and he got married again to Susan Body, herself a widow, with a daughter Georgina (1872) by her first marriage.  She worked as a teacher at the parish school in 1891. After a few years, however, before 1900, they moved to Chesham Bois.

The last of England's children (he had at least eleven) was Ann, who married farm worker Joseph Hawks Burridge from Oxfordshire in 1874.  They moved to the east side of Prestwood, as Joseph worked for her uncle Richard at Atkins Farm.  He was a carter on the farm in 1900.  Their son Joseph (1879) became a bricklayer.

 

Tilbury

Charles Tilbury ((1825), member of a Methodist family, was a butcher at Heath End in 1851.  He had moved to Cockpit Hole in great Kingshill by 1861.  As well as being a butcher, he was a cattle drover.  After his wife died in the 1890s he moved back to Heath End.  His oldest child Mary (1850) married Jabez Dennis in 1871 and moved to Hazlemere.  His eldest son George (1852), who worked as a general labourer, never married.  The second son Esau (1856) married Eliza in 1876 and moved to Cockpit Hole, next to his parents' house.  He worked as a farm labourer and a bodger.  He stayed at the same address until the end of the century, by which time his son George (1885) was an apprentice chairmaker.  The third son Boaz (1857) became a blacksmith and labourer, and married Elizabeth Ward, a straw-plaiter, in 1880, staying at first with her parents William and Eliza in Moat Lane.  They moved to the east side of Prestwood Common in 1881 when their first child was conceived and remained there to the end of the century.  Their eldest child Harry (1882) was then a farm labourer and carter, but his younger sisters Annie and Ruth were described at this time as unemployed, although 16 and 14 years respectively.

Walker

John Jacob Walker (1856) was born in Great Hampden and became a blacksmith.  He married Mary Ann from Little Hampden in 1885 and they settled in the smithy at Hampden Bottom until after 1900.

Webb

Originally from Chesham, Richard Webb (1819) was a shoemaker in Prestwood in 1861 but he left the parish to set up a business in Church Street, Great Missenden.  His daughter Mary Ann, who was a shoe binder, married David Peedle in 1 867 (supra) and they remained in Prestwood.  Her brother Robert (1850) worked as a shoemaker and lodged with them in 1871.  He married and set up his shoemaking business in Kiln Common, where he remained until the end of the century.  By 1891 Robert's younger brother Walter (1857), who had originally started to learn his father's trade but then abandoned it, moving away from the area altogether, had returned to set up in business as a pheasant breeder, employing his young nephew William, Robert's son.  He and his wife bought Claremont House in 1887, on the west side of the old Prestwood Common.  Their residence in Prestwood did not last long, however, and shortly after 1891 they had moved to one of the Station View Cottages on Trafford Road in Great Missenden, where Walter was now a dealer in furniture, although this was to prove to be another short-term venture that did not last long beyond the century.  Like many such tradesmen, the Webbs were Nonconformist and attended the Methodist chapel in Prestwood.

 

Wiltshire

William Wiltshire (1841) was a journeyman harness-maker born at Woodborough in Wiltshire.  He married Eliza Ellen of Stokenchurch and they lived in Wiltshire and Oxfordshire before moving to Great Missenden in about 1883.  They lived at 2 Church Street.  By 1891 they had moved to Moat Lane in Prestwood.  At this time they had a son William Charles (1871) who was a labourer on the new railway through Missenden and another son Thomas (1876) who was a farm labourer.  Two twin sons Walter and Levi (1879) were still at school.  The eldest son married in 1894 and moved to High Wycombe.  Thomas married in 1897 and moved back to Great Missenden.  In 1900 Levi and Walter were lodging separately in Prestwood, Levi a general labourer  and Walter a brickmaker's carter.  The Wiltshires were members of the Methodist church.

 

Woodworkers

Workers in the timber industry were a fairly separate group socially, the appropriate skills being handed down from father to son, and the different families often intermarrying.  The families were more concentrated in great Kingshill and Heath End than in the rest of the parish.  Many had ties with, or were descended from, families in other rural communities where woodland industries predominated, such as Lacey Green, Princes Risborough and Speen.  Towards the latter part of the C19^th the demand for wood-workers declined and many descendants had to take up agricultural and other labouring jobs.  Like the publicans, shopkeepers and practitioners of skilled trades, many of these families were Dissenters.

 

Anderson

(1) The brothers John (1831) and Joseph (1835) Anderson lived in neighbouring cottages at Heath End, Great Kingshill in 1861.  John made wooden hames (harnesses) and saddle-trees for horses, while Joseph did farm labouring and sawyer jobs.  They were the sons of William Anderson (1809) who was Disraeli's gardener at Hughenden Manor and a prominent Baptist.  (Another brother James, 1833, lived at Great Hampden in 1861 and then settled at Naphill.)  John was married to Louisa Lacey from High Wycombe.  They remained at the same house until he died in 1894.  Their son Frederick (1859) followed the same trade as his father and after marrying in 1879 took the cottage next-door where Joseph had lived.  He lived there until the end of the century, by which time his sons Albert (1881) and Robert (1886) were chairmakers.  His mother continued to live next-door and worked as a laundress.  John and Louisa's son Charles (1866) was still living at home in 1891 and had a job as a gardener like his grandfather, but he eventually moved to Marlow.

Joseph, who was married to Alice, also remained at Heath End, moving before 1881 to a cottage in White Horse Yard, where he worked on a circular saw at the sawmill.  At the end of the century they still had two single children at home, Alice (1872), a dressmaker, and William (1875), who had then been a stationary engine driver for over ten years.  Before the national electric grid, such petrol-driven engines were used to generate electricity to drive machinery, in this case the saws at the mill.

 

(2) Edwin Anderson (1814) was from a family unrelated to the above and had been born in Speen.  He lived near the Golden Ball in Prestwood in 1851, but in 1861-91 lived in Kiln Common and worked as a sawyer, as did his son John (1842).  He died in 1891.  His son John married in 1870, living at Hotley Bottom in 1871, but then moving to Green Hailey near Monks Risborough, where he stayed through 1900.  A younger son William (1856) also moved away from the parish.

 

(3) George Anderson (1861) was the son of a farm labourer at Piggotts Common and initially worked on a farm, but when he married Sarah from Prestwood in 1887 they set up home in Great Kingshill, where he worked as a saddle-tree maker.  They were still there in 1900.

 

Bristowe

John Bristowe (1825) was a sawyer in Great Kingshill in 1851, married to Phoebe from Little Missenden.  He died in 1863 and in 1871 Phoebe, working as a monthly nurse, was lodging with David Nash, the saddle-tree maker, in Great Kingshill; by 1881 she was living alone as a widow in Little Missenden.  Their son John (1851), however, became a saddle-tree maker and raised his family at Cockpit Hole, Great Kingshill, to the end of the century.  John Jr's son Michael (1880) was by then married and living nearby in Kingshill. He worked as a bodger.

Busby

John Busby (1839) was the son of a Great Kingshill woodworker.  He married in 1869 and settled in the same village as a chairmaker.  His wife Caroline was a straw-plaiter.  They stayed there until the end of the century.

Cartwright

Benjamin Cartwright (1829) was a bodger in the parish in 1851.  He was descended from a Great Hampden and Piggotts family of small farmers.  He was still living at Kiln Common in 1861, but had by then set up in business as a timber dealer, employing three men.  After 1865 the family moved to Wycombe, where Benjamin ran a chair-making firm, employing 12 men, a boy and 4 girls.  His older daughters helped make the cane seats.  In about ten years time they were back in Prestwood, on Polecat (Knives) Lane, still making chairs and cabinets, but employing just two men, while two of his daughters still worked as chair-caners.  Oddly, they were back in Green Street, High Wycombe, in 1891.  He was still a chair manufacturer, and this time they stayed.

Crutchfield

William Crutchfield (1791) was a bodger living on the north side of Kingshill Common in 1851 and until 1870 when he died.  His son James (1817) was married and working as a farm labourer in Great Kingshill in 1861-71, before moving to Little Missenden.  His next son William (1822) became a bodger and moved to Saunderton, where he died in 1876.  The third son George (1825) moved to Naphill and worked as an agricultural labourer.  Another son Reuben (1836), who got married in 1859 to Margaret Wells (from another bodger family, infra), settled by Kingshill Common as a bodger, until he also died, relatively young, in 1875.  His widow moved to a cottage next door to her brother Cornelius, where in 1881 she lived with her sons Eli (1862), likewise a bodger, and Reuben (1866), who was then a monitor at the parish school with his sister Mary Ann (1868).  There was a second daughter, Elizabeth Jane (1871).  Margaret lived here as a laundress until her death in 1910.  Eli joined the army in the 1880s but returned to live in Cryers Hill.  Reuben married Ruth Langston (1868) in 1890 and they settled in a cottage near his mother, but by this time he could only find farm labouring work.  They eventually moved to Heath End, still within the parish.

Free

(1) Francis Free (1817) was a last-maker and bodger who lived at Stony Green in 1861, as he did in 1851.  As well as being a small farm, the cottage served as a public house once known as The Plough (c1820).  In 1842 Wheelers had acquired the house for selling their beer.  (The family were active members of the Baptitst Church, but this was not seen at the time as incompatible with the sale of alcohol.)  He went on living there until his death in 1878.  His widow Elizabeth (1829) moved to a cottage on Denner Hill next to the Weathercock Inn, where she ran a shop until her own death in 1886.  In 1861 there were four children at home - Frederick (1846), a bodger, Charles (1851), Alfred (1853) and Ralph (1856).  Frederick married in 1867 and moved to a cottage on Knives Lane between the Polecat and the King's Head.  In 1869 he had a son christened Frederick Liberty.  By 1881 he had moved into the Lodge at Hughenden Manor, where he is described as a chairmaker.  They subsequently moved to Amersham and later High Wycombe.  Charles married in 1872 and moved away from the area.  Alfred married in 1878 and moved to a cottage beside Moat Farm, where he became a timber merchant, employing three men.  Next door was David Peedle (q.v.) who was also a timber dealer, perhaps in partnership with Free.  By 1891 Charles had moved to Great Kingshill, where he was again described simply as a "turner", ie bodger - perhaps the business did not turn out too well.  He subsequently moved to High Wycombe.  Ralph married in 1879 and moved to Kiln Common, where he too was a bodger.  By 1891 he had moved to Bryants Bottom, where he stayed to the end of century, working as bailiff for the Hampden Estate.

Free's wife had a son, William (1852), who continued living with his mother until 1873 and learned to become a bodger.  He married Emma that year and they moved to Bryants Bottom, where they stayed for the rest of the century.  Of his sons, Ernest (1876) became a bodger, Walter (1879) a timber-yard worker, and William (1882) a pheasant-rearer.

 

(2) Joseph Free (1839) was the son of Henry (1811), a farm labourer from Oxfordshire, who lived on Boss Lane about 1834-51.  He married Lydia Phillips in 1864 and they settled in Great Kingshill, where they still lived in 1900.  He played cricket for Great Kingshill in the 1860s and worked as a sawyer right up into the 1880s, after which he had to take farm labouring jobs.  His son Joseph (1863) also became a farm labourer and cricketer.  He married Sarah from Little Missenden in 1886 and settled in Great Kingshill in a cottage close to the cricket field.  At the end of the century he was working as a bricklayer.  His younger brothers also became agricultural workers.  George (1867) married in the same year, but moved to the Wycombe area.  Frederick (1877), still single, moved to London.

Grove

Amos Grove was born in Penn Street in 1855.  He married in 1877, but his wife died shortly afterwards.  In 1881 he worked as a bodger, lodging in Wycombe Heath.  He married Fanny Mead (1853), also a young widow, later the same year.  They set up home in Great Kingshill with Fanny's daughters Jane (1875) and Bertha (1878).  In 1900 Jane was still at home, working as a domestic servant; their son Harry (1887) was a saddle-tree maker; Bertha had moved to Chesham; and Harry's older brother Cedric (1883) had joined the army.

Hester

Christopher Hester (1806), the master wheelwright, and his wife Hannah (1809), continued to live in Kiln Common into their seventies.  He died in 1884 and she in 1889.  They left no descendants in the parish.

Janes

Richard Janes (1810) was from a farming family and was a gardener in 1851, with a cottage and a field on the edge of Kingshill Common, next to an orchard owned by his father.  He was still there in 1861, but had become a chair turner or bodger, with his son Abel (1843) also following that trade.  Another son James (1847) would also become a bodger, but Walter (1852) was apprenticed as a blacksmith.  Richard later (1881) returned to gardening, perhaps because of his age, but he stayed in the same cottage until both he and his wife died in 1888.  James had married in 1882 and his family became the sole occupants of the cottage in 1888.  They were still there in 1900, although James was then a farm worker.  At this time his oldest son Ernest (1885) was lodging at Nairdwood Farm as a labourer and the second oldest Frank (1888) worked as a gardener.

George Janes (1834) was from another branch of the same family.  His father was William (1806), a chair turner who had lived on the south side of Kingshill Common since 1834, and who died in the 1850s.  George married in 1858, continuing to live in the same cottage and plying his father's trade.  In 1861 his brother Albert (1843) lodged there also and worked with him.  George's sons followed in his footsteps - Albert (1862), Edwin (1865), Henry (1868) and Arthur (1870) - working as a family wood-turning business for most of the century.  By 1900, however, of George's sons, only Arthur remained in Great Kingshill, not far from his parents.  (He later took over the Red Lion.)  Edwin had died in 1894 and about that time Henry had departed for Desborough Street in High Wycombe and become a chairmaker.  Albert Sr moved in 1869 to Water Lane, Wycombe, to join a relative Allan Janes (1843) who had the year before co-founded with Charles Nicholls (his brother-in-law) a chair factory employing (in 1881) "33 men 10 girls and 3 boys" (Nicholls and Janes Ltd, which folded up about 1970).  The firm made elegant hand-carved furniture, including some for the famous architect and furniture-designer Sir Edward Lutyens.  George had another brother, Thomas (1838), who was a turner on the south side of Kingshill Common until the 1870s.  He moved to Widmer End and - a sign of the times - became an engine-driver (ie a farm steam-engine).

Yet another branch of the Janes family descended from John (1785) who was a wheelwright, and latterly a publican (at the King's Head, later at the Polecat, in Prestwood).  He was dead by 1861, but his son William Henry (1812) had lived since the 1830s on the north side of Kingshill Common, near the Red Lion pub.  He was a wheelwright and in 1861 his son Peter (1843) assisted with the business.  (His wife Mary contributed to finances as a breadmaker.)  Later William Leonard (1855) joined the team.  He retired in the 1870s and moved to Oxford Road, High Wycombe, lodging with his daughter Emma, who had married chairmaker Joseph Worley.  Peter carried on the Kingshill business after his father retired.  In 1892 his oldest child Albert Ernest (1866) married and set up home in Kingshill, working as a turner, next door to his relative James (supra).  Two of Albert's sisters in 1901 were employed at the Vicarage as parlourmaid and housemaid.  Their aunt Susannah, Peter's sister, had been kitchen maid there in 1861 for Revd. Thomas Evetts.  William Henry's sister Martha (1817) was single in 1861 and in charge of the King's Head pub which her father had previously run.  She died in 1865.  Another son of William Henry - Arthur (1838) - also became a wheelwright and saddle-tree maker.  He worked in Great Kingshill, too, after he married in 1858, but the family moved well away from the area in the 1860s.

A fourth branch of the family stemmed from James (1778), who was the farmer at Upper Warren Farm in 1851.  His grandson James (1839) also settled in Great Kingshill as a saddle-tree maker, later a clamp-maker, and by 1900 a chairmaker.  James's brother Jabez (1843) also lived in Great Kingshill (near Cockpit Hole) after he married, but in 1881 he (like Thomas above) had become an engine-driver.

Jenkins

Joseph Jenkins (1835), recently married, lived in Great Kingshill in 1861 as a bodger.  His wife Ann was a lacemaker.  They lived there for over ten years, but then moved to Naphill, where he worked as a farm labourer.

Jennings

John Jennings (1823) was a sawyer and a Methodist.  He lived near Martins End.  His wife Sarah died at the age of 35 in 1860, just after the birth of their fifth child George.  His mother-in-law Martha Pearce, already 67, moved in to help care for the children while he worked, but she died in 1862.  In 1864 he married Mary Essex (1804), the widow of John Essex, and went to live in Kiln Common.  In 1871 his sons William (1850) and George (1858) were still living with them, working as shoemaker and apprentice respectively.  In 1881 Mary died and John left the parish for High Wycombe, where he died in 1899.  William, meanwhile, had married and set up a shoemaker's workshop close by, where he remained to the end of the century.  He was also described as a "turner" in the Great Missenden Directories at the end of the century.  His son Ernest (1877) married in 1900, working as a timber carter and so also having returned to the family tradition in the timber industry.  John's eldest son Charles (1847) married Hepzebah Mason (infra) in 1868 and went to live with his in-laws: he worked as a sawyer.  Shortly after, he moved to Hobbs Lane in High Wycombe (then known as Chipping Wycombe), where he remained until his death in 1901.

Jeskins

Sawyer James Jeskins (1832) moved from Little Missenden in 1865 to a cottage beside Cockpit Hole in Kingshill, where he and his family stayed until the 1890s, after which I could find no trace of him, his wife, nor their sons, including Sam (1875) who was described as a wood turner (bodger) in 1891.

Lacey

In 1851 James Lacey (1811) and his wife lived in Great Kingshill by the then Stag public house, with seven children up to the age of 16.  They were still there in 1861, having had no more children, with five still at home.  Although James was then described as a farm labourer, the family had traditionally been involved in the woodlands industry, as hauliers, bodgers, timber dealers and so on, and he was still involved in dealing timber from time to time.  James and Mary remained in the same cottage until they died in 1892 and 1895 respectively.

In 1861 the eldest son William (1838) was working as a bodger and that year he married Unity from Little Missenden and moved to another cottage in Great Kingshill.  In the late 1870s they moved to Lewknor in Oxfordshire, but they soon moved again to Bolter End near Fingest, where William took on a small farm, his two oldest boys George (1863) and Leonard John (1865) working with him.  William's other children in 1881 were Elizabeth Jane (1869), Ruth (1873), Eva (1876) and Frederick (1880). 

In 1861 James's second son Thomas (1841) was also a bodger.  He married the next year and moved to Wycombe Heath, just outside the parish and close to Great Kingshill, where he remained beyond 1900.  He worked as a wood haulier.

The third son John (1850) was still with his parents in 1871, again working as a bodger.  The same year, in October, youthful temptation seems to have overcome him and he was convicted of stealing two jackets, as a result of which he spent four months in jail.

 

John Lacey in custody

 

After his release in 1872 John married, moving to another cottage in Great Kingshill, from which he worked as a timber carter.  By 1891 he had taken on an 8-acre smallholding at Wycombe Heath, like his brothers William and Thomas.  His sons Alfred (1874) and Frank (1878) worked for their father.  The family remained there to 1900, when four children were working on the farm: Alfred, Frank, Harry (1886) and Edith (1888).

James Lacey had an older brother, William (1802), who also lived in Great Kingshill in 1861.  He died in 1865, but his son George (1846) married in 1869 and worked from the same cottage as a bodger, his wife making lace, which she gave up as the family grew.  George continued making chairs until he died shortly before the end of the century.  His sons learned the same trade.  Frederick (1876) moved, after his father died, to Wycombe Heath, but in 1900 Albert (1879) and William (1887) still lived with their mother.

James and William had an uncle Jonathan (1776), who in 1851 was a labourer in Hughenden.  After his wife died he moved to Great Kingshill where he was recorded in the 1861 census as a "police steward" (then 85 years old!).  Jane Janes (1810), his widowed daughter lived with him as a housekeeper.  Incredibly, Jonathan was still living at the time of the next census, then 95 and still working as a carter!  His daughter still cared for the house.  Sadly he died later that year.

Lewis

Joseph Lewis (1813) lived in a cottage on an early enclosure on Prestwood Common (where Giles Gate now stands) until his wife Sarah died in 1888, when he went to live with his son Edwin (1849) on the east side of Prestwood Common.  He died in 1895 after spending his whole life as a bodger and doing other labouring work in Prestwood.  Edwin, who was a bodger, sawyer and cabinet-maker, moved to Ibstone for a while, but returned in 1873 when he married local girl Eliza Towns (infra).  They lived in a cottage next door to Benjamin Hildreth's smithy at the corner of Moat Lane in 1881 before moving to Prestwood Common, where they stayed to the end of the century, but had no children.  Joseph's oldest son Daniel (1840) had moved to Chalfont St Giles by 1861.  His second eldest William (1845), a bodger and farm labourer, latterly a carpenter, married local girl Julia Wilkins (q.v.) in 1870 and they moved into a cottage in north Prestwood, later moving into a cottage next door to Wesley Villa on the new High Street (then Middle Road) about 1900.  Jobs in the woodland industry by then were drying up and one son became a painter, another a teamster.  Joseph's youngest son George (1854), another bodger, married Catherine in 1874 and they lived not far from his parents in 1881, also ending up on Middle Road, near the east end, in 1900.

 

Long

James Long (1835), born in Northwood, Middlesex, was a farm labourer in Little Kingshill in 1881.  He and his family moved into Stonyrock cottages later on, being described in the 1891 census as a "woodman".  His son Edward (1871) was at this time a gardener, possibly at nearby Peterley Manor.  Two other sons were farm labourers - William (1873) and James (1876).  While these three brothers had left home by 1900 (living nearby in Little Kingshill and Little Missenden), James and his wife Matilda were rejoined by an older son, Walter (1864), who was still single and a woodman like his father.

Montague

Henry Montague (1831) was the son of farmer John Montague of Lower Warren Farm, for whom he worked in 1851.  He married Elizabeth in 1859 and took up residence in Heath End, working as a sawyer.  His third son Herbert died in 1871, when only a year old, but he had two older sons, Frederick (1861) and Alfred (1864) who were still at home in 1881, the first a saddle-tree maker and the second a shoemaker's apprentice, although Henry was now listed in the census as a farm labourer.  Henry and Elizabeth were still in the same house at the end of the century, although Henry was now retired and living off his savings.  Alfred joined the army in 1884 but Frederick remained, married in 1897 and stayed in Heath End as a saddle-tree maker.

Moore/Moors

There were two old widows named Mary Moors in Prestwood in 1851.  Their husbands had been brothers and both had children still living in the parish.  By 1861, the elder Mary (1785) had died, but the younger (1792) now lived with her sister Ann and her husband John Mason (infra) at Sedges Farm .  Her older son (Norman) Thomas Moors (1821) was now himself a widower and living alone on the east side of Prestwood Common.  He worked as a "jobbing" carpenter, i.e. one available on hire.  He married again shortly afterwards and he and his wife (ten years his junior) moved to a cottage on the north side of the common, where by 1871 they looked after two children, George (1854) by his previous marriage and Eliza (1867) by his current.  Unfortunately he was widowed again shortly after this and by 1881, describing himself as a "master carpenter", he was raising the two children (the older now in his mid-twenties and a farm labourer, the daughter working at straw plaiting) with the help of a paid live-in housekeeper, Jemima Holland (1819), a widow from Hertfordshire.  He married Jemima in 1883, and they lived on in the same cottage until his death in 1892.

Mary's younger son was Daniel (1824) in Moat Lane, who cut and sold firewood and bought and delivered manure.  In 1861 he and his wife Mary Ann (1812) had four children at home - Lucy (1849), Alfred (1852), Elizabeth (1854) and Albert (1857).  Their eldest Ann (1846) was no longer living with them.  In 1871 Daniel was described in the census as an agricultural labourer.  He was undoubtedly still dealing in firewood, but probably had to supplement this with other temporary work, while his wife and two daughters were lacemakers.  The older son Alfred was lodging nearby and working as a bodger.  Mary Ann died in 1876, but when Albert, now also a bodger, married Clara in 1879 they moved in with his father, while Lucy was living at the Green Man as the housekeeper (later moving to High Wycombe).  Albert died when only 26 in 1883, leaving Daniel alone again, but he re-married in 1886 to a woman from Northamptonshire, and he remained the local firewood dealer to the end of the century.

The elder widow Mary left behind three children that we know of - Henry (1817), Emma (1829) and William (1830).  In 1861 Henry and his family had moved to Bryants Bottom.  He worked as a farm labourer, having been in the army when he was younger.  They had a creative approach to naming.  Their oldest was Amos Jesse (1846), the next was General David (1851) [was this a reference to the much-decorated General Sir David Dundas who fought in many campaigns such as the Seven Years War and the French Revolutionary Wars, although he had died in 1820?] and, following Joseph (1854), there was Liberty (a boy) born at the beginning of 1861 [this was the time of Abraham Lincoln's campaign to become president and free the slaves].  His nephew William Chilton, then 19, was also living with them in 1861, as well as a lodger from Little Missenden.  In 1862 Henry died and Sarah re-married a few years later and moved to Chalfont StGiles.  So by 1871 the Moors family had mostly gone, William Chilton was married and living in the house, and the only member of the Moors left was David (having dropped the prefix!) lodging next door and working as a labourer.  Although he married shortly after this, he died about 1877, leaving yet another widow named Mary (1852) to bring up two sons, Alfred and Frederick, on the proceeds of lacemaking and taking in a lodger.

Henry's sister Emma married the sawyer John Harding, but they seem to have left the district.  His brother William (1830) was also a sawyer, who lived with his mother in Prestwood in 1851, but he seems not to have stayed in the parish either.

Nash

See under small farmers.

 

Pearce

Benjamin Pearce (1841) appears to have lived in Little Missenden earlier, but around 1870 he moved to Great Kingshill with his wife Eliza and son Frederick (1866).  In 1871 they had a daughter Ellen.  Benjamin was a bodger and his wife a straw plaiter.  Shortly afterwards Eliza died and Benjamin got married again in 1875 to Rebecca Page, née Slater (1831).  At the same time he became keeper of the Golden Ball inn, which had been kept by Rebecca's first husband George.  They later moved to a cottage near Prestwood Lodge, where they were in 1891.  Despite being ten years younger, Rebecca died in 1894, leaving Benjamin a widower once more.  At the end of the century he was working as a sawyer, living in the same cottage, where he was supported by his daughter Ellen (1871), a bead-worker.

His brother Charles (1842) married in 1865 and also moved to Great Kingshill, but soon moved back to Little Missenden.  His daughter Minnie (1866) stayed a little longer in Great Kingshill, learning lacework from her aunt Nancy Janes, who lived near Cockpit Hole.

Phillips

The Phillips family had been chair turners or bodgers in the Great Kingshill and Wycombe Heath area in the first half of the C19^th.  John Phillips (1802) still worked there through the rest of the century, although he was having to take ordinary labouring work by 1871 and was unemployed and a "pauper" from 1881.

John's eldest son Thomas (1827) was also a turner and had originally moved to Holmer Green to lodge with his wife Julia's parents Edmond and Sarah James.  Edmond was was himself a woodman.  From 1864 to 1881 Thomas lived in Great Kingshill.  His oldest son, also Thomas (1851), who also worked as a turner, was in 1881 lodging at the Royal Oak run by Edmund Batson (q.v.).  Part of his time he spent helping Batson run the pub.  Still single when his father died at the end of 1881, he moved out to his own cottage in Great Kingshill and his mother came to live with him, along with several of his unmarried sisters, who were all beadworkers, and young brother Harry (1878), who became his apprentice.  Thomas Jr died in 1897, leaving his mother living there at the end of the century, supported by two unmarried daughters - Emma (1856) and Mary (1861) - and by another unmarried son who worked as a bodger, Frederick (1870), who had been lodging before then at the Royal Oak, along with his older brother Charles (1864).  The latter, who also was a chair turner, was married with a young family in Kingshill at the end of the century.

John's son John Jr (1836), another bodger, moved into a cottage near the Travellers Rest about 1857, by the track that would eventually become the High Street, with his wife Mary.  They regularly attended the Methodist Chapel further along the street.  They remained there for the rest of the century, by which time John was bedridden and unable to work any longer.  During that time they had ten children: Isabella (1858), George (1860), Alice (1861), Caroline (1868), Owen (1870), Arthur (1871), Annie (1873), Ada Ruth (1875), Archie (1876), and Alfred (1878).  George married Louisa of Marlow in 1883 and moved to Ibstone, returning to Prestwood and a cottage near Moat Farm about 1890.  Louisa died and George got re-married to Emma, continuing at the same address; at the end of the century he was employing men to help with his work, although his teenage sons Alfred (1885) and George (1887) were employed as gardener and carter respectively.  Of the other brothers, Owen, who found work helping to build the new railway, married in 1893 and moved to Princes Risborough; Arthur, who originally worked as a turner but eventually became a bricklayer's labourer, married in 1897 and moved to the small two-room Pear Tree Cottage in Prestwood (I have been unable to locate this property, which was probably beside the orchards along the newly-built High Street).

John Sr's son James (1839) married Elizabeth Hopcraft, daughter of a Princes Risborough tailor, in 1860.  He worked as a bodger in Great Kingshill, moved to Knives Lane in Prestwood by 1871, and back to Great Kingshill to live near his father before 1891, remaining there to the end of the century.  By then he had become a publican at the Royal Oak and was doing gardening work on the side.  The eldest son Peter (1863), who worked as a gardener as a teenager, married in 1894 and, like the next eldest Frederick (1868), left the area.  The youngest sons, Ja mes and Albert, did not become bodgers, both working for a bricklayer as teenagers in 1900.

John Sr's daughter Lydia (1841) married Joseph Free (q.v.) in 1864, and her sister Emma (1844) married the following year.  His youngest son George (1849) died young in 1875.

 

Rance

The Rances were traditionally sawyers, although they also took general labouring jobs according to the the season and demand.  John (1811)  and Elizabeth still lived in Green Lane as they did in 1851.  Living with them in 1861 were their son William (1838), who had become a chair-maker, two daughters who worked as lacemakers, and the youngest son John (1845) who was a farm worker.  Their oldest son Arthur (1835), also a sawyer, had married in 1860 and was then living in Knives Lane; he later moved to Lee Common as a bodger.  In 1871 John still worked as a sawyer at the age of 60, but only John Jr remained at home, now working as a bodger.  William was also married by then and working as a bodger at Naphill, eventually in the 1880s becoming the publican at the Royal Oak there.  In 1891 he is described in the census as "imbecile", although this must have been a late development (although he was only 53), and probably referred to some debilitating illness from which he died later that year.  Neither Arthur nor William appeared to have left any children.  John Jr married Louisa in 1873 and moved to North Dean.  Elizabeth died in 1880.  John Sr by then was too senile to cope alone and taken to Stone Lunatic Asylum where he died in 1884.

Ridgley

George Ridgley (1804) was from a Princes Risborough family of sawyers.  He had first moved to Great Kingshill in the 1820s, returned to his home town, and by 1851 was back again in Kingshill (living in what is now part of Yew Tree Cottage).  He lived until 1889, his wife having died earlier in 1881.  Their son Thomas (1833) was also a sawyer, still single in 1871 and living with his parents; he could not be traced after that.  Another son Free (1838) married in 1862 and moved to Speen, where he set up a chairleg-making business and employed 13 men.

William Ridgley (1821) was also from Princes Risborough and probably a relative of George.  He was a sawyer and also owned a small parcel of land at Bryants Bottom in 1871, having moved there in the 1850s.  His wife Jane died in 1871 and he re-married, later moving back to Risborough.  His first son Jesse (1850) married in 1874, but could not be traced until the 1900s, when he was still in the Hughenden area.  His second son by the first marriage, John (1852), became a bodger and married in 1882.  He and his wife settled in Bryants Bottom through 1900.  The third son James (1861) seems to have been less fortunate, moving to London (Woolwich) and being recorded as a prison inmate in 1886.  A son by the second marriage, William (1878) moved to West Wycombe and then High Wycombe.

Saunders

In 1851 farm- and wood-worker Daniel Saunders (1812), born in Princes Risborough of a Methodist family, had been living beside the Green Man pub, but by 1861 he had become the beerseller there, doing some sawyer work as well.  In 1866 he died, leaving a widow Sophia (1809) looking after four children.  The latter included Emma (1850) who married George Buckland (q.v.) and George (1840) who had married Martha Mason in 1862.  Sophia, along with her unmarried daughter Ellen Jane (1853), went to live with Emma.  Sophia died in 1880.  George, a farm labourer, continued to live nearby with his family of eight children into the 1880s, when he moved to the White House on Nairdwood Lane.  By 1900 he was working for himself raising pheasants, while his remaining unmarried son George Jr (1884) worked in the chair-making industry.  His first son William (1863) married in 1887/88 and earned a living as a chair turner or bodger, living at Martins End and then on the west side of Prestwood Common.  His children Bertie and Winifred both appear in the 1900-01 school photo (see Pitt).

Daniel and Sophia's oldest son was Jabez (1837), who in 1859 married local girl Isabella Ward.  They lived near his parents in 1861 and he worked as a farm labourer.  At that time they had their first child Ellen (1860).  By 1871 they had had four more children and moved to Great Kingshill, where he worked as a sawyer for the local wood industry for over ten years, subsequently moving to High Wycombe.  Three of his sons - Thomas (1868), John (1873) and Charles (1875) - became chair turners (bodgers) and remained behind, in 1891 lodging in Great Kingshill at the home of turner Frederick Wright, who had married their sister Ellen (1859).  Thomas got married in 1892 to Ruth Brown (1869), the daughter of a timber carter, Peter Brown, who had moved to Great Kingshill for a decade in the 1880-90s.  They set up home in Great Kingshill.

 

Gravestone at Holy Trinity churchyard of Ruth Saunders (née Brown), who died in 1909 at the age of 40.

 

Another sawyer of the same surname in the parish in 1851 was Solomon (1804) from Saunderton, although we do not know whether he came of the same family as Daniel.  He lived at the southern extremity of the parish in the part of Great Kingshill south of Boss Lane.  By 1861 his wife Jane had died and he was living with a housekeeper, the widow Rachel Jenkins, whom he eventually married.  He died in 1876.

Smith

Jobbing carpenter John Smith (1802) had lived with his parents and then his own family in Moat Lane since 1831.  He and his wife were still there in 1861-71.  His wife Charlotte was a lace-maker.  One daughter, Frances (1831), had married John Adams in Polecat Lane.

Stacey

The sawyer William Stacey (1824) continued working at the sawmill at Heath End where he was in 1851 until after 1861, but by 1871 he and his wife Mary Ann had moved into a cottage next to the Chequers in Prestwood that was owned and occupied by Mary Ann's brother Elisha Essex, still a bachelor at 56 (his sister Ruth was publican next door).  Elisha was a timber dealer and presumably William Stacey's employer.  By 1881, however, William had become the licensee at the Chequers.  (A person staying in the pub on the night of census that year, and in 1871, was Samuel Saunders, a sheep drover, providing evidence that the pub, right by the route from Honor End down the west side of Prestwood Common, was important in supporting this major drovers' route.  The Sheepwash pond used by the drovers for cleaning their stock was close to the pub.)  Mary Ann died in 1885 and Ruth returned to the pub.  William died in 1897 and does not seem to have left any children.

 

Stevens

Richard Stevens (1852) from Hughenden was a chairmaker.  He married Mary from Iver in 1879 and they settled for the rest of 1800s in Great Kingshill.  After four daughters their first son Arthur John was born in 1895.

Gravestone of Richard and Mary Ann Stevens in Holy Trinity churchyard, erected 1919/26

Tucker

The Tuckers were a major carpentry family in 1851.  The father Joseph died in 1859, but several sons succeeded him.  In 1861 Edward (1819) plied his trade in Great Kingshill, but soon moved to Cryer's Hill, where his father had worked.  He died there in 1887.  His brother William (1823) similarly worked as a carpenter in Heath End through 1861 and 1871, but then there seemed to be a domestic split, for at some time in the 1870s his wife Elizabeth (1829), who used to work as a lacemaker, went to live in a cottage by Springfield House, where she worked as a laundress for the families there, including the brewing dynasty, the Wellers.  William continued to live alone until he died in 1899.  Elizabeth continued at Springfield as laundress to the end of the century.  She was always accompanied here by her daughter Ann (1854) who worked as a dressmaker and then as a laundress like her mother, even though she married labourer Owen Axten in 1886.  Ann and Owen had one child, Clara (1887).  Although William and Elizabeth had two sons, Joseph (1858) and John (1864), it is not clear what happened to them after 1871, when they vanish from the Bucks records, and one wonders whether this had something to do with the separation of their parents.  Daniel (1826) was a third son of Joseph who worked as a carpenter, moving around this area and West Wycombe, but by 1881 he was in the Wycombe Union Workhouse at Saunderton, dying in 1884.  The fourth son is only known as "H." in the 1851 census, when he was 21 years old, but he was working as a carpenter.  It has not been possible to trace him further.  One of Joseph's daughters, Louisa (1831) married a George Bignell in 1861, while her younger sister Caroline (1832) married George Lester in 1855, a Downley chairmaker.

Tompkins

William Tompkins (1801) was born in Chesham and lived after marrying in Little Missenden, moving to Great Kingshill just before 1850.  He worked in the woodland industry as a carrier.  His son Samuel (1828) worked as a wood turner or bodger and came to Prestwood when he married Eliza in 1851.  Samuel died in 1882, leaving Eliza to survive on parish relief until her own death in 1898.

Another son John (1833) married Charlotte from Great Missenden in 1857, and lived initially at Buckland Common, moving to Prestwood about 1863.  He was a turner and timber dealer, his wife a straw plaiter.  From 1867 he was the publican at the Green Man, his sons Thomas (1861) and William (1864) working as timber carter and chair turner respectively.  His family were regular attendees at the Prestwood Methodist Chapel.  After sixteen years he gave up the inn and concentrated on his timber dealing business.  In 1891 three more sons were working in the timber industry - Alfred John (1871) and Rupert (1878), as bodgers, and Ralph (1876) as cabinet-maker.  At the end of the century he was still running the business, employing Rupert and his youngest son Albert (1884) as wood turners.  In the 1880s Thomas and William left Prestwood parish.  Alfred, however, married Minnie Anderson in 1894 and set up a poultry farm at the defunct Golden Ball the same year.  By the end of the century they had one child, Edward John (1896).  Ralph married in 1900 and moved to High Wycombe.

 

Alfred J. Tompkins, Poultry Dealer at the former Golden Ball

Turner

The bodger and wood labourer John Turner (1827) was born in Speen.  He and his wife Fanny and their children moved to Honor End Lane in Prestwood in the 1860s, having lived previously at StLeonards near Chesham and at Wendover.  He lived in Honor End Lane until 1891, although he died in 1898 at Newport Pagnell, his wife having died earlier in the 1880s.  When he was widowed he was joined by his daughter Georgina (1859) as his housekeeper.  She got married in 1891 to a wood labourer (Frederick Turner, 1863, from Great Hampden) and remained in the same house.  Not all the other children could be traced, but Ralph (1865) was a labourer still living at home in 1881, a coachman at the Red Lion Hotel in Great Missenden in 1891, and, still unmarried, a partner of the farmer John Fleet at Sedges Farm in 1901.  Wilfred (1868) was a farm boy in 1881 at the age of 13, still living at home and a stonecutter in 1891.  He remained a stonecutter after he married in 1895 and moved to the west side of Prestwood Common.

Turner, Free (see Wilkins)

Ward

The Ward family had a long history in the Prestwood and Speen area as carpenters and sawyers and were well represented in the parish in 1851, but by 1861 just two descendants survived, neither working in woodland trades.  William (1823) was a farm labourer, born in Speen, who married Eliza Essex (q.v.) in 1858 and went to live in Moat Lane, near her family.  Eliza did straw plaiting and taught this to her daughters, but in 1881 William was unemployed and receiving parish relief, so they had to take in lodgers.  He later regained work and at the end of the century was a road labourer.  A grandson William (1886), who was brought up by his grandparents, was apprenticed in chair-making, and thus taking up again the old family occupation.

The other descendant, Thomas (1828), had learned land surveying while working for his grandfather Joseph Biggs's timber dealing business.  In 1861 he ran Prestwood's first Post Office at the old School House by the church and was also acting as Registrar of Births and Deaths.  He employed a teenage girl to act as "letter carrier".  He still carried on his work as a land surveyor and was also a rate collector and auctioneer - almost all the "white collar" work there was in Prestwood in those days, outside school-teaching!  In 1871 his wife Ellen Louisa (1828) was described as assistant registrar, along with his oldest son Thomas (1854).  Edward (1856) was an apprentice plumber and glazier.  Frank (1858) was, unusually for a boy, working as a domestic servant.  The three youngest, aged 6 to 11, were all at school.  By 1881 Thomas Jr (married in 1878) had gone to live in Wooburn as a carpenter, Frank had also left home, while Edward, despite his apprenticeship, was now a house painter.  Mary Elizabeth (1860) was now Clerk to the Registrar and Agnes Helen (1863) an assistant teacher.  The youngest child Ernest (1865) was not living at home - he died in 1887.  The greatest change, however, was that Ellen had died in 1879.  Thomas got re-married the next year to Sarah, a Hertfordshire woman 17 years his junior, and they had relocated to Great Kingshill near the Common.  By 1891 the only one of Ellen's children left at home was Edward, who had joined the white collar throng and was now a "master grocer", so that the home was now a shop and not a post office.  Thomas and Sarah had had two children, Ellen (1882) (in remembrance of his first wife) and Harry (1889).  Living with them at the time of the census were a son's (Frank?) wife Charlotte (1857) and her daughter of the same name (1883).  Thomas died in 1892 leaving his widow with the young Ellen and Harry.  Ellen was making net fabric (described in the census as a "networker" - a word with a different connotation today).  Edward appears to have married in 1895 and moved elsewhere.

In 1881 there was another wood-worker of the same family name, although he was not directly related to the above.  William (1856) was born in Little Hampden but soon moved to Great Kimble, where in 1879 he eventually married Ellen from that village.  They then moved to Kiln Common in Prestwood where he was recorded in 1881 as a bodger.  They stayed there to the end of C19^th, having given birth to nine children by that time.  By 1900, however, he had taken employment as a pheasant keeper, in which he was assisted by his second son Ralph (1885).  His eldest son Newman (1883) had then left home, and could not be traced.  The eldest child Ada (1880) had also left home; she married locally in 1902.

 

Wells

In 1851 widow lacemaker Mary Wells (1795) lived on the south side of Kingshill Common, supported by her son Cornelius (1829), then a self-employed bodger, and they were still there in 1861, when they were also looking after Mary's granddaughter Sarah Wells (1859), just a toddler.  Sarah may have been Cornelius's daughter, although he never married.  He had at least one brother, Jonas (1827), who was a farm labourer, living at that time at Hazlemere to the south of the parish, who might have been the father, except that he had another daughter born in the same year.  She was perhaps a rather sickly child, as she died within a year.  Mary Wells died in 1880, but Cornelius remained in his natal home until he died in 1909, doing agricultural work when there were no jobs turning chair legs.  When he was aged about 70 he was joined in the cottage by Jonas, then a widower and taking odd jobs as a gardener, and his sister Lucy (1834), still single, acting as their housekeeper.  Another sister, Margaret (1837), who had been a servant at the Polecat in 1851, married the bodger Reuben Crutchfield in 1859 and they lived nearby in Great Kingshill (see Crutchfield supra).

 

Wilkins

Henry Wilkins (1823) lived with his wife Elizabeth (née Turner) and her parents in a cottage just north of the Polecat [now October Cottage] in 1851.  They were still there in 1861, when his (by now) widowed father-in-law Free Turner lodged with them and employed Henry in his wood haulage work.  Elizabeth died in 1863 and Henry married Jane (who haled from Kent) in 1864, staying in the same house.  Free Turner died in 1871, leaving Henry in possession of the house and carrying on the wood haulage.  Before 1891, however, the family moved far away to Jane's birthplace in Kent.  Their daughter Harriet Ann, however, remained in the parish, having married James Beeson (q.v.), the blacksmith, who lived nearby, in 1864.  (Free Turner, who was Beeson's maternal grandfather, lodged with them in 1871, when he had been licensee at the Hampden Arms, Great Hampden for a year - a pub owned by the Hampdens themselves.)  Her sister Ruth, who lived at Peterley House in 1871 as a housemaid, married in 1872 but does not seem to have stayed locally.

 

Wright James (1823) and Emily Wright lived in Cryers Hill in 1851 with their family and his widowed mother Kaziah (1791).  By 1861 they had all moved to Great Kingshill.  James was a farm labourer, while Emily and her mother-in-law both worked at lacemaking.  Emily died in 1863 and James married the widow Caroline Newton (born in London, but living at this time in Saunderton) in 1865.  He died in 1890, but Caroline continued to live in Great Kingshill as a lacemaker with her unmarried daughter Mary Ann Newton (1852) who did cleaning jobs.  Caroline died in 1894 but Mary remained there with her son John (1876), who worked both as a bodger and a general labourer. James's two eldest boys died young (Henry at 29 and Noah at 20).  The next, George (1856), became apprenticed to George Lacey as a bodger as a teenager, but after his marriage in 1877 to Mary Ann Harris (1857) he was working as a carter on a farm in Great Kingshill.  By 1891, however, he had set himself up as a timber dealer and self-employed carrier, and had fathered a family of seven, all girls. He was still living in Great Kingshill at the end of the century, by then having three more children, all boys.  James's fourth son was Frederick (1859), who also learned to become a bodger and became married in 1879, continuing to live in Great Kingshill.  He played cricket as wicket-keeper for Kingshill in his thirties.  His wife Ellen was only 36 when she died in 1895, and Frederick left his cottage, along with his younger son James (1888), to lodge with Arthur Janes and his family, another bodger (q.v.).

Mary Ann Wright, the wife of George Wright, c1890? Was the marvellous chair, one wonders, locally made?

 

Stonecutters

Despite the health hazards associated with the working of Denner Hill stone, there were some families particularly associated with this trade, as it involved specialist skills and knowledge.  These families originally came particularly from west of Prestwood, the work being concentrated in the Piggotts and Denner Hill areas.

Bristowe

Charles Bristowe (1831) worked as a sandstone cutter and lived with his family in Prestwood, near Hotley Bottom, from 1861 to 1880, when he died, probably as a result of the lung disease caused by the dust from stone-cutting (he was only 49).  In 1881 his widow Sarah was supporting the remaining family on the meagre income from straw-plaiting, with the help of two daughters, Jane (1857) and Emily (1866), and her son Joseph (1859) who followed in his father's footsteps, quarrying sandstone boulders. Her eldest son Thomas (1855) was married to his cousin Ruth Langstone by this time and working as a labourer at Kiln Common, later moving to a cottage by Moat Farm to work for William Clark, but moving back to Kiln Common when he got a job at the brickworks there.  Sarah's daughter Alice (1861) was a servant at the Redrup's farm  in Kiln Common in 1881 and is recorded as singing solo at the Baptist Chapel in 1880.  She married Alfred Groom (also from a local Bapatist family) in 1884, and when all her children had married, Sarah went to live with Alice at their bakery in Great Kingshill, where she died in 1891.  Emily married the turner James Dean from North Dean in 1886 and they resided at Monkton Farm, Great Hampden, from 1888.  Joseph stayed in his parents house with his wife Fanny when they married in 1883, but he was also to die young, when only 39, similarly leaving his widow to manage the young family of six, aged in 1900 from 1 to 15.  Fanny got work as a charwoman, while her eldest daughter Violet (aged 15) did bead-work and her eldest son Charlie (12) did general labouring.  Her next sons Harry (1890) and Frederick (1892) appear in the school photo of 1900-01 (see Pitt).

The Bristowes were originally a Kingshill family and Charles had older siblings who also lived in the region.  His mother, then a widow in her forties, had lived in Prestwood in 1841 at "Brickmaker's Cottage".  Joseph (c1819) died in 1851.  Daniel (1826) was a stonecutter in Speen in 1851 and died in 1871, aged 45. Maria (1825) married the sawyer George Langstone (q.v.) and lived in Prestwood.  It was their daughter Ruth whom Thomas above married.

Fountain

See under Labourers, below.

 

Saunders

There had been Saunders's engaged in cutting Denner Hill stone in the Hughenden part of the parish and nearby since at least the end of the C18^th.  Joseph (1790) had retired from stone-cutting by 1851, but he still lived on Denner Hill with his wife Sarah in 1861, doing farm work.  At this time three members of their family were still living at home: their son James (1831) who worked as a stone-cutter, their unmarried daughter Sophia (1827), a lacemaker, and Sophia's daughter Sarah Ann (1852).  Joseph and Sarah both died in the 1860s and Sophia moved with her daughter into Prestwood, near the Chequers Inn, both working as lacemakers.  A niece Ellen (1855), daughter of Sophia's brother Daniel, lodged with them and worked at straw-plaiting.  It would seem that Sophia died in the 1870s, as she disappears from the records, and in 1881 her daughter is a housekeeper, lodging with sawyer John Jennings and his wife (possibly in the same cottage as in 1871).  The oldest son of Joseph and Sarah was William (1816), who was a stonecutter at North Dean from 1839 to after 1851, but by 1861 he had moved to Bryants Bottom, retiring to farm work.  He died there in 1878, leaving his wife Mary supporting herself by making lace with the help of two sons, Thomas (1854) and William (1858), who were still single and worked as farm labourers.  Neither William nor Thomas would take up the family's former stone-cutting trade.  William never married and remained with his mother to the end of the century, assisted eventually by his unmarried youngest sister Emily (1862).  Thomas married Lucy Lacey in 1882 and moved to a cottage nearby on Denner Hill, where by 1901 they had eight children, the two eldest Sidney (1883) and James (1886) both working on Dennerhill Farm, James as a horseman.  Joseph's second oldest boy was Daniel (1821), who, like unlike William, was still working as a stonecutter in 1861.  His wife had died in 1854 and he lived with his four children in 1861 in Bryants Bottom, close to his brother, but by 1871 he had moved a long way away, to Swansea, where he died in 1873, possibly another victim of silicosis.  His children remained in the area.  Mary Ann (1851) married Joseph Buckland.  George (1853) married and moved to Turville.  William (1857) in 1871 was a farm servant at Dennerhill Farm and in 1881 he was lodging with his sister Mary Ann.  He married Ada Ayres in 1888 and moved to Princes Risborough.  A younger brother of William and Daniel, James (1831) also originally worked as a stonecutter, but I have not been able to trace him further.

 

Smith

In 1841 the widow Esther Smith (1790) was living in one of the cottages by the beerhouse (later the Weathercock) on Denner Hill.  She had several sons involved in agricultural labour and stone-cutting.  In 1851 she moved to Stony Green to live with her sons Edward (1824) and James (1813), both farm labourers, right beneath the evening shadow of the steep Denner Hill slope.  Edward was single but James was married to Sarah (1809) and they had a daughter, also Sarah (1833).  In 1861 Edward and his mother were still here; James's wife was lodging at the Kings Head, where she was an assistant at the bar (the census return that year gives her birthplace as Boarstall Prison).  James seems to have been absent from the parish at that time, which may have been for one of many possible reasons, but he was back with his family and Edward at the old address in 1871, by which time Esther had died.  By 1881 James and Sarah had relocated 1500 metres up Hampden Road to Rectory Lodge, a cottage just outside the NW corner of the parish, while Edward could not be traced.  James died in 1888.

Esther's other children had left home by 1850 and were more involved with stone-cutting.  William (1818) was a stonecutter, working for himself.  He lived at Piggotts in the 1840s and 50s with his wife Sarah and family: George (1841), Jane (1843), Jesse (1845), Caroline (1848), Louisa (1851) - the 1851 census form has "Lueza", Peter (1853), Alfred (1855) and Ellen (1858).  They moved to Denner Hill, back to his parents' old place, centre of the stonecutter's trade, before 1861.  At this time large pits were being excavated all over the hill around Dennerhill Farm to dig out the huge hard concretions that take art to find, sweat to dig out, and both to cut into usable blocks.  By 1871 his eldest son George had moved into the adjoining cottage and was also working the fields for sarsens.  Before that the family had been in Princes Risborough and Great Hampden.  He and his wife Emma already had four children: Rose (1862), Arthur (1864), Charlotte (1868) and Owen (1870).  Now William's youngest sons, Peter and Alfred, in their late teens, were old enough to join them in the stone fields, while the daughters worked with their mother at making lace and (the youngest) straw plaits.  By 1881 William's family had all grown up and they were taking another family as lodgers, but George's is at its peak with eight children somehow finding room in the low cottage with their parents.  As well as those above we now have Amy (1873), Herbert (1876), Daisy (1878) and Lily (1880).  Both William and Sarah died in 1889.  George still lived here in 1891, but the stone fields were worked out and he now cultivated a few fields with the help of Owen, while Herbert was apprenticed to a chair turner, learning the skills of a bodger.  George died in 1898, leaving his widow and Owen in occupation of the cottage, Owen now a small farmer on his own account.  His brother Arthur had married Sarah in 1888 and also lived on Denner Hill, working on farms as a carter, ploughman, etc.  They had five sons and a daughter by 1900.

Emma Smith, George's wife, early 1900s

 

 

 

 

George and Emma's son Arthur Smith harrowing a field on Denner Hill

 

Of William's other sons, Jesse became a stonecutter and lived after he married in Springfield Cottage before settling at Denner Hill, when he became a chair-back maker and bodger - by 1900 his three eldest sons Walter, Calsey and Percy were all working with their father as bodgers; Peter also became a stonecutter and continued to work with his father, living in Bryants Bottom on the west side of Denner Hill, but after the end of the work there moved to West Wycombe; Alfred moved to the Princes Risborough area and worked as a general labourer.

Daniel (1827), who had previously lived on Denner Hill after he married, was in 1851 living in Little Hampden.  In 1861 he and his wife Sarah had moved to the north part of Prestwood, working on either Moat or Hotley Bottom Farm.  They returned to Denner Hill by 1871, but kept moving around, being at Micklefield Farm, Wycombe, in 1881, moving from farm to farm as labour was needed.

Henry (1827), like William, became a self-employed stonecutter and lived initially in Speen where his wife Caroline came from, but she died young in 1853 and he re-married Sarah Fountain (1824) the next year, moving to Stoke Lane (now Greenlands Lane) in Prestwood, where he worked pits around Kiln Common and Hotley Bottom.  Some of these huge quarries can still be seen in that area.  In 1861 he employed two men in this work - his son Free (1849) from the first marriage (still only 12) and his brother-in-law William Fountain (1838), who both lived with Henry and Sarah and his daughter Sarah A. (1851).  (Henry's youngest Jesse (1853) was not with them at this time, but he also became a stonecutter and, after working in Speen, moved with his new wife Sarah to the new-built Springfield Cottages on Denner Hill in about 1879 to work on the Denner Hill excavations, staying there until at least 1891.)   Meanwhile Free married Sarah Wright in 1869 and moved into another cottage along Stoke Lane, still working for his father.  They had a large family: Ann (1870), Elizabeth (1872), Alfred (1873), Free (1875), Owen (1877), Margaret (1879), Sarah (1881), Edward (1883), Millicent (1885) and Harold (1887). 

By 1881 Henry and Sarah were well enough off to start up the new Nanfan Farm (86 acres), while still managing the stonecutting business, and Free had moved to George Lane, Hotley Bottom, close to one of their sandstone quarries.  Henry and Sarah both lived at Nanfan Farm until their deaths in 1896 but Free had died tragically young ten years earlier and Free's widow continued at George Lane with her large family (nine children were still living with her), renting land in order to breed pheasants.  By 1901 Sarah had moved to Middle Road, next door to the Traveller's Rest, with three sons still with her - Free and Edward were working as gardeners and Harold as a teamster.  Free played cricket for Prestwood as an all-rounder.  Having married, Alfred, also moved to Middle Road, between Oliver Wright's shop and the Green Man cottages, but he was still working as a stonecutter, one of only three now in the parish employed in this way.  Two of Sarah's daughters (Sarah and Millie) were at this time living at Springfield House, Great Kingshill, as servants.

The Smiths were Baptists in their religious adherence.

Williams

Reuben Williams (1832) came from Princes Risborough to live on Denner Hill in 1853, when he married Rosetta.  By 1861 they already had four children.  Originally a farm labourer, in 1871 he was designated a flint carter, as was his son Alfred (1858), while two older sons were employed as a stonecutter - Jesse (1852), and farm labourer - Henry (1854).  In 1881 Reuben was working as a stonecutter, but with increasing age he gave this up and became a timber dealer to the end of the century, still living with Rosetta in the house on Denner Hill.  Jesse married Emma in 1874 (calling himself then, and afterwards, Joshua) and went to live in Walter's Ash, Naphill, as a blacksmith.  Henry married Julia and moved to Speen as a stonecutter, but returned to Kiln Common in Prestwood by 1885 with the same occupation; he died young in 1893 and his widow moved to a cottage in Bryants Bottom, where she worked as a laundress, her daughter Violet (1884) being a beadworker and her son Alec (1887) a farm labourer.  Alfred married Sarah from West Wycombe and moved to Oxford Road, High Wycombe, as a chairmaker.  Of the younger sons, Frederick (1865) became an apprentice wheelwright in Ellesborough in his teens and then, still single, moved back with his parents to pursue that occupation until he died in 1892, even younger than his brother Henry.  George (1868) became a wood turner.

 

Labourers

It was in the nature of agricultural labour that many were dependent on short-term contracts and having to move quite frequently to wherever work could be found, often casual day- or weekly-labour, with no pay for wet days when jobs could not be done.  Some labourers, who had acquired more farming skills than the rest, were generally able to find work locally, or they might become tied to a particular farmer, often with a cottage at their disposal, and this gave them more stability and even the chance to work their way up to better jobs like herdsman, ploughman or even farm bailiff (although farmers frequently moved, and they were under no obligation to keep on their labourers if times got tough or they got too old).  Quite often the families of these more valued labourers could also find jobs on the farms where they worked, their daughters as dairy-maids or house servants, their sons as farmhands.  These less mobile farm workers could often manage to put down roots in the community, of which they often became valued members.  Some of these families are described below.  Common themes of these family histories are poverty and early deaths.  Life was far from easy.  (For more on conditions of life and the nature of farm work in the nineteenth century see http://www.reading.ac.uk/merl and http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/peelhome.htm .)

 

Adams

(1) Joseph Adams (1804), from a Nonconformist family, had been born in Honor End Cottage and returned there after his parents died.  In 1861 he worked as a hay binder, but by 1871 had acquired ten acres and become a small farmer, although his wife Rebecca and daughter Emma (1845) still had to work at lacemaking.  Felix (1853), the son of one of Joseph's sons, also lived with them and worked as a farm labourer.  Joseph died in 1879 and Rebecca in 1880.

Joseph's first son John (1830) was also a farm labourer, married and living close by in Honor End Lane.  His wife Frances was a lacemaker.  By 1881 they had moved to Knives Lane, between the Polecat and Knives Farm, at which time he was working as a woodman.  His sons George (1858), Elias (1864) and Joseph (1871) were then a bodger and farm labourers respectively.  Frank (1865) was at this time lodging as a farmhand at Sladmere Farm, just south of Great Kingshill, where John Jesse Redrup was farmer (q.v.).  He married in 1888 and took over the Golden Ball inn, while also working as a bodger.  The family moved from there to the Weathercock on Denner Hill, he and his son Charles (1887) then both working as bodgers.  His son Ernest (1894) appears in a 1905 church school photo (see next chapter), standing next to the assistant master Herbert Groom.  An annotation of this photo remarked that Ernest was caned by the headmaster " for putting a cap on backwards and squinting one eye ".

Meanwhile, in 1891 John is described as a labourer, while George and Elias, who are still with their parents, work at the same jobs as before.  John died in 1900.  George married and moved to Primrose Hill, Hazlemere.  Elias in 1900 was still single, alone in the parental home, having set up a small business as a hay and straw binder.

Joseph's second son William (1834), also a farm worker, was still with his parents in 1861.  He married later than year and was living with a son (a farm boy) and twin daughters nearby in Kiln Common in 1871.  His wife Ellen worked as a lacemaker.  He died in 1875.

Joseph's third son George (1837) lived in 1861 in Sheepscote Cottages at the bottom end of Honor End Lane, opposite the Sheepwash and providing lodging for drovers making a stop to use the pond.  He worked as a labourer and died young in 1866.  His widow Mary (1832) and young children Sarah (1859), Thomas (1860), Eliza (1863) and Susan (1865) were still there in 1871, Mary and Sarah earning money as lacemakers.  Sarah left to get married in 1881 and Thomas went to lodge at Mantles Farm, Hyde Heath, as a farmhand (getting married a few years later), leaving just Mary and Eliza.  Eliza worked as a straw plaiter, and they were joined by Felix, Joseph's grandson (see above) and Mary's nephew, now a bodger.  Mary and Eliza remained there to the end of the century, latterly joined by Mary's grandson Aubrey (1895).  With straw-plaiting having died out as a cottage industry, Eliza was now a beadworker.  Felix married in 1882 and bore a child Felix Charles in 1886, but died in 1887.  His son died when only 18 in 1904.

 

Gravestone of Felix Charles Adams in Holy Trinity churchyard, erected 1904

 

A fourth son Jabez (1840) moved to Hotley Bottom Lane and worked as a farm labourer, having married in 1863.  He stayed there the rest of the century, usually doing farm work, although he helped to build the railway to Great Missenden (completed 1892).  His son Albert (1864) was lodging as a farmhand in Little Hampden in 1881 (along with Joseph Towns, also from Prestwood, infra).  He joined the army in 1886 but returned to his parents' home by 1891, eventually marrying in 1900 and moving to a nearby cottage.  Another son Alfred (1866) was also lodging in Little Hampden in 1881, at William Pursell's farm.  He married in 1891 and took a cottage at Martin's End in Prestwood.  By the end of the century, the decline in farm work meant that he was by then a general labourer.

Joseph's daughter Sarah (1832) married the farm worker William Climpson (1830) and they lived next door in Honor End Lane in 1861 but subsequently left the parish.

 

(2) John Adams (1857) was born in Little Missenden.  He married Hannah (also from Little Missenden) in 1885 and they moved into a cottage in Prestwood east of the old common.  At this time he was a shepherd.  Hannah died in 1897, leaving behind three young children.  John re-married a Prestwood girl, Alice, in 1900.  At this time he was working on a farm as a stockman.

Aldridge

Jesse Aldridge (1816) and his wife Sophia lived in Prestwood until they both died in the late 1870s.  His son James (1840) married Mary Ann Mason (see below under Mason for their career).  Of his other sons, Simeon (1846) died in 1872; Frederick (1854) died in 1878; Reuben (1856) moved to Brentford, where he was a carter on a farm in 1881; Alfred (1862) also moved from the area after the death of his parents, lodging in Beaconsfield in 1881, after which we lose all trace of both him and Reuben.

Jesse's brother Daniel (1817), also a farm worker, and his wife Hannah lived in Prestwood in 1861, but she died later that year.  He was living at Honor End Farm in 1871 as a farm servant, but soon afterwards got re-married to Elizabeth and they went to live at Kiln Common; he died in 1885.  Another brother Joshua (1827) was a carter living in Great Kingshill in 1861 with his wife Ann, before moving to Wycombe.  He died in 1876.

Aldridge was a common name among Quakers, but we do not know whether this family were adherents.

 

Allnutt

Samuel Allnutt (1819) lived in Knives Lane in 1851 with his wife Sarah and his widowed father Joseph (1782).  Samuel died in 1855, when only 36.  His widow supported the family with laundry work, while Joseph, despite his age, did farmwork, as did the older son Henry (1844).  Joseph died in 1868 and Henry married Lavinia the same year.  They lived with his mother in a new cottage in Great Kingshill.  Lavinia died in 1879, when only 29 after bearing three children, the oldest George (1863) at that time working as a farm-boy.  Henry himself then passed away in 1883, while Sarah died in 1891.  George disappears from the records at this time: perhaps, like his brother Herbert (1871), he joined the army.  Herbert married Ellen Rackstraw from Wycombe Heath in 1901 but he remained a career soldier.

Henry's brother Thomas (1847) is not recorded in the 1861 census and he may also have left to be a soldier.  However, he returns to the records in 1870 when he marries a girl called Eliza from Little Missenden.  In 1871 they were living at Heath End, himself a labourer and Eliza a needlewoman, but they soon moved into his old natal home in Knives Lane, where he worked as a gardener at the vicarage.  They had five children by 1881, but they still did not settle down, perhaps having to chase jobs wherever they were offered.  In 1891 they were in Hazlemere and by 1900 in High Wycombe.

Axten

Henry Axten (1849) married Elizabeth in 1877 and moved from Hazlemere to Great Kingshill, where they stayed for 15 years or more.

Beeson

The Beesons had played an important part in the life of Prestwood up to the middle of the nineteenth century, but by 1861 the sole representative of the family was Thomas (1803), who was still the gardener at Peterley Lodge.  In 1871 he had become farm bailiff for the Hampden estate, living at Hampden Row.  In 1881 he and his wife Charlotte, both then 78, were living on a pension at Lowland Farm, Penn.  In 1882 Thomas died, followed by Charlotte in 1884.  Their son William (1830) lived in Great Kingshill in 1861 and was a bodger.  He eventually became publican at the Lord Nelson in Amersham (1881).

Bignell

The Bignells lived at Bryants Bottom earlier in the century.  One of the sons, George (1830) still lived nearby on Denner Hill in 1861, working as a carter on Dennerhill Farm, but they returned to Bryants Bottom, where he became a chairmaker.  His father David, a widower of 71, was living with the family in 1881.  After this the family moved to Great Hampden.

George's younger brother William (1825) was still in Bryants Bottom and worked as a farm labourer on Newhouse Farm in 1861.  His wife Emma died in 1862 and he then married Mary, the daughter of Esther Lancaster, who lived next door, who already had a daughter Charlotte.  They had a son James.  In 1871 Mary's widowed mother moved in to lodge with them.  There seemed to be no more children, as in 1881 the family was just the married couple and her mother (who died in 1883).  From 1881 to the end of the century William was employed as a shepherd on Denner Hill.

Also in 1861-71, a Joseph Bignell (1805) and his wife lived in Kiln Common.  He was a farm labourer.  His daughter Ellen married one of the Ayres family and another daughter Emma married James Taylor.  In 1871-81, there was a David Bignell (1806) and his wife Hannah (née Lancaster) at Bryants Bottom.

It is difficult to establish the relationship between these families and other Bignell families also settled briefly in Prestwood in the second half of the C19^th from places like Great Hampden, who may have been related.  (For instance, the fact that the wives of William and David Bignell were sisters hints at a connection.)

Bowdrey

Robert Bowdrey (1795) lived on the west side of Prestwood Common (near Mill Cottage) in 1851 with his wife Mary and was still there when he died in 1874.  Robert's brother John (1799) lived nearby from before 1851 to at least 1865 in Millets Row (where Claremont House now stands), a row of small terraced cottages, near what is now Idaho Farm.  His wife was also Mary and the same age as Roberts' wife.  In 1861 their sons had left home and they just looked after their disabled daughter Esther (1830).  John's wife died a few years after this and he and his daughter moved to Knives Lane.  In 1871 he was working on road repairs.  By 1881, however, he was too old to work.  They moved back to Millets Row and were classed as "paupers", depending on parish relief which paid for a young live-in housekeeper, Alice Fisher (then 16 years old - see her family below).  John died in 1886 but Esther remained there in 1891 with Alice still acting as her sick nurse.  > Esther died in 1898, just a year after Alice left to get married.  Robert's daughter Ann (1833) married blacksmith Ben Hildreth (q.v.).

John's son William (1832) was working on Knives Farm as a teenager in 1851.  By 1861 he had married and was living beside the Travellers Rest pub in Prestwood with sons Benjamin (1857) and George (1859).  His wife Sophia died in 1865 when only 36, and William also died young in 1878 (aged 46).  Benjamin had joined the army (and I cannot trace what eventually happened to him) but George was still living at home, working as a labourer at Hildreth's forge.  In 1878 his widowed aunt Mary Bowdery (1803), a lacemaker, moved in with him.  She died in 1883; the same year George married Rose Smith of Princes Risborough, but they soon moved to Wilmots Farm, Amersham, where he worked as a farm labourer.

 

Brackley

Joseph Brackley (1845) was the son of a farm worker at Dunsmore.  He never married and moved around the area frequently.  In 1861 he was a farm servant and cowman at Atkins Farm.  In 1871 he was lodging in Bryants Bottom.  By 1881 he had moved back with his parents in Dunsmore and died in 1883.

Brooks

Thomas Brooks (1812) and his wife Ann (a lacemaker) had moved extensively around Bucks (Winslow, Marsh Gibbon, Bradenham, Saunderton, Great Kimble) before coming to live in the north of Prestwood in 1871, but they settled there until Thomas died in 1895 and Ann in 1897.  None of their children, all born elsewhere, settled in the parish.

Bryant

John Bryant who lived in Prestwood in 1851 died in 1857 leaving his widow Mary (née Groom, sister of William, q.v.) who continued working as a lacemaker.  She lived near the Chequers, next door to her son George (1832), who was labouring at the Kiln Common brickyard in 1861, having married in 1856.  Mary died in 1863 and George continued living next to the Chequers until he died in 1872 (only 39 years old), leaving his widow Isabella, who was still in the same house in 1881, working as a housekeeper and supported by two of her children, Alfred (1859), a chairmaker, and Ruth (1861), a lacemaker.  Her family had all left the parish by 1891 and she was lodging with a widower labourer, Benjamin Page (1835), in Great Kingshill, just surviving the century, dying early in 1901.

Buckland

In 1861 the brothers William and Jabez Buckland had been settled in Prestwood for over a decade.  William (1816) had been injured in a farm accident and was then unable to work, but he was employed again in 1871, by which time his son George (1849) was married to Emma Saunders (1850), the daughter of Daniel Saunders who ran the Green Man pub.  George and Emma also lived in Prestwood, her recently widowed mother with them, plus her sister Ellen, then 18-years-old.  By 1881 George and Emma had moved to Kiln Common and by 1891 to Bowley near North Dean, where George and his son William were both bodgers.  In 1881 William and his wife Eliza still lived in Prestwood, but he died in 1888.  The following year their son Albert (1866), now working as a bodger, had married and taken one of the little one-up one-down cottages in Long Row, where they managed to care for their baby Florrie (in the school photo for 1900-01, see Pitt) and his widowed mother, now 71.  Eliza died in 1899 and Albert and his family continued in the same cottage.  An older son, Henry (1851) had married long before in 1872 and also lived in Prestwood in 1881, close to his parents.  He and his wife Jane had moved to the lane by the Polecat by 1891 and again to Martins End Lane at the end of the century, when Henry was a brickyard labourer, while their son Alfred (1875) was a gravel digger.  Herbert (1864) had also married and left home before his father died, marrying Amelia from Great Kingshill in 1886.  They took a cottage in the Green Man row and Herbert worked as a bodger first of all and later as a "chair stuff worker", as it was put in the 1901 census.  His sons Alfred (1884) and Albert (1887) were then working at the same trade.

The wife of Jabez (1825) died very young in 1856 (she was only 30) and in 1861 he was living in a cottage on Moat Lane with five children, aged 8 to 16, the two oldest sons employed like himself as agricultural labourers.  By 1871 he had re-married and continued to live in Prestwood, working as a bricklayer in the eighties and nineties.  His son Joseph (1849) married about 1870 and settled in Kiln Common for more than ten years, but moved to north Buckinghamshire in the 1880s.  A daughter Mary Ann (1851) married the labourer William Hatt and lived in Knives Lane near the church in 1881, her brother Thomas (1867), then working as a farm boy, living with them.  Thomas later married and worked as a navvy on the new railway in 1891, his family living along what is now Nairdwood Lane, moving to High Wycombe before the end of the century.

The Bucklands were a Methodist family.

Chapman

William Chapman (1793) was in 1861 in the same cottage in the NW corner of Prestwood Common (one of the Clarendon Cottages, since demolished) where he lived in 1851.  He was a carrier.  He died in 1867.  His widow Mary (1795) took up lodgings in the house of another widow, Lucy Avery, in Kiln Common, but died in 1874.  Their son James (1824), who was a farm labourer, also lived in Prestwood north of the Common in 1861, but then moved to the west side of the Common, north of the Golden Ball, 1871-81, and then to Green Lane 1891.  By this time, with agricultural jobs diminishing, he was a general labourer.  He died in 1894 and by the end of the century his widow Sarah (1831) was working as a lacemaker, while still at home were her single daughters Mary Ann (1859), who was unemployed, and Ellen (1870) who did beadwork and had a daughter Winifred.  I have not been able to trace any of the other children, who must have left the county altogether.

 

Charge

Two brothers John (1784) and Samuel (c1790) lived in Prestwood.  Both had sons called William living in Prestwood in the late 1800s.

Samuel died about 1837, leaving his widow Ann, a lacemaker, who then lived on Denner Hill.  She moved to near the Green Man by 1851 with her daughter Emily.  Her son William (1818) lived on the east side of Prestwood near Collings Hanger Farm in 1861, and his mother moved to a cottage close by.  When William moved to Arthur's Cottages in Great Kingshill, where he was through 1871 and 1881, his mother moved to Honor End Lane to live with another son James (1821), who had been away in the army for several decades, but was now retired as a Chelsea pensioner and a widower.  Ann died in 1873, James in 1888.  Meanwhile, in Kingshill, William's wife Ann (1816) took the job of charwoman at the Red Lion nearby, as well as working at lacemaking.  Ann died in 1893 and William left the parish to live near High Wycombe until he died in 1906.  His son William (1841), orignally a bodger, became a brick-kiln labourer at Naphill.  John (1849) and George (1854) became labourers in Little Missenden, but George died in 1886.  John then moved to Penn.  His daughter Martha (1852) married labourer James Easden (q.v.) and for a while they lived next door to William and Ann.  Another daughter Sarah (1848) married labourer Richard Willis (q.v.).

To return to the original brothers, John (1784) died in 1858, three years after his wife.  One of their sons was William (1830), who lived at Hotley Bottom through 1861-1871.  By 1881 the whole family had moved to West Lothian in Scotland, where William worked as a ploughman.

Clark

In 1851 Alfred Clark (1819)  worked on Rignall Farm and lived with his widowed mother in Long Row.  In 1852 he married Millicent Bryant and they continued to live in that part of Prestwood.  He died in 1887 and left Millicent living with their only child Rosetta (1855) until Millicent passed away in 1898.  Rosetta remained single, working as a beadworker, in the same cottage to the end of the century.

Cooper

Farmworker John Cooper (1852) and his wife Louisa were both born in Ellesborough.  After they married they only stayed briefly in Ellesborough before moving to Amersham.  From there they came to Kiln Common about 1883.  In 1900 John had become a slaughterhouse man, while sons Albert (1882) and Ernest (1885) were employed respectively as a carter on a farm and a butcher's lad.  It seems likely that all three were employed by Cornelius Stevens (supra), in an early form of the business and slaughterhouse he would set up at Square Farm a few years later.

Danvers

Thomas Danvers (1821) and his wife Sarah lived in Prestwood until 1878.  His son Alfred (1850) moved to London and became a police constable.

Darvill

John Darvill (1813) first appears in the parish census in 1881, when he was a widower in Great Kingshill, working as a road labourer, having earlier lived in Amersham.  With him were his unmarried daughter Mary Ann (1850) and her son William Darvill (1871).  In 1871 Mary Ann had been living in this house as the common-law wife of bodger William Page.  She died in 1882 at the very young age of 32, when her son was only 11.  William eventually married in 1890 and moved to Little Missenden.  John Darvill lived on in Great Kingshill until died in 1900.

Easden

James Easden (1854) was born in West Wycombe and later lived in Downley with his wife Martha, a lacemaker, the daughter of William Charge of Great Kingshill (q.v.).  They moved about 1880 to Arthur's Cottages, next door to her parents, with their first child James (1878).  James became a chair-back maker and his son was a farm labourer in 1891, by which time they had three more sons, John, William and George.  After Martha's mother died in 1893 the Easdens left for Wycombe.

Essex

Edmund Essex (1845) and his wife Caroline, who were both said to be locally born (although I have not been able to trace them earlier) moved into Long Row in 1869 when they married and were still there in 1882 when Caroline died at the age of only 35.  Edmund re-married in 1884, but the family stayed in the same terraced cottage for the rest of the century, when Edmund was working as a carter and his son Frederick, the eldest child still at home, was a general labourer.  The oldest daughter Harriet (1871) married and moved away in 1896.  George (1873) was a railway labourer in 1891.  James (1876) joined the army and was to fight in the First World War.  Ruth (1878) was lodging with another smaller family in Long Row in 1891, to relieve numbers at home (even then there were still nine living in that tiny one-up one-down, including two adults and two teenagers).

Fisher

George Fisher (1836) moved from Wendover in 1860 when he married Sarah Essex (of the Moat Lane farming family, supra).  They lived near the George pub and he worked as a carter and general agricultural labourer.  By 1871 they had five children.  In 1881 they were living along Honor End Lane.  Their second eldest daughter Alice (1865) was then working nearby as a live-in housekeeper for the elderly John Bowdrey and his disabled daughter (supra), and their eldest, Louisa, was a domestic servant in Princes Risborough.  In 1891 George was working as a ploughman and Alice was still acting as sick-nurse for Esther.  He died a year later, while Alice got married in 1897 and moved to the Wycome area.  At the end of the century Sarah had moved to Hotley Bottom Farm, where her sons worked, Alfred (1873) as a carter and Rupert (1882) as a cowman. She earned money from lacemaking and her daughter Amy (1878) did bead-work.

Fountain

The Fountains were a Zion Baptist family with ancient roots in the area, James being mentioned as a labourer in the 1798 Posse Comitatus.  His eldest son William (1785) became a farmer at Widmer End and his son James (1818) became a farmer and timber dealer  variously at Chalfont and Marlow, while his son William (1839), after a spell of chairmaking in Great Kingshill around 1871, became a grocer and postmaster at what is now Verney's, Cryer's Hill, having married Ann Priest from Hawbushes Farm, and another son Albert (1854) became a farmer at Little Kingshill and then Bradenham.  The young William played cricket and football for Kingshill and captained both teams.

Another son of James, Richard (1790), lived on Denner Hill in 1851 and was still working as a labourer in 1861, although now widowed and lodging with the wood-dealer Joyce Parsons (supra), for whom he probably worked.  Most of Richard's children dispersed over the Wycombe-Chalfont region, but Sarah (1825) married the stone-cutter Henry Smith (supra) and lived in what is now Greenlands Lane in 1861, Jane (1836) married the sawyer Abel Slater (1835) and was living in Bryants Bottom in 1861, Ebenezer (1837) became a shoemaker in Prestwood, remaining active in the church, and William (1839) lodged with his sister Sarah and was also working as a stone-cutter in 1861.  William continued as a stone-cutter after he married, and set up home from 1865 in one of the brickfield cottages at Kiln Common; by 1881 two of sons were also stone-cutters for Henry Smith.  He conducted a concert at Zion Baptist Chapel in 1879.  The family eventually moved to Wooburn.

A third son of James was Daniel (1789).  In 1861, a widower, he was living and working on Fry's Farm, Great Kingshill, for William Mason, who had married his daughter Maria.  By 1871, he still lodged there but was old and blind and unable to work.  The following year he died.

Frith

In 1851 the wood-seller and general carrier John Frith (1801) lived in Great Kingshill with his wife Susannah and the family of his farm labourer son James (1828) - wife Phoebe and son John Jr (1846).  The household was the same in 1861, with the addition of two daughters for James and Phoebe.  The only change ten years later was that Susannah had died and only the youngest of James's children remained at home, Ann, a lacemaker like both her mother and grandmother.  His son John, who was also a farm worker, had married Mary Hatt from Marlow in 1865 and they lived in another cottage in Kingshill with a young daughter Elizabeth (1865) and son James Jr (1868), plus Mary's brother and the lodger James Hatt (1849), who was an agricultural labourer.    John Sr died in 1877.  James, Phoebe and Ann then moved to Widmer End, where James worked as a labourer and carter, but he died in 1885.  John Jr, however, continued to live in Great Kingshill to the end of the century.  They had no more children and had to continue to care for Elizabeth, who was very backward.  James Jr, who worked as a ploughboy in 1881 married in 1887 and moved to High Wycombe.  By 1900, however, he had moved back to Kingshill, in Piper's Lane, and had a son John (1888), thus keeping up the generational alternation between John and James.

Gibbons John (1830) and Edith Gibbons lived in Princes Risborough until about 1873, when they moved to Bryants Bottom, along with his younger brother Robert (1850) who had just married and came to live next door.  John and Edith were both still living there in 1900, when John worked as a road labourer.  Their daughter Emma (1860) had married and had a single child Rupert (1880) before she was widowed; she re-married the bodger Jabez Hawes (1867) and they came to live in Robert's cottage when he left in 1890.  Emma was seemingly unlucky in her choice of husbands, however, as Jabez died in 1891.  Emma moved to High Wycombe.  John and Edith's son Harry married in 1899 and settled in north Prestwood at Old Chequers Cottage, working as a roadman, filling in pot-holes in the dirt tracks that served as thoroughfares in those days, as well as cutting grass and hedges. Robert, who had meanwhile become a chair-back maker, had moved his family to Prestwood (his nephew Harry came to live next door in 1899).  His son Rupert (1882), was lodging in Great Kingshill in 1901, working as a general labourer.  A younger son Frank (1892) appears in the 1900-01 school photo (see Pitt).

Emily Gibbons, the wife of Harry Gibbons, c1920, with two daughters.  The book presumably indicates she is literate.

Glenister

Jonas Glenister was born in Chesham Bois in 1830 and married an Aston Clinton straw-plaiter called Eliza in 1870.  They appear to have moved to Middlesex at first, as that was the birthplace of their son Charles (1870), but soon afterwards came to north Prestwood, where they stayed for the rest of the century.  Charles had moved back to Middlesex by 1891, however.

Grover

William Grover (1832) was born in Hertfordshire and was the brother of Henry Grover who took over Collings Hanger Farm (supra).  He married Eliza (a straw-plaiter) from Chesham and they lived in that town until 1865, when they moved to a cottage in Prestwood, his widowed mother accompanying them.  William worked at the farm next door to their cottage, where their eldest daughter Mary Ann (1857) lived as a servant.  William's mother died in 1877, at the age of 86.  They then moved to Great Kingshill, where William worked as a hay binder and his wife as a charwoman.  After 1881, however, they moved much further away, to Kensington, London.  Of their sons, both Alfred (1865) and George (1871) joined the army.  They married in 1884 and 1891 respectively.  Alfred eventually returned to Prestwood with his family in the 1890s, where he obtained work as a carter on a farm.

Hailey

Charles Hailey (1841) moved from Great Hampden in 1861 when he married Ann Franklin (1837), the daughter of widow Elizabeth Franklin (q.v.), who lived by the Green Man.  They lived next door to her mother and stayed in that cottage to the end of the century.  Their second son Richard (1870) died at the age of two, but their first son Charles (1864) was an apprentice coach builder in 1881.  He married in 1885 and seems to have moved to Kent.  Their third son Harry Thomas (1873) married Alice from Brill in 1901 and took a cottage next to his parents.  He worked as a general labourer at first, but at the end of the century he was working as a stonecutter (which had been his paternal grandfather's occupation).  By then they had four children and still lived next door to Charles and Ann.  The Haileys were a Methodist family.

Hannell

William Hannell (1832) was a Little Kingshill man who was living in a cottage near Prestwood Lodge in 1861, along with his wife Charlotte (née Herbert), who was from Bath in Somerset, having been married about five years before.  When Emily Watson (supra) came to reside in the Lodge about 1863, she took William on as gardener.  She was also from Somerset and may have known of Charlotte.  Almost all of her servants were from the Hannell family, including Charlotte and her daughters.  William carried on as gardener, and ultimately steward, all this time, retiring when Emily died in 1895, but he and Charlotte continued living in the cottage.  Their daughter Agnes (1857) married Walter Wright, the timber dealer in Prestwood, in 1885.  Another daughter Sarah Jane (1861) married in 1893, but her husband Edwin Janes died a few years later and she returned to the family home.  Their daughter Ruth married carpenter George Biggs in 1890 and lived in Great Kingshill.  The final daughter Amy Charlotte married William Pitt who came to Prestwood to be schoolmaster at the church school (q.v.).  William Hannell had one son, Charles (1859), who first worked as a gardener with his father.  He got married to a Cheltenham girl, Mary Ann, and returned to set up a pheasant breeding business in the grounds of the Lodge.

 

Harding

Thomas (1791) and Hannah Harding lived in Glebe Cottage  in 1851.  They were Quakers.  He was from Marlow originally.  They were still in Prestwood in 1861 and, while all their children had grown up, they had three grandchildren living with them, all children of Charles (1829), who was a sawyer as well as a farm worker, and died tragically young in 1854 after he had lost his wife in 1851.  (All three grandchildren got married in their twenties; William, the only boy, moved to Chalfont StGiles.)  The only son of Thomas and Hannah still in the parish in 1861 was Jacob (1828), who also worked both as a sawyer and a labourer, according to the season and work demands.  His wife Emma Willmore (1825) was the daughter of John Willmore, postmaster in Great Missenden High Street in 1851.  Their children in 1861 were George (1850), Mary Ann (1853) and Charles (1856).  In 1871 Thomas was alone, his wife having past away, although he was still working at the age of 78, and Jacob and Emma had no more children.  George was now working as a labourer, Charles attending school, and Mary Ann had married William Taylor and was living at Martin's End.  By 1881 Thomas had died (in 1878) and Jacob's family had all left, but Emma had set up a small grocery business.  George was still single and working as a farm labourer, lodging with his sister, while Charles had married Caroline in 1877 and they had their first son William in 1880.  They lived at Stonygreen Farm, where he worked for over ten years.  By the end of the century he had moved to the new High Street in Prestwood and was working on a poultry farm; William still lived at home (he was 21) and had a job as a gardener.

The eldest of Thomas and Hannah's children was Ephraim (1816).  He married Amelia from Great Hampden and in 1861 was living on Potter's Row Farm, just north of Great Missenden, as a labourer.  His sons Job (1839) and Reuben (1844) were both shepherds on the farm, Ephraim James (1849) was a "farm boy", and Amelia, though only 9, worked as a lacemaker.  There were three younger children. Ephraim Sr died in 1871.  With the place at the farm lost, as it came with the job, Amelia had to move immediately to one of the cottages by the Green Man in Prestwood, where she and her daughter Ellen/Helen (1854) were the main bread-winners, alongside Job who kept his job as shepherd.  In 1881 it was just Amelia and her two youngest sons Abel (1859) and Eli (1863) who were both now working as agricultural labourers.  Job, who was still a shepherd, married Sarah Pearce in 1876 and moved into the same row of cottages.  Eli married in 1889 and moved to Kiln Common, his mother joining them and helping to look after the new baby, Florence (1890).  He later found work at the local brickyards and survived the century, although Amelia died in 1898.  Abel had married earlier in 1882 and moved to the east side of the Common, where he took up work as bodger and his wife took in washing.  They lived here through 1900.  Job meanwhile had moved to Stony Green, next door to his cousin Charles.  There were now fewer jobs for shepherds, with the decline of sheep farming, so he was now working as a gardener.  He died in 1893.  Of Ephraim's two remaining sons, Reuben married in 1868 and moved to Rickmansworth and Ephraim James (1848) married in 1870 and moved to Ashley Green beyond Chesham.

An unrelated Harding family also made a belated and brief appearance in the C19^th in Prestwood.  James Harding (1862) had lived with his parents in South Heath, north of Great Missenden, until he married in 1881 and moved to Martins End Corner.  By the end of the century, however, they had moved to The Lee.

Harris

Francis Harris (1816) and his wife Rosetta had lived near Cockpit Hole in Great Kingshill since they married about 1840.  They lived until the 1880s.  Their daughter Rosetta (1864) was a teacher in her teens and married in 1886, and an older daughter Mary Ann married George Wright (q.v.), but I have not been able to trace the family further.

Hatt

Charles Hatt (1804), originally from Berkshire, married a Hughenden woman Hannah Ives and they lived in Boss Lane, Great Kingshill until 1851, after which they moved to Naphill.  Some of their children, however, maintained ties for a time to the Prestwood area.

Thomas (1826) lived in North Dean but his daughter Mary (1847) married John Frith of Prestwood (q.v.).  Joseph (1836) married Lucy Ann Dixon in 1854 and they lived in Hughenden parish for about five years before removing to Little Missenden.  They returned to Prestwood, near Heath End, about 1880, when eight children were still living with them: Mary (1856), a domestic servant, Reuben (1859) and Charles (1867), farm workers, Emma (1870), Margarite (1873) and Ellen (1875) still at school (although Margarite was described in the census as an "imbecile"), and infants William (1877) and Thomas (1879).  Another child Walter (1865) remained at that time in Little Missenden as a farm servant.  Joseph died in 1890 and Lucy returned to Little Missenden with the family, apart from Charles who in 1891 was recorded as lodging at Pipers Corner.  He had joined the army in 1885.

William (1839) lived in Upper North Dean.  His son John (1875) became the publican of the Sportsmans Arms there in 1897, combining this with a haulage business, removing stones from arable fields for road-making.  He married Elizabeth Chilton of Bryants Bottom (daughter of William Chilton) and she, together with their children, continued to attend the Methodist chapel in that hamlet, although he was Church of England.

Amos (1843) lived in Great Kingshill (near Cockpit Hole) 1875 to 1891.  He became a chair-maker.

James (1851) lived at Springfield, Great Kingshill, about 1872-81, but moved to West Wycombe.

William (1854) lived in Knives Lane, Prestwood, about 1875-84, before moving to Marlow and then West Wycombe.

Hawes

(1) George Hawes (1867) was from Radnage Common, where in 1881 he was a farm servant and lived with his widowed father Edmund, who was born and lived all his life in Radnage.  George came to Great Kingshill in his early twenties, lodging in 1891 at the house of the sawyer James Jeskins.  He worked as a bricklayer's labourer.  Here he met Florence and in 1899 they married.  They got a cottage at Heath End.  Their first son George was born early 1900, their second Maurice at the beginning of 1901.

(2) Daniel Hawes (1839) was born in Princes Risborough and was a labourer in Lower North Dean in 1881.  He brought his family to nearby Denner Hill in the 1880s.  In 1891 he was described as a chair-back maker, but in 1901 as a hay and straw binder.  Still at home and single at this time were his daughter Mary (1872), a beadworker, and a son Joseph (1880), like his father a hay and straw binder.

Hayward

Thomas Hayward (1841) was publican at the Wheatsheaf near Chinnor in 1881, although he and his wife had lived in Great Missenden for a short time around 1877.  In 1891 they were at a cottage between Collingshanger Farm and the former Golden Ball and he worked as a general labourer.  They had just two children, Walter (1876), who was born deaf, and John (1877) who worked as an errand boy in 1891.  By 1900 they had moved to a cottage near the Chequers.  The sons were still unmarried, Walter having become a watchmaker and John a gardener.  The Haywards were members of the Prestwood Methodists.

Heritage

Ingram Heritage of Great Kimble married in 1858 and moved to Moat Lane, Prestwood, where he was employed as a general farm worker and carter in 1861.  Having moved to Knives Lane by 1871, they then apparently moved to Wycombe.

Hobbs

Amos Hobbs was born in Chesham about 1827 and first appears in the records as a prisoner in 1845, but he joined the army immediately on leaving prison and remained a soldier until 1875.  He married Bertha Radlife (1847) of Wendover about 1866.  She was the daughter of single mother Ann Radlife, a plaiter who lived with her parents, William a farm worker (originally from the Great Missenden parish), and Mary, a lacemaker.  Their home was in Wendover 1867-76, but soon after Amos retired from the army on a pension, and they went to live in Prestwood, on the north side of the common, to 1881, when Amos worked as an agricultural labourer.  After a spell in 1882-85 in Princes Risborough they returned to Prestwood.  Amos died in the 1890s, but Bertha continued living beside what was now called "Middle Road" (later High Street), earning money as a charwoman, accompanied by her two youngest children Frank (1882), a teamster, and Willie (1885), a painter.  Older sons were Frederick (1871), a farm labourer who moved to Chesham, and Arthur Ernest (1880), who died when a young baby.

Hodgson

John Hodgson (1828) from Cumbria married Ann from Adstock in Buckinghamshire, and they went to live for many years at Great Hampden.  In the 1870s he got the post as gardener at the Vicarage in Prestwood, living at the neighbouring Lodge.  With them were two unmarried daughters in their thirties.  In the 1890s he retired to Great Missenden.  He was replaced as gardener by Thomas Cummins (1863) from Monks Risborough.

Lacey

Alfred Lacey (1862) was born in Little Kingshill, where he was a farm servant in 1881.  When he married Ellen in 1889 he became the groom at Peterley Manor and they lived at Blacksmith's Cottage in the grounds.  They had a son Ralph William in 1890.  By 1900 they had moved a short distance to Stonyrock cottages (on the edge of his birth village) and was a carter on a farm.  By then they had five more children.

Lane

James Lane (1807) had been a small farmer at Lee Common in 1851, briefly ran Andlow's Farm around 1854, and took over Collings Hanger Farm some time before 1861, but it is not clear where he went after this.  However, one of his sons, William (1827), had married in 1851 and also moved to Prestwood, to George Lane (Hotley Bottom Lane), where he worked as a labourer on Hotley Bottom Farm.  He remained there until nearly the end of the century, but by 1901 had moved to Ashley Green, beyond Chesham, to live with his oldest son Alfred (see below).  His sons Joseph (1853) and James (1860) were also farm labourers.  Joseph married in 1880 and moved into the adjoining cottage.  He left Prestwood in 1889 for Hyde Heath and then Ashley Green.  James married in 1889 and moved into Joseph's old cottage.  When his parents left he moved nearby to Moat Lane and worked as a teamster.

 

Alfred (1856) was convicted of stealing money in October 1873 and sentenced to one month in prison.  He married Mary in 1877 and was working as a labourer in Lee Common in 1881.  In the next two censuses he was living in the Chesham-Amersham area, but by 1911 he held Hyde Farm in the Great Missenden parish, where he was helped by a 22-year-old son and two farm servants.  His father, widowed in 1908, lived with him here.  Alfred and Mary had had six children by then, but had lost three of them.

Alfred Lane, photo in custody as a youth, later a successful farmer

Langstone

George Langstone (1831) lived in Kiln Common from 1861 to the end of the century.  His wife was Maria Bristow (q.v.), a lacemaker, who died in 1900, after which George, still working as road labourer at 72, was joined by his daughter Ruth, who had married a relative of her mother, Thomas Bristowe, by then working in the local brickworks.  George's son George (1853) was also a labourer.  He moved to Great Missenden after getting married, but returned to the parish, in Great Kingshill, next to Cockpit Hole, in 1890, staying there until the end of the century.  His son Joseph was then 14 and already working as a farm labourer.  George Sr's second son Thomas (1856) married in 1875 and also lived in Great Kingshill.  At the end of the 1800s he was a carter on a farm, although his son John, then 19, was helping make chairs.  The third son Frederick (1865) became a stone digger on Denner Hill after marrying, but later, by 1900, had become a shepherd.

George Sr's father had been a carrier who moved around quite frequently, mostly in the Hughenden area, and George had brothers who sometimes lived in the parish . William (1847) first lived in Speen after marrying, but about 1880 he moved to Piper's Cottage, Great Kingshill, where he was still living in 1900.  Joseph (1852) lived in George Lane (Hotley Bottom Lane) Prestwood in 1891, but died later that year.  His widow Elizabeth stayed, working as a charwoman, her son Harry (1882) working as a teamster.

 

Loosley

Richard Loosley (1815) and his wife Jane moved from Princes Risborough to Bryants Bottom in the 1860s.  They moved to the top of Denner Hill and were lodging at the Weathercock inn in 1881.  Richard died in 1886.

Mason

Mason had long been a common name in the area.  The major farming family has already been mentioned above.  In 1798 there were also two agricultural labourers of that name.  In 1861 there were two labouring families called Mason, probably related in some way, and possibly distantly related to the farming family.

 

(1) Charles (1794) lived on the west side of Prestwood Common in 1851 with his wife Sarah.  Their daughter Eliza (c1818) in 1861 was still single, working as an "errand woman" and caring for her then widowed father, who was retired.  She died in 1865 and Charles in 1867.

From 1851 to 1871 their two sons also lived in the Kiln Common area of Prestwood, Henry and George.  Henry (c1818) was married to Charlotte.  Their son George (1840) in 1851 became a wood turner or bodger.  Daughter Martha (1844) was to marry George Saunders (q.v.), while her sister Ann (1846) married Jesse Parsons of Ballinger and moved out of the parish.  In 1871 Henry worked as a shepherd.  By 1881 the family had moved just north of the parish, in Bloomfield Lane (Great Missenden parish), and he worked for the Bougs.  Henry and Charlotte died in 1887 and 1890 respectively.  The only child surviving at home by then was Elizabeth (1852), who had been born as, what they called in the census at this time, an "imbecile", and she was now cared for by her sister Martha Saunders at the White House in Prestwood until Elizabeth died in 1894.

 

George (1823) was married to Ruth.  Their family included Frederick Thomas (1849) who became a bodger in Prestwood through 1900, Mary Ann (1852), Amos (1855) who also became a bodger, Martha (1858) who married Frank Adams (q.v.), Harry (1860) and Charles (1869).  By 1881 George had become a small farmer and a timber merchant and lived at Nairdwood Farm, where Harry and Charles worked for him.  George died at the beginning of 1901 leaving only Frederick and Amos still living in the parish.  The latter had married Ann in 1879 and they moved into Bloom in Great Missenden at first, but by 1891 they were living in Prestwood.  Ann died before her 40th birthday in 1898.  By then Amos was a timber dealer and two of their sons Francis (1881) and Harold (1883) were both working as bodgers, perhaps for their father.   Right: Gravestone in Holy Trinity churchyard of the bodger Frederick Mason who died in 1904; in 1910 his son Joseph (then aged 27) was buried alongside him, said "to have died suddenly while at his duty", making one curious to know more.

 

Another of the older descendants was John (1796) who lived in 1851 on the east side of Prestwood Common with his wife Ann.  In 1861 they were living at Sedges Farm, where he was then working, alongside a shepherd and two other agricultural labourers, one of whom was his son Jesse (1821).  In 1871 John, now a widower, was living in another cottage in Prestwood, still supported by Jesse.  By 1881 Jesse was the sole earner, as John had retired and was having to live on "parish relief", although an unmarried daughter of Jesse's had joined them to earn a few extra pence as a straw plaiter.  Later that year John died and by 1891 Jesse was gone too.  John's second eldest son Charles (1827) married in 1850 and worked in Prestwood for a while as a bodger, but the family moved to Amersham before 1871.

 

(2) George (1808) and Thomas (1811) were brothers.  George was a widower with two young daughters when he married Sophia (née Slaughter) from The Lee in 1850 and they moved into a cottage near Mill House on the west side of Prestwood Common with her widowed mother, where they stayed until George died in 1871.  Sophia continued to live there alone as a "pauper" and latterly a lacemaker until her own death in 1895.  They did not have any children.

Thomas married in 1834 and lived at Cryers Hill in 1841, Polecat Lane in 1851, and on the other side of Prestwood Common in 1861, where he stayed until he died in 1896.  His eldest child Mary Ann (1835), who was deaf from birth, married the labourer James Aldridge and they lived in 1871 next to George Mason (1823) and Ruth (above).  They vanish from the records for 20 years and they are next found in 1891 living with her father Thomas, by then a widower.  Also with them was Thomas's granddaughter Ellen (1878), a nursemaid (the daughter of his son Thomas).  His daughter and her husband remained there to the end of the century.

A younger daughter of Thomas, Hephzibah (1844), married sawyer Charles Jennings in 1868.  They moved in with her parents, as there were now no children left at home.  In 1871 she had a son Herbert and worked as a laundress.  By 1881 they had moved to Wycombe, where she lived until her death in 1929.              Thomas's first son was Thomas (1847).  He became a blacksmith, married Mary Ann Penn and moved to the east side of Prestwood Common (1871), Holmer Green, Great Kingshill (1881), and then Wycombe.

Meade

Walter Meade (1868) came from Somerset to be cowman at Prestwood Lodge in the 1880s.  He stayed after marrying Annie from London in 1892.  In 1900 he was stockman at the Lodge, Annie the dairywoman.

Miles

James Joseph Miles (1862) was from Haddenham near Aylesbury and his wife Emma was from Little Missenden.  He served in the army before getting married in 1888, when they moved into Great Kingshill.  In 1891 he was described as a "chip carter", his wife being a bead-worker.  They stayed there beyond the 1800s, but never had any children.

Nash/Tyler

Charles Nash (c1770) was a small farmer at Hunts Green near The Lee who moved to Prestwood in the 1840s.  The Hunts Green farm had been in the family for a long time, as another Charles Nash was farmer there in 1724.  Three sons and a daughter lived in the parish in 1851, of whom two, George (1790) and William (1799), were present in 1861, both working as farm labourers.  William never married and so had no descendants.  He supplemented his wages as a bee-keeper and by making beehives for sale.  He lived at Thimble Cottages in 1851 (he kept his hives in the little triangular patch of pines next to the cottages), and later in what is now Hotley Bottom Lane (George Lane in 1861).  His elder brother George, who lived in Elizabeth Cottages, did marry.  One of his sons, Solomon (1822) married in 1842, but his wife died after giving birth to their first child Mary.  Perhaps with money from his father, he managed to buy a horse and cart and build up a business as a self-employed carrier in the 1860s before moving to Wendover.  His daughter Mary (1842) married the blacksmith Albert Walker, whose family were blacksmiths at Hampden Bottom (just beyond the northern tip of the parish) and at Great Hampden.  They moved out of the county after 1861. 

George's daughter Elizabeth (1812) married Great Hampden farm labourer James Tyler (1811) in 1833, but died in 1859.  They lived next-door and James was still there in 1861 with his son George (1840).  After George died in 1864-65, his unmarried daughters Mary (1813) and Martha (1815), who had been looking after their father, moved in with their sister's widower.  Mary worked as a lacemaker, and so did Martha in 1851, but the latter seems to have been incapacitated in some way after that and was never credited with an occupation in later census returns.  Martha died in 1876 and Mary in 1882.  James Tyler died in 1890, but his son, George Nash's eponymous grandson, had married and was living nearby at Ladyboys 1871-1900 (in 1881 said to be a bodger's labourer, in 1900 a general labourer).  In 1900 all but one of his family were still living locally.  Harry (1872) and Arthur (1882) worked at the nearby Kiln Common brickworks, Peter (1878) was a faggot-maker (bundling sticks together for fuel), while two daughters were braidworkers.  James (1874), however, had moved to Marlow.  The Tylers were another of Prestwood's Methodist families.

Page

George Page (1833) had been living at Great Hampden when he married Rebecca in 1853 and moved to Prestwood, next door to the Green Man.  They were still in Prestwood in 1871, but had had no children, and he was then working as a bodger.  In 1872 he became the licensee of the Golden Ball (Wethereds), but he died soon after in 1874. The next year Rebecca re-married the widower Benjamin Pearce, who became innkeeper at the Golden Ball in his turn.

Pearce

Charles Pearce (1824) and his wife Caroline moved from Little Missenden to Great Kingshill around 1870 and a few years later settled next door to Nanfans, on which farm he was then employed.  In 1881 they had two grown-up daughters who worked as straw plaiters (Jane 1858 and Ruth 1860), a teenage son Reuben (1864) who also worked at the farm, and a younger daughter Sarah Ann (1872).  Reuben married in 1889 and moved to Chesham.  Charles and Caroline continued living in the same cottage, while Ruth, who was still unmarried, had moved into Nanfans to assist the then ageing Mary West who owned the land.  Charles died in 1892 and Ruth moved back in to help her mother, who died in 1898.  Ruth was still there, aged 40, at the end of the century.

Peppett

Elijah (or Elisha) Peppett (c1814) lived in Long Row, Prestwood from 1837 (when he married) to 1851, but in 1861 he and his wife Mary (who were childless) were living in Great Kingshill.  A niece Mary Young (1850)  lodged with them at this time.  She helped Mary Peppett with lacemaking.  Elijah died in 1864, but his widow continued living there until she died in 1880.  Mary Young had got married in 1874.  Elijah's mother Hester lived in Moat Lane in 1861, along with his sisters Ann and Hannah (infra).

Pratt

Amersham-born Daniel Pratt (1803) lived near the Green Man in 1851 with his wife Sarah and family.  They moved to Warwick before 1861, but Sarah died in 1864 and Daniel moved back to Prestwood, living alone in the line of cottages known as Millet's Row by the north-west corner of Prestwood Common.  He eventually became a gamekeeper, but retired before 1881 and died in 1883.

Pusey

John (1787) and Sarah lived beside the Kings Head in 1851 and were still there in 1861, although he had then retired.  He died in 1869 and Sarah in 1875.

Redding

Thomas (1806) and Ann Redding lived in Prestwood from 1860 until 1875, when he died.

Ridgley

Daniel Ridgley (1839) and his wife Emma (a lacemaker) moved from Princes Risborough to Bryants Bottom in about 1866.  Daniel died in 1897, but his wife continued to live in Bryants Bottom as a lodger with Arthur and Fanny Boules, working as a nurse.  Their oldest son John (1861) became a stonecutter, married Eliza and they moved in next door to his parents: they remained there to the end of the century, when their oldest son Charlie had just begun work as a general labourer and their oldest daughter May was a kitchenmaid at the Vicarage.  Daniel's second son Albert (1864) married Charlotte in 1888 and they moved to the top of Denner Hill, where he worked as a general labourer.  They were also still there in 1900.  Their son Dan (1873) married Gertrude in 1897 and they stayed in Bryants Bottom, Dan being in 1901 an "egg tester", working for the new pheasant farming business on Denner Hill.  Alfred (1876) moved to Great Hampden, Arthur (1878) joined the army, and Owen (1879) moved to Princes Risborough, all general labourers.

Saunders

Agricultural labourer William Saunders (1817) continued to reside at Nairdwood Farm and manage it, as in 1851, until at least 1861, but then moved to Little Missenden until his death in 1900.

Sawyer

Richard Sawyer (1834) was the son of a local labourer, John Sawyer.  Richard married but continued to live with his widowed father in one of three cottages on the west side of Prestwood Common (where Michaelmas Farm is now).  Some time after 1861, the family moved to Little Kingshill, where he worked as a hay binder.

Slaughter

James Slaughter (1797) worked on Atkins Farm in 1861, as he did in 1851, and lived nearby.  He was married to the widow Ann Cartwright.  They remained there until they died in the 1870s.

James's brother William (1811) lived on Denner Hill in 1851 and his family were still there in 1861, although they had now changed their name (by at latest 1855) to Slater.  In 1871, by which time the family had moved down the hill to Bryants Bottom, the eldest daughter Mary Ann (1851) remained as a servant at Dennerhill Farm and she got married the next year.  The next two daughters Emma and Martha married and left home in 1873.  In the 1881 census, William was alone with his daughter Lizzie.  It has not been possible to trace his wife (he was still said to be married), the eldest son Henry by his wife's previous marriage, or his final daughter Lucy, in 1881 or later.  In any case William died before 1881 was out.  Lizzie married the same year.

Sturges

Thomas Sturges (1814) was living by Great Kingshill Common in 1861, as he had done since he married in 1839, and as he would continue to do until he died in 1878.  His oldest son William (1840) was lodging at the Stag Inn in 1851, but he joined the army in 1858 (following the same career as his paternal grandfather).  He had left the army by 1891.  He was then married to Louisa (1857), living in Great Kingshill, and working as a general labourer.  He died in 1900.  The second son James may have also been a soldier, as he does not feature in the records after 1871 until his death in 1895.  The third son Thomas (1849) similarly disappears after 1871.

Taylor

William (1825) and Ann (1820) settled down in the Kiln Common part of Prestwood in about 1856, coming from Iver in south Buckinghamshire, and having moved around regularly as part of the mobile agricultural work-force.  Ann worked at home as a dressmaker.  They had five children: James (1847), Mordecai (1848), Harriet (1852), Mary Ann (1854), and William (1857).  In 1881 William was working as a shepherd;  Mordecai, having married Sarah Page in 1873, was living at Stony Green with two children, Caroline (1876) and Frederick (1878).  By 1891 both William and Ann had passed on, but Mordecai and Sarah were to be found in Great Kingshill and had had two more children, Albert (1883) and Rose (1886).  Frederick and Albert, however, lodged with their widowed grandmother Mary Page (1809) - people seldom lived alone in these days: it was a waste of space in poor cramped cottages and the single elderly in this way had help at hand, even if they were but children.  By the end of the century Mordecai was working at the hard trade of cutting Denner Hill stone.  William, however, had moved away from farm work (where jobs became scarcer towards the end of the century) and acquired wood-working skills, still then in demand.  He became a bodger and moved to Little Hampden in 1883 (where he taught his son Charles, 1877, the same trade).  Mordecai's eldest son Frederick moved to Hazlemere and made the wooden frames for chair seats; he and his wife were joined by his brother Albert, who was working in the same trade, and his mother, who now worked in a laundry.

 

Towns

The Towns's were long-term Prestwood residents.  Joseph and Sarah were living at Whiteacre Cottage in 1851 and were still there in 1861, but by now Joseph, at 76, was unable to work and the couple were on parish relief.  Soon afterwards they both passed away.  Their eldest son was George (1813), lived next door in 1861 with his wife Elizabeth and six daughters aged 1 to 15, the five eldest of which were all lace-makers along with their mother.  The eldest Ann died later that year.  The second, Louisa, was lodging as a servant in Knives Lane in 1871, by which time George and Elizabeth had added two more girls and two sons to their household.  The third and fourth daughters married in 1872 (Eliza, to Edwin Lewis, supra), and 1874 (Louisa, to Thomas Ayres).  The fifth and sixth daughters married in 1877 and 1880.  By 1881 there were just two children still at home, Agnes (1865) and the youngest, John (1868).  Agnes now worked as a straw-plaiter since the decline of lacemaking.  George died in 1888, leaving the family in poverty.  His widow moved out to one of the tiny properties forming Long Row and survived on parish relief, even though Agnes and John, now a farm labourer, were still living with her and earning some money.  John married in 1895 and moved to Great Hampden.  His mother died in 1897, leaving Agnes free to marry in 1900.  (One advantage of a large family was that the youngest could take care of ageing parents and still be free to marry at a reasonably young age.)

George had a brother Jesse (1816) who in 1861-71 similarly lived with his family in the old part of Prestwood.  His wife Eliza died in 1875, leaving Jesse with daughter Mary (1853) and son Amos (1858).  Like George's widow he eventually moved into Long Row, now aged 74 and on parish relief, looked after by Mary and another son, Joseph (1863).  Jesse died in 1898, leaving Joseph and Mary fending for themselves, Mary now nearly 50 years old and Joseph, 35, working as a ploughman.

 

Turvey

George Turvey (1855) came from Princes Risborough in 1882 to work as a navvy on the new railway.  He and his family of nine children born between 1873 and 1890 took a cottage on Denner Hill.  There were two other earners in the family in 1891, Jane (1877), a beadworker, and Owen (1874), also a navvy.  Only Owen stayed to the end of the century, the rest of the family moving to near Buckingham.  He married Elizabeth in 1896 and settled in north Prestwood, where his wife had been born, continuing to work as a labourer.

Tyler

See Nash above.

 

Wheeler

James Wheeler was already 66 in 1851, but he was still working as a farm hand in Great Kingshill in 1861, now widowed, but with the help of a grandson Jabez Janes (1843) who was also a farm worker.  By 1871 he was too infirm to work and lived with another grandson in Kingshill, James Janes (1839), q.v.., a saddle-tree maker.  He died in 1873.

 

Willis

Richard Willis (1847) was a son of George Willis, a labourer in North Dean.  In 1867 he married Sarah Charge (1848), the lacemaker daughter of William and Ann of Great Kingshill (q.v.). In 1879 his father died and he and his family moved to Great Kingshill, his mother Eliza, a pauper, moving in with them.  Eliza died in 1882.  The family remained in the same cottage until the end of the century.

 

Widow lacemakers and spinster servants

Frequent early deaths among labouring men in the C19^th left a surplus population of middle-aged and elderly women, not all of whom re-married.  With no "welfare state" they were faced with the problem of how to earn sufficient to maintain themselves, most often by very long laborious hours making lace.  They seldom lived alone, but usually formed a household with others similarly situated or lodged with relatives.  They were an important source of learning for young people before the era of formal schools, as children often boarded with them, relieving their own families, utilising spare household space, and, in the case of girls, learning the skills of lace-making.  Tedious communal lace-making sessions were a time of passing on traditional lore - songs, nursery rhymes, local family histories, and no doubt much else, denigrated in later ages as "old wives' tales", but containing some rustic wisdom that would be useful in their later married lives.

 

Adams

Mary Adams (1832) - see under Joseph Adams, labourer, supra.

Benning

Caroline Benning (1836) moved to Kiln Common, Prestwood, from Hampden Row in the 1870s.  With her, in 1881, were her son John (1863), a bodger, and her father Stephen Ward (1813), a carpenter.  She was still living in the same place in 1900.  Her father passed away in 1893.  John married Ruth Hildreth (q.v.) in 1889 and took a cottage nearby.  They had a son Fred Victor (1890) who, in 1901, was living with his grandmother, presumably because she needed support, then being 65.

Chilton

Mary Moors (1808) married Thomas Chilton in 1832, a stonecutter, but he died young from a silicosis-like disease common among those of that trade, and she was already a widow by 1850, earning her family's keep from lacemaking.  She was living at Kiln Common in 1861, assisted in pillow lace-work by her daughters Jane (1841) and Susan (1841), the latter a bonnet-sewer.  She had also taken in a 13-year-old apprentice, Caroline Lacey (1848) from Great Hampden.  By 1871, without the support of her girls, who were by then married, she was reduced to lodging with her daughter Lousia (1846) and her husband Joseph Brown (1847), a brickmaker, while still earning money from lacemaking at the age of 63 and for another ten years until her death.  Jane also continued lacemaking after she married Simeon (1839), one of the sons of Abel and Jane Ausden in George Lane, in 1863, but when Simeon, a farm labourer like his father, also died young in 1878, she became a widow lacemaker like her mother, having to support three children at her cottage in Prestwood in 1881.  Her son Albert (1867) was by then earning something as a farm worker, and her daughter Emma (1870), although just ten, was working as a straw plaiter, lacemaking being a more advanced skill that was generally taken up a little later.  Mary Chilton's son William (1839) was a farmworker in 1861, lodging with her brother Henry in Bryants Bottom.  He remained in that expanding little community after he got married in 1862 to Emma Ridgely (also a lacemaker).  He was still there in 1891 after Emma died in 1883/84, working as a roadmender, but then he moved to Chenies, although his daughter Mary remained in Bryants Bottom as the wife of William Essex, her brother Harry lodging with them, working as a carter on a local farm like his brother-in-law.

A distant cousin of Thomas Chilton was Mary Ann (1814), who married Mary Moors' brother, Daniel (1824) in 1848.  Her sister Martha (1812) had married James Heath in 1839.  In line with the common fortune of this family, Heath died before the age of 30 in 1849, and Martha was left as yet another widow lacemaker.  In 1861 she lived in Moat Lane with two teenage sons who helped support the family with the meagre incomes of young farm labourers, Thomas, the eldest, and Simeon, a situation that was essentially the same in 1871, although Simeon had been replaced by a third son, George, her second eldest.  At this time they also had taken in a lodger, another member of the Moors family, Alfred (1851), a bodger.  By 1881 Thomas was married and his mother lodged at his cottage, now too old to continue with lacemaking and in receipt of "parish relief".  She finally died in 1888, whereupon Thomas and his wife moved to Wendover for the rest of the century.

 

Franklin

Elizabeth (1814) was already widowed in 1851, but she continued living in on the small Long Row cottages.  In 1861, to make enough from lacemaking, she needed the help of two daughters: Ann (1837) did lace work, and Emma (1845), who was disabled, did embroidery.  She also took a lodger. In the 1871 census she was on her own, but by 1881 she was living with Ann, who had married the farm labourer Charles Hailey.  She died in  1890.

 

Green

In 1851 Sarah Green (1798) had been living in Thimble Cottages, Green Lane, with her farm-worker husband Samuel and next-door to her brother William Nash.  Samuel died before 1861 and she continued living there, working as a lacemaker, with her unmarried son John (1823), a farm labourer like his father.  She died in 1868 and John continued living there on his own until his death in 1888.

Heath

Unity Heath (1815) was a widow in Back Lane, Great Missenden, in 1881.  With her was a single daughter Ellen (1854).  Neither appeared to be employed.  Unity died in 1886 and Ellen moved into one of the little cottages in Long Row, where she got work as a straw plaiter.  She was still there in 1900, officially designated a "pauper".  (In another of the cottages in Long Row in 1891 there temporarily lived the eight members of the family of Samuel Stride (1854) who was an itinerant railway labourer.  At this time, during the building of the railway at Great Missenden, a number of labourers had to find accommodation locally.)

Lacey

Henry Lacey had been a bricklayer on the west side of Prestwood Common in 1851, but he died shortly afterwards.  His widow Catherine (1819) moved to Kiln Common and in 1861 lived as a lacemaker, her daughter Mary Ann (1841) also working as a straw plaiter.  She had three younger children also at home to care for.  Another daughter Caroline (1848) lodged next door with another widow lacemaker, Mary Chilton (q.v.), and also worked at the same occupation.  They were no longer in Prestwood in 1871 and it is not clear what became of them.

Lancaster

Esther Lancaster (1801) had lived in Bryants Bottom with her labourer husband in 1851, but by 1861 was widowed and surviving as a lacemaker.  With her were her daughter Mary (1839), who was also a lacemaker, the latter's own daughter Charlotte (1857), and a son William (1843), labourer.  After bearing a son James in 1861, Mary married the father, next-door neighbour William Bignell (supra) in 1862 (when his previous wife died), and the whole family moved in with Esther Lancaster.  William Lancaster died the same year.  Esther died in 1883, by which time Charlotte had moved to 118-119 Oxford Road, High Wycombe, where she was a domestic servant for Alfred Child (a French-polisher) and his wife Caroline (a fruiterer).  She never married and continued to live in Wycombe to the end of the 1800s.  Young James Bignell died in 1880.

Langston

Elizabeth Langston (1826) moved to Prestwood from Ellesborough at around the age of 40.  She never married.  In 1871 she acted as housekeeper for the widowed blacksmith John Wilkins at Honor End.  In 1881 she was lodging in Great Kingshill with the widow Charlotte Page, the grocer, and worked at lacemaking.  She was still in Kingshill in 1891, lodging again with the old widow Caroline Wright.  She died in 1900.

Page

Elizabeth Page (1804) was already a widow in 1841 when she lived with three children at Naphill Green, but had moved to Great Kingshill by 1851, where she was to remain until she died in 1890 - possibly because she had relatives there.  (We do not know her maiden name, but she may have married a relative of England Page, supra, who lived in Kingshill.)  She had borne a fourth child William in 1843, whose extra-marital birth may have inspired the move away from a community where she was known.  Her eldest child Philip (1829) was living in High Wycombe in 1851 and later moved to Buckland where he was married.  We know nothing of him after that.  In 1857 the second eldest Emma (1833) also left home after getting married in Wycombe.  The third child Ellen (1835) stayed with her mother, also working as a lacemaker, until her mother died.  By 1881 Elizabeth was blind (possibly an occupational hazard with continual work of this kind, especially when it had to be carried on even in poor light, as must have been so in their little cottages), unable to work, and in receipt of poor relief.  After her death Ellen moved to Saunderton, still a spinster lacemaker, where she died in 1907.  The last child William became a bodger in his teens and in 1871 had his own cottage next door to England Page, although by 1881 he had moved back in with his mother and sister, staying there after his mother died and his sister left.  By 1901 he had left the parish and was lodging in Little Missenden with the family of another bodger named Darville.  (In the 1871 census two visitors of this name were given with William Page, so it may be that this was his mother's birth family.)

Mary Page (1810) was another widow lacemaker who came from Beaconsfield.  She also settled in Great Kingshill until her death in 1895, taking lodgers to supplement her income after her last children had left home.  As she lived fairly close to England Page's shop, she may also have been married to one of that family.

Pearce

Elizabeth Pearce's farm labourer husband died in1851, when she was just 49.  She was left to support herself with lacemaking in the cottage in Great Kingshill where they had lived together.  She was assisted by two daughters, Sarah (1836) and Elizabeth (1841), while her son Joseph (1846) was employed as a labourer.  Joseph died in 1863.  Elizabeth died in 1871, leaving Sarah and Elizabeth, still single, on their own, although in the 1871 census Sarah was temporarily at Knives Farm, where she was a "monthly nurse" on behalf of a two-week-old daughter of the farmer William Wilkins.  Sarah married the shepherd Job Harding (supra) in 1876 and went to live in Prestwood, her sister, who was still working as a lacemaker, lodging with them.  Older children had left home by 1861, but one of them may have been Isaac (1832) who was then lodging in Prestwood and working as a shepherd.  As a 20-year-old youth in 1852 he had been charged with others of creating a disturbance at a Congregation of Primitive Methodists (records of Petty Sessions held at The George in Great Missenden).  He was "admonished" and discharged without further punishment, apart from paying the fees of the police officer.

Peppett

Hester (or Esther) Peppett (1772) was housekeeper at Moat Farm in 1851 and caring for her mother Hannah Essex, while her husband Thomas (1780) lived nearby looked after by daughters Ann (1811) and Hannah (1818).  By 1861 Hester was a widow and in her turn looked after by the two daughters, still single and now in their forties.  She made money as a pillow lace-maker, along with Ann, although Hannah was unable to work.  Her sons Elijah (supra) and John had moved to Great Kingshill and Chalfont St Peter respectively.  She died in 1864 and Ann continued in the same cottage as a lace-maker, still with her sister Hannah, until the latter died in 1874.  She could then no longer continue to sustain a cottage on her own and in 1881 was living as a lodger in Kiln Common with a young widow lace-maker Mary Moore (1852) and her two young sons.  Although now in her seventies she continued working until her death in 1884.

 

Taylor

Sarah Taylor (1821) moved to Heath End from Little Missenden in the 1870s when her husband died.  As well as her own lacemaking work, she was supported at home by two grown-up single children: George (1856), who was a general labourer, and Sarah (1860), also a lacemaker.  She died in 1885, but her children continued in the same cottage until at least 1891.

Wilkins

Sarah Wilkins (1804) lost her husband John, a labourer, in 1854.  She remained in the same cottage in Prestwood with occasional employment as a "monthly nurse", supported, in 1861, by two daughters, one a lacemaker and the other, who was lame, doing embroidery.  1871 found her on her own, working as a laceworker, her daughters having married and left home.  She died in 1875.

 

With these family stories, which begin in one century and end in another, we catch a glimpse of a future that would revolutionise daily life throughout the country, not excluding Prestwood.  By 1900 Queen Victoria had reached the last whole year of her reign.  The Boer War was in progress in South Africa.  Elgar was composing “The Dream of Gerontius” and HG Wells writing “Love and Mr Lewisham”.  The growing trade-union movement culminated in the founding of the Labour Party, presaging the decline of Liberalism.  Nevertheless, trade figures reached a new high and unemployment was minute.  A Board of Education had just been created, and an Education Act was soon to follow, with the aim of universal education and the reform of the currently piecemeal and disorganised system in which Church schools were still the main provider.  Advances in transport, especially the railways, were about to take away forever the rural isolation of the Chilterns, and the impact of London, both commercially and culturally, was now increasingly felt.  The new century was announced on the first day of 1901 by a gold-printed edition of The Times.

The life that was to be lost is captured by Robert Louis Stevenson in his essay "The Autumn Effect" written in 1875, being an account of a walk over several days from High Wycombe to Tring, passing along the east side of Prestwood and through Great Missenden.  The weather was apparently clear and sunny, which may account for trhe essay's rather rosy outlook.  We pick up his journey as he travels along what may well have been Nairdwood and Green Lanes before descending to Great Missenden through woodlands, which must surely have been those of Angling Spring.

"... passing through  a gap in the hedge, I began to go down hill through a pretty extensive tract of young beeches.  I was soon in the shadow myself, but the afternoon sun still coloured the upmost boughs of the wood, and made a fire over my head in the autumnal foliage. ...

“Great Missenden was close at hand ..., in the trough of a gentle valley, with many great elms about it. The smoke from its chimneys went up pleasantly in the afternoon sunshine.  The sleepy hum of a threshing-machine filled the neighbouring fields and hung about the quaint street corners.  A little above, the church sits well back on its haunches against the hillside—an attitude for a church, you know, that makes it look as if it could be ever so much higher if it liked; and the trees grew about it thickly, so as to make a density of shade in the churchyard.  A very quiet place it looks; and yet I saw many boards and posters about threatening dire punishment against those who broke the church windows or defaced the precinct, and offering rewards for the apprehension of those who had done the like already.  It was fair day in Great Missenden.  There were three stalls set up, sub jove ["in the open air"] , for the sale of pastry and cheap toys; and a great number of holiday children thronged about the stalls and noisily invaded every corner of the straggling village. ...

“I went up into the sloping garden behind the inn and smoked a pipe pleasantly enough, to the tune of my landlady’s lamentations over sundry cabbages and cauliflowers that had been spoiled by caterpillars.  She had been so much pleased in the summer-time, she said, to see the garden all hovered over by white butterflies.   ...  Then I fell into a long and abstruse calculation with my landlord; having for object to compare the distance driven by him during eight years’ service on the box of the Wendover coach with the girth of the round world itself. ...

“I could hear the ploughmen shouting to their horses, the uninterrupted carol of larks innumerable overhead, and, from a field where the shepherd was marshalling his flock, a sweet tumultuous tinkle of sheep-bells.  All these noises came to me very thin and distinct in the clear air.  There was a wonderful sentiment of distance and atmosphere about the day and the place. ,,,

“... all the hills in Buckinghamshire, wear a sort of hood of beech plantation; but in this particular case the hood had been suffered to extend itself into something more like a cloak, and hung down about the shoulders of the hill in wide folds, instead of lying flatly along the summit.  The trees grew so close, and their boughs were so matted together, that the whole wood looked as dense as a bush of heather.  The prevailing colour was a dull, smouldering red, touched here and there with vivid yellow.  But the autumn had scarce advanced beyond the outworks; it was still almost summer in the heart of the wood; and as soon as I had scrambled through the hedge, I found myself in a dim green forest atmosphere under eaves of virgin foliage.  In places where the wood had itself for a background and the trees were massed together thickly, the colour became intensified and almost gem-like: a perfect fire green, that seemed none the less green for a few specks of autumn gold.  None of the trees were of any considerable age or stature; but they grew well together, I have said; and as the road turned and wound among them, they fell into pleasant groupings and broke the light up pleasantly.  Sometimes there would be a colonnade of slim, straight tree-stems with the light running down them as down the shafts of pillars, that looked as if it ought to lead to something, and led only to a corner of sombre and intricate jungle.  Sometimes a spray of delicate foliage would be thrown out flat, the light lying flatly along the top of it, so that against a dark background it seemed almost luminous.  There was a great bush over the thicket (for, indeed, it was more of a thicket than a wood); and the vague rumours that went among the tree-tops, and the occasional rustling of big birds or hares among the undergrowth, had in them a note of almost treacherous stealthiness, that put the imagination on its guard and made me walk warily on the russet carpeting of last year’s leaves.  The spirit of the place seemed to be all attention; the wood listened as I went, and held its breath to number my footfalls. ...

“The fields were busy with people ploughing and sowing; every here and there a jug of ale stood in the angle of the hedge, and I could see many a team wait smoking in the furrow as ploughman or sower stepped aside for a moment to take a draught.  Over all the brown ploughlands, and under all the leafless hedgerows, there was a stout piece of labour abroad, and, as it were, a spirit of picnic.  The horses smoked and the men laboured and shouted and drank in the sharp autumn morning; so that one had a strong effect of large, open-air existence.”

 

 

We started this chapter on the brink of major change and have seen now it affected people's lives, but there was so much more to come.  Not a glimpse can be seen in Stevenson's picture of bucolic pastoralism, which hardly accorded with the harsh life of the agricultural worker even at the time it was written.  The dark clouds of war were still unimagined just over the horizon, and irresistible economic forces, previewed by Cornelius Stevens, would alter the face of the countryside for ever.