High Wycombe has a rich and varied history. A single page can only give a flavour of the town’s history and introduce you to some of the key figures and events over the last 200 years.
Early history
The first evidence of occupation in Wycombe area dates from the Iron Age. In c. AD 150, the Romans built a villa on the Rye. The earliest written reference is to ‘Wicumun’ in AD 970.
Mills and the river
The Domesday Book highlights the importance of the river to the mills that grew up along the valley. There are twenty corn mills mentioned in the Domesday Book along the nine miles between West Wycombe and the Thames. The last surviving working mill, Pann Mill, was restored by the Society and dates from this period. At the height of milling, it’s believed there were 32 or more mills along the Wye, one every 1/3 of a mile.
In the medieval period, Wycombe established itself trading in corn from the nearby mills and cloth produced by the fulling mills. The medieval town quickly became the largest and most successful town in Buckinghamshire, supplying grain, livestock, timber, and cloth to the London markets.
Paper and lace making
During the Tudor era, cloth-making was the main industrial focus of the town. By the 17th century, the cloth industry was in decline, with many mills reverting to corn milling before the emergence of new industries, papermaking and lace making. The mechanisation of papermaking in the early 19th century resulted in large job losses in the mills, resulting in riots and the destruction of many machines. The rioters were apprehended and transported to Tasmania. Glory Mill and Wycombe Marsh Mills were still producing paper until the 1980s. Lace-making ended mainly in the late 19th century, killed off by mechanisation and acts of Parliament restricting working hours and giving children free compulsory education.
Many of the historic buildings in the High Street date from the 18th and 19th centuries, including the Guildhall and Little Market House. In 1854, the railway arrived in the town as a branch line from Maidenhead, then extended to Thame and Oxford, and hence to Birmingham. The mainline to London opened in 1899.
To the south of the town centre lies Wycombe Abbey, now a school. It was originally known as Loakes Manor, with the house built in the early 17th century and extended for Lord Shelburne. The mostly 17th-century Loakes Manor was rebuilt as the Gothic style Wycombe Abbey in 1798 by the 1st Lord Carrington, with the current parkland and lakes laid out to befit the status of the house by “Capability Brown”. The current layout of the town and main roads owes much to Lord Carrington donating land to the town Corporation in the early 1900s for the civic buildings in Queen Victoria Road. The Town Hall was built in 1904, with the other civic buildings having to wait until the 1930s.
Furniture making
High Wycombe is synonymous with furniture making and was once the main producer of Windsor Chairs and supplied furniture globally. Chairmaking began as a cottage industry and by the early 19th century, small furniture workshops mushroomed in the town in response to the demands for chairs for the London market. From the 1860s, this largely hand-craft industry became more mechanised, and larger factories opened, diversifying production from chairs to furniture from a range of manufacturers, a few of the hundreds of factories included Goodearl, Gomme, Glenister, Willam Keen, William Birch, Walter Skull and others.
By the Second World War, High Wycombe was producing furniture of the highest quality, providing fine pieces for the wealthiest homes in the world. During the war, the skill of the furniture workers was utilized for the war effort, and many of Wycombe’s furniture factories were converted to manufacture aircraft components, most notably for the DeHavilland Mosquito. Post-war, several influential furniture manufacturers and brands, including Ercol, Parker Knoll, and G-Plan (Gomme), emerged, most now having relocated out of the town.
Education and ceremonies
In 1799 Lieutenant Colonel Gaspard Le Marchant opened a school for army officers in the High Street known as the Royal Military College. This establishment tutored the students in a wide range of skills, including trigonometry, geometry and French, as well as siege warfare. Eventually, moving to its current location in Sandhurst. Many officers served with distinction under Wellington in the Napoleonic wars.
An annual event and unique to High Wycombe is the Mayor weighing-in ceremony. This is believed to be an ancient custom that fell into disuse but was revived in 1892. The outgoing Mayor and Councillors are weighed, and their weights are called out to the assembled audience. If they have put on weight, it is considered to be at the taxpayer’s expense and the crowd jeers. If they have lost weight, the crowd cheers. The new Mayor and Councillors are also weighed, and their weights are recorded. This ceremony can still be seen each year in May.
Wycombe Abbey School was founded in 1896 by Frances Dove, a woman’s campaigner and pioneer for female education. Set up to provide an academic education to girls like the existing public schools for boys. In 1900, she also founded Godstowe Preparatory School. She was elected to High Wycombe Borough Council in 1908 following the 1907 Women Act, which allowed women to stand for office even though they could not vote. In the 1928 New Year Honours, she was made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Newlands and the Rye
As the population grew with the furniture industry, it expanded into a water-logged and low lying area to the west of the town centre called Newlands. This is where some of the poorest people lived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Houses were crammed together, with several families sharing an outdoor ‘privie’, which emptied directly into the Wye. A Board of Health report in 1849 revealed dangerously unhealthy conditions with typhoid and cholera. Working conditions were just as poor in the chair-making industry; employers worked adults and children for thirteen hours a day, six days a week. This eventually led to a slum clearance program in Newlands in the 1930s and other parts of the town.
The Rye, a piece of land next to the river on the eastern side of the town, has always been important to townsfolk. It dates from the 16th Century when ownership passed to the town for pasture, recreation and special events. In 1923 the Dyke was donated by the Marquis of Lincolnshire in memory of his only son, who died of wounds in World War I. Cattle were grazed on the Rye and the daily walk to and from their owner’s homes was a familiar site until 1927 when an act of Parliament was passed stipulating that the Rye could only be used for recreational purposes.
