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I'd like to start this with a big two fingers up to HS2, closed footpaths and ruining an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty!
On Tuesday the 10th August 2021 I drove just over an hour to The Lee and parked up by St John The Baptist church.
Christian worship has taken place at the village now known as The Lee since the 12th Century.
The Old Church, as we now refer to the church building in the grounds behind the current Parish Church, was formerly called Lee (or Ley – Old English for a clearing in a wood) Chapel, a chapel to Weston Turville, granted by the family of Turville to the Abbey of Missenden, which was run by the Cistercian Monks.
The first Minister was probably John Slithurst – monk of Missenden in 1540. The Reformation initiated by Henry the VIII placed the Missenden Abbey into the hands of the King who sold off the monks’ property. The manor of the Ley then passed to the Russel family, then to the Plaistowe family and then to the Deering family. The Old Church was dedicated to St John the Baptist.
I walk on down into The Lee's village green.
The village name is Anglo Saxon in origin and means 'woodland clearing'. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Lee and was, following the Norman Conquest, granted by William I to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. Its early history is closely tied up with that of Weston Turville and a chapel-of-ease was established in this connection. It and also had associations with the Earl of Leicester who, in the early part of the 12th century, charged Ralph de Halton to oversee the lands. At the end of that century the Turville family took over this role. Soon after this Robert, Earl of Leicester granted the land to Missenden Abbey. After the dissolution of the abbey The Lee stayed in the possession of the Crown until 1547 when Edward VI granted a lease on the estate to John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford.
The events that led to Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford initially leasing the lands at The Lee to William Plaistowe in 1635 and later selling the land to the Plaistowe family are obscure; either they were mortgaged to pay off debts or were sequestrated as a consequence of the Russells' involvement on the "wrong" side of the English Civil War. Thomas Plaistowe, who died in 1715, was the first of the family to be the outright owner of The Lee and his namesake in 1785 passed ownership to his daughter Elizabeth, who married Irishman Henry Deering. The Plaistowes once more owned the village for another 50 years.
Lee Manor is an eighteenth century manor house.
I pass the Cock and Rabbits Inn and walk down Kings Lane.
On the bend I take a footpath on my left.
Here in 1900, Arthur Lasenby Liberty bought the manor from John Plaistowe and built a new manor house on the outskirts of the village. The old manor house became three attached properties which remain so today. Outside the new manor house he sited a figurehead depicting Admiral Richard Howe taken from HMS Howe. The figurehead was moved to outside Pipers where the family moved to in 1953. The ship, which had subsequently been renamed Impregnable, was scrapped by the Royal Navy in 1919, and purchased by Liberty in 1926. He used the timbers of this ship to refurbish, in Tudor revivalist style, the interior and frontage of his famed Liberty's department store in London. The Liberty family have continued to reside at The Lee to the present day.
I follow the path across fields.
I take the path through a herd of cows, who thankfully had no interest in me.
The path brings me out onto Potter Row where I turn right and follow the road for a while before taking a footpath on my left.
I have forgotten all about the HS2 line works ripping up this beautiful part of the world and the inconvenience of them closing and diverting footpaths!
I continue down the path across a works track where they are ripping up the area, and I get my first glimpse towards Great Missenden and the classic Chilterns Countryside. Ahead a Red Kite soars, the only one I saw all day, which is strange The Chilterns are normally full of them.
The path brings me down onto The Aylesbury Road the busy A143, I walk a short way up the verge to the roundabout where I turn right up Link Road into Great Missenden.
The name Missenden is first attested in the Domesday Book as Missedene, with other early attestations including the spellings Messedena and Musindone. The -den element probably comes from Old English denu, meaning 'valley', but the etymology of the first element is uncertain. It is thought to occur in the name of the River Misbourne, which rises in Great Missenden, and also in the Hertfordshire place-name Miswell. Frank Stenton and Allen Mawer guessed that it came from a hypothetical Anglo-Saxon personal name Myrsa, which they also supposed to be found in the name of Mursley. Eilert Ekwall suggested that it came from a lost Old English word related to English moss, and to Danish mysse and Swedish missne (which denote plants of the genus Calla, such as water arum). Recent researchers have tentatively preferred Ekwall's guess, in which case the name Missenden would once have meant something like 'valley where water-plants/marsh-plants grow'.
I turn left and walk up the High Street.
Great Missenden lay on a major route between the Midlands and London. Several coaching inns, particularly the Red Lion (now an estate agency) and The George (with new owners), provided rest and refreshment for travellers and their horses. The first railway line in the area was, however, routed alongside the Grand Union Canal to the east. Once the coaches stopped running Great Missenden declined in importance and prosperity, becoming an agricultural village. Following the arrival of the Metropolitan Railway, (later the London Underground's Metropolitan line) in 1892, Great Missenden became a commuter village for London with writers, entertainers and even Prime Ministers among the resident. Great Missenden railway station is now on the Chiltern Railways line and offers fast and reliable services running into London Marylebone; it is the first station on the line that does not fall into a London Zone.
The Red Pump Garage petrol station, which was the inspiration for the garage in Danny, The Champion of the World by Ronald Dahl, has been captured in time; it still has 1950- style pumps, with the white Shell Oil sign at the top.
Now I reach The Ronald Dahl Museum on The High Street.
Roald Dahl Museum, a great little family attraction in Great Missenden, the heart of Roald Dahl country.
Come face-to-face with Fantastic Mr Fox, measure up to your Roald Dahl Heroes, pull a power pose next to Matilda and discover Roald Dahl's famous Writing Hut - the birthplace of your favourite characters - at the Museum of one the World's No.1 Storytellers.
A quick nose inside the shop, I moved on. A word of advice if you want to visit the museum, pre-book it was full today.
I turn left down the pretty Church Street.
A pretty 2 bedroom cottage for sale at £499 ,950.
Now I turn right to continue up Church Street.
Church Street crosses a bridge over the A413 and up top the Church itself.
The Church of St Peter and St Paul is Grade I listed.
The church dates mainly from the 14th century, heightened in the 15th century. The tower's asymmetrical lower level results from the tower's extension to the south after the Reformation, with a wall nearly 14 feet thick, to support a new belfry to house five bells moved from the dissolved Missenden Abbey. The church was restored, and the north-east aisle rebuilt, in 1899–1900 by John Oldrid Scott.
The church is built of flint rubble, with sarsen stone footings and some dressings, some roughcast, other dressings in ashlar.
The writer Roald Dahl, who lived in Gipsy House in Great Missenden, is buried in the churchyard.
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| BFG's footprints lead to Ronald Dahls Grave. |
There are two Commonwealth War Graves Commission memorials in the churchyard, marking the burial place of two British soldiers. They commemorate Rifleman Jeffrey James Whitney of the Rifle Brigade, who died in September 1940, age 20, and Major Basil Arthur Parnwell of the Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), who died in July 1947.
I leave the church grounds and out onto B485 and then up Frith Hill.
I take the footpath pass Hill House and through a wooded area.
I leave the wooded area onto a hillside with a view down to Great Missenden.
Now the path I wanted to take is closed by HS2 works, so I try a few other routes all leading nowhere. So I walk back downhill towards the roundabout to an abrupt HS2 worker who refused to let me through and directed me to another path that eventually leads me back to where he was on the other side.
So I have no choice back to walk back along the A413 and back up the path which I walked down to Great Missenden. The sun is blazing now as I make the hard slog back up the hill again.
Back out onto Potter Row I walk back the way I came and on a bit further to take a different path back towards The Lee.
I take a footpath that leads me back across farmland on Ballinger Farm.
The path leads me onto Blackthorne Lane where I walk up and pass the tiny St Marys Church in Ballinger.
St. Mary’s Church was built by Mr A. E. Watson of The Lee Manor in 1873 “as a school and lecture room for the poor”. The picture in the Church shows Mr. Watson with the teachers, surrounded by their pupils. This placed it at the centre of village life and it never lost that position, because the caretaker’s family (name of Evans) came to live in one cottage in 1920. When Dorothy Evans came to live in Watson Cottage in 1920, the Church was used by the Church of England and the Free Church, with their services alternating between morning and afternoon. (The Free Church stopped holding services in the 1960’s).
There was a Dames school at St Mary’s during the week run by a Miss Beeson for small children and Dorothy remembered putting their slates out, although she herself went to Lee Common School. The Evans family looked after the church for over 50 years.
Before the War Memorial Village Hall was built after the First World War, St. Mary’s was used for village events.
The most recent additions to the Church are the porch (1986) and kitchen, at the turn of the millennium.
I leave the church continue up the lane and onto a footpath.
The footpath eventually leads me back to The Lee village.
I have a pint of Tring's side pocket for a Toad ale in The Cock and Rabbits pub, which seems to be an Italian Restaurant too. Followers of television’s Midsomer Murders may remember the inn as The Rose and Chalice.
I walked in from the car park where the rude owner got shirty," you cant come in this way, you need to go outside, what do you want?". I explained that there was a sign pointing to the bar this way. anyway I got a pint and drank in the garden. Not sure I'd ever bother visiting again!
The walk due to the closed footpath was just under 8 miles instead of the 5.5 miles it should have been!
I drove a short way to Malt The Brewery in Prestwood to buy a few ales and cider. Worth the short diversion, and then back off home!
