THESE REMARKABLE Indian princesses, two of whom lived in Hammersley Lane, Tylers Green during the Second World War, are set to attract world-wide attention.
Later this year a movie Lioness will be released highlighting the life of Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, a leading suffragette, by linking her story with a fictional Sikh woman living in Southall in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, next spring, a new book and accompanying exhibition at Kensington Palace called Princesses of Resistance will be unveiled.
It features Sophia, her eldest sister Bamba, who lived in Lahore, and her other older sister Catherine who owned what is now called Hilden Hall but was formerly Colehatch House in Hammersley Lane.
The Duleep sisters were the daughters of the ruler of the last Sikh empire and lived with fabulous wealth. But these were no giggly society girls: they were each stubbornly independent, strident feminists and ardent suffragettes.
Catherine and Sophia were well known in the village in the early part of the war, often marching out in the fields, dressed in wellies and pearls, exercising Sophia’s dogs.
Colehatch House was renamed by Sophia after her sister Catherine (middle name Hilda) died of a heart attack in 1942
But they also cared for Jewish refugees at their Hammersley Lane retreat and in the run-up to the war regaled against Germany’s Nazi regime. Catherine, who was gay and lived in Germany with her partner until 1937, helped scores of Jewish families escape abroad.
As her biographer Peter Bance says: “Being brown-skinned and gay was a dangerous thing to be when the Nazis were in charge, but she refused to move.”
You can see a fascinating half an hour BBC documentary about Princess Sophia on this YouTube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAH0MLNfK1U
Local case sparks stalking review
THE LAWS to prevent cyber-stalking look set to be strengthened following the case of a local woman whose computer was hacked by her ex-partner to find out where she was living.
Penn and Hazlemere MP Sarah Green (Lib Dem, Chesham and Amersham), pictured above, told MPs the woman had obtained orders from the courts to prevent her ex-partner contacting or molesting her but then discovered her social media accounts were hacked for details of her location and information about their children.
However current laws meant she was unable to obtain a stalking protection order.
“Her fear,” Ms Green told the House of Commons, “is palpable.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmoud said it was “a horrifying case.” She said she would make arrangements for it to be investigated to see if elements of the new Crime and Policing Bill going through Parliament can be strengthened to cover the issue.
Local news
Ofsted praise – As Curzon Church of England Combined School in Penn Street celebrates its 175th anniversary this month it has been given an early birthday present from Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education). In an ungraded report last month the Ofsted inspectors said the school had maintained the standards which had resulted in a “good” rating in 2017. You can read the report on this link https://files.ofsted.gov.uk/v1/file/50279083
Schools merge – Manor Farm Infant School in Rose Avenue will take control of the privately-run Manor Farm Preschool and Nursery situated within its grounds from September. The infant school received an ‘outstanding’ rating for its early years provision by Ofsted in April and the preschool was also given an ‘outstanding’ rating at its last inspection four years ago. The schools said the merger will provide a “seamless and high-quality educational journey” for children aged from three to seven.
Soggy success – Just over 730 runners took part in the village’s biggest charity gathering, the Penn 7, Fun Run and Ruby Dash last month, despite cloudy skies and thundery showers. Hundreds stayed on for an evening of live music on the common. You can view an eight minute professional video of the day on this link https://www.facebook.com/pennseven/videos/957014119797212
Parking clamp-down – Traffic wardens and police are set to make visits to Wheeler Avenue, Carter Walk and other roads around Tylers Green Middle School during school leaving time to prosecute drivers who park recklessly. “Despite repeated reminders we continue to receive serious and legitimate concerns from members of our school and local community, supported by photographic evidence and first-hand reports of dangerous, obstructive and disrespectful behaviour,” head teacher Sam Isaacs wrote in the school newsletter.
New cafe – An independent cafe, moc&more, will open at Hazlemere Crossroads in the former Lloyds Bank. The business opened its first cafe in Flackwell Heath in February last year.
Church refurb – The supports and equipment that enable the 300 year old bells of Holy Trinity church, Penn to be rung are to be replaced later this year as part of a major refurbishment of the bell tower. It was announced in the parish magazine that the £35,000 appeal for the work is nearing its completion. The last refurbishment was just after the First World War.
Farewell Joan – Joan Bailey, who was for many years the school secretary at Rayners, Penn when it was a school for deaf children, has died at her care home in Llangammarch Wells, Powys aged 95.
Farewell Barbara – Barbara McEvoy, who ran keep-fit groups in the village hall for many years, has died aged 83. Donations in her memory are being made to Parkinson’s UK.
Infilling objection – The parish council has objected to a plan to build a detached home in the garden of a house on the corner of Coppice Farm Road and Old Kiln Road, Tylers Green saying it would be over-development. It is not known if neighbours have objected because of Buckinghamshire Council’s continued insistence not to publish public comments on planning applications.
Historic fete – One of Britain’s longest running annual village fetes – Hazlemere Fete – will be making its 163rd appearance in the grounds of Sir William Ramsay School on bank holiday Monday, 26 August. Earlier this year the fete organisers were awarded a Pride of Bucks award for the fete’s long standing contribution to the community and local charities.
Cottage plan withdrawn – A second planning application to extend April Cottage in Penn’s conservation area has been withdrawn following local protests.
Brigade called – Firefighters were called to the garden of a house in Meadow Walk, Tylers Green, to put out a bonfire which had run out of control.
Pulling stumps – Knotty Green Cricket Club has informed Penn Parish Council it will be giving up its tenancy of the Knotty Green cricket pavilion at the end of this season.
Village show – You can enter online for the Penn and Tylers Green Village show on 13 September. There’s plenty of classes involving baking, painting and making as well as growing. More info on this link: https://www.pennandtylersgreenvillageshow.com/classes
Allotment demand – Demand for allotment sites continues to grow. There are currently 14 people on a waiting list for a plot on the Ashley Drive site in Tylers Green.
A long way from Rose Avenue – Sir William Ramsay School’s year 7 and 8 boys cricket team, above, found itself at a prestigious venue – Stowe School – for a school cricket tournament where, after a morning’s intensive coaching, they played boys from the Winchester House independent school from Brackley.
Coming home: Lady Sarah’s extraordinary life comes full circle
AS THE daughter of the 5th Earl Howe, Lady Sarah Curzon lived life to the full.
As a society debutante – she has seven portraits in the National Portrait Gallery – she went on to marry two rich and well-known men; travelled the world; was involved in an international mystery, and endured tragedy and pain.
This month her story ends where it began – here in Penn.
Lady Sarah, known to friends and family as Sally, died at her home in Cape Town last month aged 80. Her funeral will be held at Holy Trinity Church and her body laid to rest alongside her father in the graveyard.
Her father, Francis Curzon, the 5th Earl Howe was a first and second world war veteran who had three wives, three children and several racing cars
She spent much of her childhood at Penn House, often visited in those days by the elite of the British motor racing scene. Her father had been a five-time British motor racing champion and winner of Le Mans in 1931.
In 1966 she married Piers Courage, an heir to the Courage brewery fortune and one of the country’s top racing drivers, at a wedding which was a society highlight among London’s glitterati.
They were deeply in love, but just four years later came tragedy. Piers was killed in a motor racing accident in Holland leaving Sarah a 25 year old widow with two young children.
Soon though she met the eccentric professional gambler and zoo owner John Aspinall, a good friend and gambling partner of Lord Lucan. Two years later they married in another glamorous wedding. Two years after that, in 1974, she and her new husband were at the centre of international media interest following Lord Lucan’s infamous disappearance.
Sarah and John Aspinall shared 28 years together, bearing a son and sharing their home in Belgravia with a variety of exotic animals from Aspinall’s private zoo. She once turned up at her son’s school sports day with two Siberian tiger cubs in the back seat.
In 1995 her eldest son was paralysed after a road accident and in 2000 Aspinall died after a long battle against cancer. In 2019 she moved to South Africa to be near her son Bassa and his family. Three years ago, with her health failing, she was said to have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in a massive fraud, but neither her nor her family made any public comment.
Bassa told the Daily Mail : “She kept my father alive for six or seven years. It was morphine and bandage changes four or five times a day. She didn’t falter; she never did. She was very stoic and blessed with abundant courage.”
New plans for hundreds of homes within a mile or two of Penn and Tylers Green
PLANS FOR new homes within a few miles of the village are continuing apace. Within the last few weeks:
- A formal planning application has been submitted to build a second housing estate off Abbey Barn Road in Wycombe Marsh where Berkeley Homes wants to build 550 houses.
- Also in Wycombe Marsh, Savills has applied to convert two office blocks, Buckingham House and Oakley Court, off the A40, into a total of 118 one and two bedroom flats.
- Taylor Wimpey, which is still working on a new planning application to build 540 homes in the Gomm Valley, also off the A 40, has, in the meantime, acquired open land off Skimmers Field, Holmer Green and plans to build 140 homes.
- At Wilton Park, the former military base in Beaconsfield, further details have been approved for a redevelopment which will provide 654 homes plus sports pitches and changing facilities.
Our famous hole in the wall has disappeared for a while
THE NEXT phase in the conversion of the former Penn School into a luxury hotel has involved the brick by brick demolition by hand of the entrance off Church Road, including the section of wall with our rather quirky landmark – a perfectly formed hole in the wall.
But fear not. When the slightly wider entrance to the hotel, to be called Rayners Penn, is reconstructed reusing the preserved brick and flint, the hole in the wall will be re-inserted.
Over the years there’s been much speculation as to why a hole was inserted into a solidly built wall. But war veteran Bill Wheeler vividly recalls it being put in place and the reason why.
Back in 1940, after the evacuation of the British Army at Dunkirk, there were genuine fears that a German military invasion of this country was imminent. Communities throughout Britain – and, in particular, the Home Guard units that had been formed – were encouraged to use their initiative and come up with schemes that would hinder, harass or even destroy any invasion force.
In Penn they came up with the idea of the hole in the wall.
The thinking was devilishly simple. When word got out that a column of enemy tanks was en-route to Penn from Beaconsfield or High Wycombe a tree would be felled to block Church Road with a sizeable proportion of its trunk placed through the hole to keep it secure.
Once the line of tanks stopped to clear the obstruction the Penn partisans would appear from behind walls and hedges armed with explosives and guns and take on the enemy.
Hence, the Rayners hole in the wall isn’t just any hole in the wall, but a revealing example of Penn’s defences and the resoluteness and bravery of those prepared to risk their lives in that defence. It’s good of Rayners to go out of its way to keep the memory alive.
Above, here’s how the main entrance to Rayners, Penn will look. It replicates the original entrance to the Victorian manor built in the mid 1800s and reinstates a pedestrian entrance which was removed when the house became a school. The original entrance is pictured below. Image and photo: Rayners, Penn.
80 years on: A community’s hopes and aspirations summed up in a single photograph
Photo by the Ross picture agency for the Bucks Free Press.
IT IS, perhaps, the most memorable photograph ever taken in Penn and Tylers Green.
The date was Sunday 2 September 1945, the day of the formal surrender of Japan and the official end of the Second World War (Victory in Japan Day – VJ Day – was two weeks earlier when Japan announced it would surrender.)
So how best to mark such a significant day? By photographing the generation so many people had fought and died for.
Eighty years ago every available child aged between three and 14 converged at the recreation ground (now the cricket ground) for this once in a lifetime photograph. The venue was particularly relevant. The recreation ground had been gifted to the village community to mark the end of the First World War 27 years earlier.
Afterwards the children played sports and games and were then joined by others for a party in the village hall that would live long in the memory.
The clubs and societies in the village, together with some generous individuals, were determined this would be a victory and a day the children would never forget. There were sandwiches and cakes and ice cream for the 250 children packed into the village hall. Every child went home with some fruit and half a crown (12.5p today but in those days a small fortune for a child).
And it didn’t end there.
On Wednesday 5 September, just before they returned to school, many of the children boarded a fleet of coaches to take them to London Zoo for a treat paid for by the men and women’s section of the Penn and Tylers Green Royal British Legion and the Penn and Tylers Green football and cricket clubs.
Time to say goodbye: Most of the child evacuees, pictured above getting to know the area in 1939, returned home. Some were so homesick for the village that had been their home for five or six years, they returned to Penn and Tylers Green on holidays after the war.
On VJ Day itself most of the children joined the grown ups as a village bonfire was lit on the front common, and more free ice cream handed out. Every church in Penn and Tylers Green held thanksgiving services. The village hall was filled to capacity with a hastily arranged Victory Dance.
The celebrations rounded off an emotional summer in the village 80 years ago as people prepared for the end of hostilities:
- There were tears of happiness at the village hall when the village’s women’s institute were visited by the newly released prisoner of war the ladies had “adopted”. They had sent Gunner Kerridge warm clothing, food and soap throughout the war and in July he came to the WI meeting with his fiancée to thank them for their kindness. They had one final gift to give him: a wedding present.
- Emotional scenes too at the football club where pre-war player J. Sturgess, another prisoner of war, returned to the warm embrace of former team mates. Many of the players were still serving in various parts of the world but throughout the war the club had kept in touch with them all, sending them hundreds of pounds to make life a little easier.
- Many of the child evacuees who had stayed in the village and surrounding area during the war had returned to their London homes in dribs and drabs in recent months but in July those that remained went back en mass. Adults who had looked after the children for five years saw 200 of them off at High Wycombe railway station while at Marylebone their families waited to greet them. A handful of children in Penn and Tylers Green stayed here though for family reasons, some remaining for many years.
- There were fond farewells too to the American military who had become familiar and welcome figures in and around High Wycombe in recent years. “Farewell America” balls were held in the town hall and a number of weddings hastily arranged. On 18 August at St Margaret’s Tylers Green, Gwendoline Hawes of Elm Road married Capt Warren Bush of Colorado with a reception in the village hall attended by many villagers and American servicemen.
Of course there were tears of sadness amid the joy, especially among the family and friends of the 31 men from Penn and Tylers Green who died on active service during the war. They were aged from 19 to 50.
In High Wycombe High Street where many hundreds had gathered to merry-make there was a pause in the midst of the revelry as an open-back lorry, filled with German prisoners of war returning from a day’s labouring on building sites, edged its way slowly through the thronging crowds.
Some in the crowd jeered and gloated. Others turned away and returned to their drink. But for some the forlorn look on the grubby faces of the prisoners, no doubt pondering their own homecoming which was still some months away, was the sobering image of a memorable day.
First line of defence
OUR AREA played a key military role in the Second World War and if ever, God forbid, there’s a third this area will once again play a central part.
Last month’s Strategic Defence Review highlighted just how crucial the A40/M40 corridor is:
- RAF High Wycombe is the headquarters of UK Space Command, operating from deep in its bunker in Naphill. The review says that in the future space will be “central to war fighting” and satellites, essential for communication, must be protected.
- Twenty miles down the motorway the former RAF Northwood, now simply called Northwood Headquarters, was established in April this year as the military strategic headquarters for all three of Britain’s armed forces. The review says it will be the ‘single brain’ in any future conflict and must be “resilient to both physical and cyber attack”.
- Forty miles up the motorway RAF Brize Norton is already Britain’s biggest RAF station and its main hub. The review says it should be a high priority for investment and improvement.
On top of that, data centres, which enable our computers, mobiles and AI to work, are now regarded as “critical national infrastructure” and the review says greater focus is needed to ensure they are protected.
According to AI, 85 per cent of Britain’s data centres are within 20 miles of here – Slough, for instance, is the largest data centre hub in Europe and has 34 in its trading estate alone. More vast centres are planned at High Wycombe, Iver and Heathrow.
If needs be, says the review, the Government should consider forming a volunteer force to protect them, not dissimilar to the Home Guard of the last war.
Regional news
A woman of importance – Archeologists are trying to identify this near perfect sculpture of a second century Roman woman unearthed by HS2 engineers building the railway near Stoke Mandeville parish church. Many believe she is Vibia Sabina, wife of the Roman emperor Hadrian, of Hadrian’s Wall fame.
Hospice merger – Two local hospice charities are expecting to merge from September to combat rising costs. South Bucks Hospice, which operates a day care centre in High Wycombe, and the Florence Nightingale Hospice Charity, which is linked to the NHS Florence Nightingale Hospice at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, hope the merger will enable them to offer more support to patients in Buckinghamshire.
Hotel extension – Premier Inn near Loudwater Tesco has been given permission to build 29 additional rooms on top of the existing hotel, giving it a total of 169 bedrooms.
Abbey sale – Missenden Abbey, the conference/wedding/events centre in Great Missenden, is being put up for sale to ease the finances of its owner, the Buckinghamshire New University. The centre will close down at the end of November.
Dodgy pumps – Trading Standards officers who checked petrol pumps in Buckinghamshire found that four per cent were not delivering the amount of fuel indicated on the pump. Not all was a detriment to the motorist however. Some were giving out more fuel than indicated, meaning the petrol station was losing money.
River warning – Police toured the banks of the Thames at Bourne End during hot spells last month encouraging people not to swim in the river because of infection risk from pollution, danger from boats and unpredictable water conditions.
Bridge collapse – Investigations are under way after this footbridge across the Jubilee River at Taplow – a flood relief channel for the Thames — collapsed last month. Fortunately no-one was on it at the time.
Phone boxes to go – BT is planning to remove seven public pay phone kiosks in the Wycombe district. It says all have been used less than 52 times in the past 12 months. One, in West Wycombe, which is listed, has been used three times in the past year.
Mobile beach – Norden Farm Arts Centre in Maidenhead is bringing in 15 tons of sand this summer to create an artificial beach for families outside the centre.
CCTV expansion – Police are planning to introduce CCTV cameras into village centres in Buckinghamshire where none are currently located. They include Holmer Green, Great Missenden and Chalfont St Giles.
Car park shut – The Queensmere car park in Slough, one of the first multi-storey car parks when it opened 52 years ago – was closed last month because it “no longer aligns with modern parking standards”. The entire Queensmere shopping centre is in the process of closing and will be replaced with homes, businesses and a smaller number of shops.
Town revamp – Meanwhile, in Maidenhead a planning application has been made for a massive reconstruction of the Nicholson Centre in the town centre. It comprises multi-storey blocks of flats and offices plus shops, restaurants and pubs.
Blue Badge fiddling – When police and traffic wardens checked 151 vehicles displaying Blue Badges and parked in disabled parking places in Buckinghamshire they found that 23 were being used by people who should not be using them. Parking tickets were issued but further prosecutions may follow.
By-pass go-ahead – Plans for a by-pass for Watlington which were delayed while environmentalists investigated reports that an endangered species, the white-clawed crayfish, were inhabiting a brook due to be crossed by the road, can now go-ahead after they found no evidence of the crustaceans.
Brick by tiny brick – Legoland in Windsor is set to redesign the theme park’s entrance, above. It’s meant to look as though it has been built by Lego bricks, but it’s actually a clever deception.
This blog will be next fully updated in September as we’re taking a break for August.
You can contact this blog at peter@pennandtylersgreen.com