SLOWLY but surely, and with fingers crossed, things are returning to some sort of normality in Penn and Tylers Green.
A number of social events are already planned in the village for later in the summer. In addition to Open Gardens day on Sunday 6 June, the local churches are planning a Songs of Praise on the Common on Sunday, 4 July, and the Penn and Tylers Green Village Show is pencilled in for 18 September.
Football resumes for some teams at Penn and Tylers Green Football Club this weekend and Penn and Tylers Green cricket teams expect to be operating from 12 April, with the Colts starting later in the month. The village tennis courts reopened this week and the Sports and Social Club reopens on 15 April. Hazlemere Golf Course reopened this week and its crazy golf course reopens today (Good Friday 2 April).
Tylers Green Village Hall will reopen for certain children’s activities from 12 April, but most other bookings will have to wait until 17 May. Children’s parties and family get-togethers will have to wait until at least 21 June. There are similar restrictions at Hazlemere Community Centre. Their beer garden will open on 12 April with restricted numbers and a maximum of two households meeting. Hazlemere Library anticipates reopening on 12 April.
Penn Festival is on course for the weekend of 23/24 July at Penn Street. Local theatres, Wycombe Swan, which acquired new owners this week, and Aylesbury Waterside are hoping to resume productions on 17 May. Windsor Theatre Royal is planning to resume on 21 June with Sir Ian McKellen in Hamlet. Bekonscot Model Village reopens on 12 April. Odds Farm Park and the Go Ape adventure courses in Wendover Woods and Black Park reopened this week.
First orders please….
MANY local pubs are still finalising their arrangements for reopening, assuming permission is given for 12 April. This is the latest position, but I will update this list as and when over the next couple of weeks as more details become available.
Red Lion, Penn
At the moment opening the garden for drinks and food from Monday 12 April to Thursday 15 April between 4pm and 9pm; Friday 16 April to Sunday 18 April between noon and 9.30pm (7pm Sunday) and after then opening full time from Thursday to Sunday until further notice. If it is pouring down they may close, so check.
The Old Queen’s Head, Penn
The pub has been extending its garden during lockdown with a new upper terrace.
Bar: Monday/Tuesday open 4pm to sunset. Wednesday to Sunday: noon to sunset
Food: No food Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday/Thursday noon to 2.30pm and 6pm to 8pm. Friday/Saturday noon to 8pm. Sunday noon to 6pm
Horse and Jockey, Tylers Green
Please note, these garden open times are weather dependent. Monday 12 April, noon to 10pm. Thursday 15 April, 3pm to 10pm. Friday/Saturday 16th/17th noon to 11pm; Sunday 18th noon to 9pm/
The Crown at Penn
This Chef and Brewer pub will not reopen for drinks and meals until Monday, 17 May when it is expected customers will be able to eat and drink seated inside.
The Mayflower, Penn Road
Reopening outside areas for food and drink from Monday 12 April.
The Squirrel, Penn Street
Garden reopening for drinks and food from noon on Monday 12 April. Booking advised for busy times…Sunday lunch on the 17th, for instance, already fully booked.
The Hit or Miss, Penn Street
Reopening on Saturday 17 April at 11am for drinks, snacks and meals in outside areas. Opening hours are being extended.
The Potter’s Arms, Winchmore Hill
Reopening outside terrace on 12 April and now taking bookings.
Royal Standard of England,Forty Green
Reopening outside areas on Monday 12 April.
The Red Lion, Knotty Green – now called The Lion of Beaconsfield
The new beer garden and terrace will be open from Monday 12 April.
Penn and Tylers Green’s Mr Table Tennis wins top award
CONGRATULATIONS to Ron Hedley of Old Kiln Road, Tylers Green who has won a special award from the national table tennis organising body for his outstanding contribution to the game. He’ll be presented with a Pride of Table Tennis Award in June.
Ron has organised teams and tournaments for the Buckinghamshire County Table Tennis Association for 42 years; is a long standing referee, umpire and player and life member of both the High Wycombe league and Bucks association. He remains county match secretary and a regular player despite battling cancer for two years.
He is also chairman of the Chilterns Cricket League and chairs the over-60s and over-70s Bucks County Cricket Club.
Dust-ups and departures mark the start of the local election campaign…
THE local election campaign has got off to a lively start with one former Tory councillor accusing an existing one of deceiving the public, an accusation strongly denied.
Peter Cartwright, a former mayor and county councillor who is standing as an independent in the Tylers Green and Loudwater ward in the Buckinghamshire Council elections next month, delivered an election leaflet through doors in the village this week that lets rip against existing councillor Lawrence Wood.
He claims that Cllr Wood doesn’t actually live at the house in New Road, Tylers Green – the home of his aunt, Katrina Wood, who is also a local councillor – which is listed as his address on the council’s website. Instead, he claims Cllr Wood lives outside Buckinghamshire – something he terms ‘morally wrong’. He also accuses him of having the lowest attendance record of attending council meetings.
The council confirmed this week it is investigating a report about whether an elector has given correct address details.
However, Cllr Wood told me this week: “I have a long-term, demonstrable residential and business connection with the address in New Road, and I legally qualify to be a councillor. However, due to unforeseen circumstances relating to my children, I have chosen to step down at the end of this term of office.”
Exit stage right
Another name that won’t be standing for election when nominations close next week is David Shakespeare, who has represented Tylers Green as a Buckinghamshire councillor since 1977, with the exception of four years between 1981 and 1985.
David, who lived with his wife Patricia in Hammersley Lane, is a former chairman of Buckinghamshire County Council and one-time leader of the Conservative group on the Local Government Association. In 2001 he was awarded an OBE for his services to local government.
He now lives in Selsey, West Sussex, but his ambitions in local government continue. He is standing as a Conservative candidate in next month’s elections for West Sussex County Council.
One way voting
Tylers Green Village Hall will be used as the Tylers Green polling station on 6 May despite some coronavirus restrictions still being in place then. Voting will be in the Penn Room to enable voters to enter through the main entrance and exit via the side fire doors.
Coronavirus update
NEIL McDonald, the chief executive of the Buckinghamshire NHS Trust, told the trust board meeting this week the rates of infection in the county have fallen to those seen last September. Local hospitals are now restoring non-urgent services that have been paused since Christmas. The big challenge now, he said, is reducing waiting lists for elective (non-urgent) surgery which have built up during the pandemic. This would involve new ways of thinking and working.
Dan Gibbs, chief operating officer, told the board that Wycombe, Amersham and Stoke Mandeville Hospitals had not recovered at the same pace as other hospital trusts in the south east because, for reasons yet to be explained, the peak demand on Bucks hospitals arrived later than those in neighbouring areas.
By mid March more than 80 per cent of Bucks NHS staff had received their first dose of vaccine.
Second local vaccine jabs to start soon
There were fewer than 10 new Covid cases in Penn, Tylers Green, Hazlemere, Holmer Green and Knotty Green last week, a figure comparable to those last September. There were just 30 new cases reported in the whole of Buckinghamshire yesterday. Local doctors’ surgeries urged over-50s who have not yet been for their first vaccine to do so urgently as they want to ensure these last people in the priority groups are vaccinated with their first jabs before starting second jabs for vulnerable groups in the next few days.
Churches adapt
Another disrupted Easter at our local churches. Penn Street church is allowing in worshippers for an Easter Sunday service, but those attending will have pre-booked and numbers are severely curtailed. Restricted numbers too at Tylers Green Methodist Church on Easter Sunday.
Holy Trinity in Penn is holding a 6am ‘Sonrise’ service in the churchyard on Sunday morning and an Easter audio service has been recorded for both Penn and St Margaret’s Tylers Green, which is available via the churches’ website. The usual Easter Monday walk to Penn Street for lunch at the Hit or Miss can’t happen, but instead there’s an Easter treasure trail taking place all weekend between St Margaret’s and Holy Trinity.
MPs split
Our local MPs split when the issue of extending the Govenment’s powers to impose coronavirus restrictions until September was debated in the House of Commons last week. The Wycombe (and Tylers Green) MP Steve Baker voted against, while Chesham and Amersham (including Penn) MP Dame Cheryl Gillan and Beaconsfield’s Joy Morrissey voted in favour. The Government won the vote by 484 votes to 76.
Young suffer mental health harm in lockdown
Self harm and eating disorders amongst young people increased significantly last year says a report to Buckinghamshire Council. Mental health workers counselling youngsters with eating disorders recorded a 60 per cent increase in their caseload. The number of young people attending A&E in the county having suicidal thoughts or self-harming increased by around 30 per cent.
Tackling one wee problem…
One of the great things about children is how quickly they adapt. All the teachers in our village schools have been amazed a just how easily pupils slipped back into routines and accepted new Covid-protection procedures, taking everything in their stride.
It’s just getting used to specific “toilet” times that’s proving a challenge for some of the very youngest…an age group that often leave it to the very last second before dashing off to the loo (how the memories come flooding back!). Common sense rules the roost… if it’s a dire emergency they tell an adult and pop into the loo making sure they keep a safe distance from other children not in their bubble!
…and solving another
There was much moaning when the Post Office carried out its threat the other week to remove the post box in Church Road, Tylers Green – near the top end of the back common. So many dogs were peeing on it the Post Office deemed it was a health hazard for its postmen and women to empty.
This week, a most sensible solution. A new post box, stuck on top of a pole, has been placed on the same site.
Ponds, playtime and medical practitioners
KEN Allen, who keeps in touch with those born and bred in the village in the 1930s, 40s and 50s – many of whom are now scattered far and wide – took this picture of Pistles Pond in Beacon Hill, Penn and it provoked lots of childhood memories.
Janet Garrett (nee Perfect) who used to live in one of the cottages next to the pond spent many an hour playing Ducks and Drakes, skimming stones across its surface, and remembers the army requisitioning Slade’s garage in the Second World War and launching a rowing boat on it (goodness knows why).
Another family who lived in Beacon Hill were the Channers (Channer Drive was named after them) and Bill Wheeler, who’s in his nineties, noted his grandmother Margaret Channer married his grandfather George Wingrove Wheeler in 1874. Later the Wheelers also had a road named after them (Wheeler Avenue).
Meanwhile, our very oldest resident, 106 year old Herbie Druce, who was born in a cottage in Beacon Hill near the pond, still has a remarkable memory. In this month’s parish magazine he vividly recalls Dr Louisa Garrett Anderson who lived with her partner Dr Flora Murray in Paul’s Hill, Penn. He recalls her diagnosing him with pleurisy and remembers precisely where she sat at Evensong at Holy Trinity. When Dr Murray died in 1923 hers was the first funeral Herbie sang at as a choirboy.
Dr Garrett Anderson’s mother, Dr Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, was the first woman in Britain to qualify as a physician and surgeon.
*Incidentally, according to Miles Green’s book Mansions and Mud Houses, Pistles Pond, Wash Pond, also in Beacon Hill, and Widmer Pond on the common formed the boundary between Burnham and Desborough, two of the Saxon Hundreds (administrative districts) well over 1,000 years ago. Widmer probably means ‘wide pond’ in olde English and Pistles Pond is recorded in a 14th century map as Pussulle, likely to be derived from Peas Hill, an area where wild pea flowers grew.
Plans in the pipeline…
Conservation area schemes meet resistance
PLANS to extend an 18th century cottage in the heart of the Penn and Tylers Green conservation area are meeting with a mixed response.
The parish council, the residents’ society and some neighbours object because they say the extension to Gable Cottage in Elm Road, Penn would have a detrimental impact on neighbouring listed buildings. However, a number of neighbours have written in support and the council’s planning officers are recommending approval. Councillors will decide the issue next Tuesday.
Meanwhile, revised plans to extend another cottage in the conservation area – The Cottage on the back common – are meeting resistance from the residents’ society. The owners want to build a two storey front and side extension to the house and construct a swimming pool at the rear. The society says that although the revised plans are an improvement on the original they still feel the extension will be overbearing and intrusive. The early Victorian cottage was formerly the home of the late Sir Oliver Millar, Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, and his wife Delia.
Pub thinks its Covid restrictions could last for years
THE Royal Standard of England pub in Forty Green has applied for planning permission to erect permanent cloisters and wooden gazebos in its garden so it can continue to serve customers outside for the long term. The pub is very old – it maintains it is the oldest freehouse in England – and its owners fear its cramped interior will be unable to accommodate lots of customers for some considerable time.
In an appeal to its customers to support the application the pub’s owners say: “Many rural pubs are too cramped inside to adhere to safe Covid-19 practices and are under threat of closure due to poor trade created by the pandemic. There is a need to secure the long term sustainability of the business.” The application also includes the building of a lychgate in the garden which will act as new toilets. If approved it would mean customers would not need to enter the pub at all.
A helping hand
THE council has stepped in to help a scout group dogged by bad luck. Hazlemere scouts lost their scout hut when an arsonist destroyed it.
They then raised thousands of pounds through fund raising to rebuild it and handed the cash over to a contractor to start the rebuild. Then the contractor went bust; the scouts lost their money, and still had no hut. Now the Beaconsfield and Chepping Wye Community Board – a group set up by the new Buckinghamshire Council last year to help local projects – has pitched in £5,000 to help get work started again.
The Beeb’s boys have a local connection
FERGUS Walsh, the BBC’s medical editor, whose calm and factual coronavirus reports have been an essential commodity during this emergency, is a local boy. He was born and bred in Beaconsfield and attended the Royal Grammar School up the road. Today he lives in Windsor.
Meanwhile, his new boss, the BBC director general Tim Davie, gets away from the pressures of life by regularly taking long distance runs in the Chilterns. In his younger days he set himself the challenge of running every mile of every public path on the Chiltern Hills West Ordnance Survey map, 171. Over two years he covered more than 1,500 miles. He’s also a member of the Chiltern Society’s volunteer path maintenance teams.
The gift that keeps on giving…
To celebrate the new millennium 21 years ago the village’s cub scouts planted 2,000 daffodil bulbs in various spots around Penn and Tylers Green. Now, as men in their late 20s and early 30s, they and the rest of us can enjoy the fruits of their labour. It has been a particularly splendid spring for daffs this year.
Cutting it fine – HS2 seeks tunnelling permission at the very last minute
THERE were some raised eyebrows to say the least when it was revealed in Parliament last week that HS2 has still to gain permission from the Environment Agency to drill its ten mile twin tunnel under the Chilterns. The company’s giant tunnel boring machines are in position, nearing completion and expected to begin tunnelling operations in the early summer.
There is still enormous anxiety among some experts about the impact the tunnelling could have on the fragile and damaged chalk structure to be found in the Chilterns, the result of it being mauled by glaciers in the last ice age.
Dr Haydon Bailey, one of the country’s leading chalk geologists, says that although the geology won’t affect the construction of the tunnels, the disturbance to the ground by the drilling machines could dislodge the neighbouring fault lines. This, in turn, he fears, could lead to the complete draining of Shardloes Lake near Great Missenden, or the disappearance of the delicate chalk stream, the River Misbourne.
The company says it will be submitting its application imminently. The Environment Agency then has 56 days to assess all the implications before making a decision.
Local news
Parking lay-bys – Highway engineers are working out how much it would cost to construct parking lay-bys in Ashley Drive, Tylers Green.
Festival scam – Penn Festival is urging people not to buy e-tickets advertised for re-sale on-line as there’s a chance they could be fake. Tickets can only be bought through the PennFest website or through the festival agents, Gigantic.
Lockdown crime drop – The cold, lockdown month of January saw a drop in crime levels in Penn and Tylers Green. In the Chalfonts area, which includes Penn, there were 80 reported crimes compared to 113 for the same month last year and 112 in December.
In the Chepping Wye area, which includes Tylers Green, the 94 reported crimes were down on the same month last year (118) but up on the December figure of 77. Violence and anti-social behaviour accounted for around half of the figure.
House blaze – A fire which started in the bathroom badly damaged a house in Wynn Grove, off Penn Road, Hazlemere on Tuesday. No-one was injured.
Thief jailed – A thief who broke into houses and cars in Tylers Green, Hazlemere and Holmer Green was jailed for seven years this week. Gary Atkins, 43, of Holmer End, Holmer Green admitted four burglaries, five counts of stealing from vehicles or interfering with them, one of drug possession and another of assaulting a police officer. All the offences took place in the last 15 months.
Memorial trees – The Penn and Tylers Green memorial trees, dedicated in memory of those in the village killed in action in the First World War, are to be featured in a article on the British Forces Broadcasting Service website, written by Greg Allwood, who lives in the village. You’ll be able to view it on www.forces.net
Nigel remembered – A bench is to be situated in Penn Street churchyard in memory of its late vicar, the Rev. Nigel Stowe.
Unit on TV – A TV documentary about about the bone marrow transplant unit in Great Ormond Street Hospital, which includes the Penn and Tylers Green Room, was aired this week. The room was named following the village’s fund raising contribution to the Wishing Well Appeal in the 1990s.
Farewell Mrs Walker – Mrs P.Walker, a teaching assistant at Tylers Green First School, left the school this Easter after 15 years.
The real Prince George
I have always wondered why so many Americans are obsessed with the British Royal Family, especially as they successfully fought a war nearly 250 years ago to get rid of them.
Some Maidenhead friends of ours whose daughter married an American a few weeks after Harry and Megan’s wedding tell the story of the groom’s aunt and uncle who were desperate to visit Windsor Castle while they were here. After they did so they were asked if they enjoyed their day in one of the world’s most historic and iconic buildings.
”It was fantastic,’ replied the aunt. “Do you know, today we sat on the same bench that George Clooney sat on at the wedding.”
This blog will be updated with the latest information regarding the reopening of pubs as it becomes available.