(Answers at the bottom of the quiz)
SEASON’S greetings everyone. Here’s our festive quiz. The next blog will be early in the new year.
1. Name the international pop star who attended Sir William Ramsay School; the world famous comedy actor and TV host who attended Holmer Green Senior School; the top British comic who attended Wycombe Royal Grammar School; and the celebrity chef who attended John Hampden Grammar School.
2 Why was William Penn ‘cancelled’ by the Quakers in April?
3. Today it is Hazlemere Golf Course. What was it for most of the Second World War?
4. In March why did the Post Office remove the post box near Tylers Green Village Hall and replace it with a smaller one on the top of a pole (pictured below)?
5. Even today people living between Hazlemere Crossroads and the Cosy Corner shopping parade occasionally find strange animal bones in their gardens. Why?
6. The Horse and Jockey in Tylers Green, pictured below, has been a pub for over 175 years. But what was its original name?
7. A by-election in the Chesham and Amersham constituency (which includes Penn) in June produced a surprising Liberal Democrat win. Who was the winner and, within 500 votes, what was her majority?
8. Who is the Ashley of Ashley Drive, the Taplin of Taplin Way and the Carter of Carter Walk?
9 Name the famous children’s writer buried in Penn churchyard and the famous aviator buried in St Margaret’s churchyard, Tylers Green.
10. Which Christmas carol was reputedly written in Holmer Green by Christina Rosetti?
11. Where in the village is, or was, Muddy Bottom, Fairy Dell, Closed on Tuesdays, Dog Hill?
12. Where, in South Bucks, is:
the reputed home of Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter?
the Victorian mansion Heatherden Hall?
the village where Richard Cox first grew Cox’s Orange Pippin apples?
13. Why are Forty Green and Knotty Green so called?
14. Where are the festively named Holly Cottage, Angel Cottage, Partridge House and Old Bell House?
15. Why is Penn and Tylers Green Football Club’s ground, pictured below, called French Meadow?
16. Who topped the Saturday night bill at this year’s Penn Fest?
17. According to Google, where are Tylers Green First and Middle Schools, St Margaret’s Church, Tylers Green and Tylers Green Village Hall located?
18. Something we now take for granted was introduced to Tylers Green School (now the first school, pictured below) exactly 100 years ago amid great excitement. What was it.
19. There’s another Penn in the UK. Where is it?
20. There are six rivers in Buckinghamshire . Name them.
Answers
1. Leigh-Anne Pinnock of Little Mix (pictured below); James Corden; Jimmy Carr; Heston Blumenthal
2. The Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) named a room at their London headquarters after William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, who was one of their most famous members, However this year they withdrew his name from the building because, in the 17th century, he owned enslaved people.
3. A training area for Army tank drivers.
4. So many dogs were weeing on the old post box it was deemed a health hazard for postal workers to empty.
5. For a number of years at the beginning of the 20th century this area of Hazlemere Park was fenced off as a reserve for all manner of wild animals that were sold to and bought from circuses and zoos.
6. The Horse and Groom. For many years there was the Horse and Groom in Elm Road, Penn and the Horse and Groom in Church Road, Tylers Green. Inevitably it caused much confusion, so the Horse and Groom in Tylers Green changed its name to the Horse and Jockey. The Horse and Groom in Penn (actually the boundary between Penn and Tylers Green ran through the middle of the pub separating the lounge from the bar) closed down some years ago and is now the site of Penn Surgery and pharmacy.
7. Sarah Green, pictured below, with a majority of 8,028
8. Ashley Drive is named in honour of the Rev Ashley Spencer, vicar of St Margaret’s between 1883 and 1918, pictured below. Taplin Way is named after Ben and Albert Taplin, father and son and the first two clerks of Chepping Wycombe Parish Council between 1895 and 1929. Carter Walk is named after Thomas Carter, a founder member of the Penn and Tylers Green Cricket Club and Football Club who was licensee of the Horse and Groom from 1899 to 1927.
9. Alison Uttley (her book Merry Go Round is based on Penn Fair); and Sir Arthur Whitten Brown the navigator who with pilot John Alcock made the first non-stop trans-Atlantic flight in 1919.
10. In the Deep Midwinter
11. The lower part of New Road was called Muddy Bottom before it was changed to New Road
Fairy Dell is a wooded part of the back common by the path from New Road to Church Road
Closed on Tuesdays, now called Emily’s Cottage, is in Elm Road, Penn on the site of Woodbridge’s grocery store which always closed on Tuesdays.
Dog Hill is the Hazlemere Road between Potters Cross (New Road, Hazlemere Road, Elm Road,Common Wood Road crossroads) and the top of the slope. It is so called because the Dog pub was situated where the entrance to Meadow Walk is now.
12. The Mad Hatter, on whom Lewis Carol based his character in the Alice in Wonderland books, is generally believed to be Roger Crabbe who suffered head injuries in the English Civil War and retired to run a hat shop in Chesham. The story goes he dressed only in sackcloth and lived on turnips.
Heatherden Hall and its grounds were bought in 1934 by Charles Boot who, with his business colleague J Arthur Rank, developed Pinewood Studios, so called to reflect the name Hollywood.
Brewer Richard Cox developed the apple named after him in 1825 in Colnbrook
13. Forty Green is named after the prominent rockface surrounded by Ridings Lane. It’s made up from the Old English “for” as in forehead and the Old English for the equivalent of a dry area of land in a marsh, pronounced “nee” or, in this case “tee”.
Knotty Green – first named in the 13th century – is called after the rough, tangled tussocks found in the grassland of the area.
14. Houses on or around the front common.
15. It is on the site of a school which, during the late 18th and early 19th century was used to educate French children seeking refuge from the French Revolution.
16. Rag’n’ Bone Man
17. Loudwater, three miles away. Google describes all the businesses and community buildings and groups in Tylers Green as in Loudwater. Businesses and organisations in Penn are described as being in Penn, Loudwater.
For reasons entirely illogical and unexplained Google decided that Loudwater is the epicentre of the business and community world in this area and we are a mere minor part of that world.
18. The introduction of running water supplied by the new laid water main in the village, enabling drinking water from taps for the first time.
19. Part of Wolverhampton in the West Midlands
20. The Rivers Chess, Great Ouse, Misbourne, Thame, Thames and Wye
Interested in quizzing? Ray Stidwell and friends are organising another of their popular quizzes in Tylers Green Village Hall on 29 January in aid of the Motor Neurone Disease Association and the Thames Valley Air Ambulance.
There will be slightly fewer tables this year because of Covid precautions so if you are interested (preferably to book a table for eight or ten but you can be fitted in if fewer) contact Ray on ray@stidwell.plus.com or Anna on annessou@gmail.com
You can contact this blog at peter@pennandtylersgreen.com