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Naphill
Naphill maps
Historic maps of Naphill and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Naphill maps
Naphill area books
Displaying 1 of 7 books about Naphill and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Naphill
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Naphill.
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PIGLET
We came to live in Downley Road in 1987 at The Barn which was in a bit of a state in those days. Wife, daughter, me and three cats. The very first memory I have is of our first weekend here when we thought we would quickly nip out to the back of the common to get our bearings for half an hour, and trudging back exhausted four hours later after getting hopelessly lost!
We spent the best part of 4 years improving and renovating during which time daughter Kim left and got a flat. Angie got a job at Bradenham Manor and the ship sailed on.
Naphill is a very nice place to live with some very decent people and we were very happy here. A retreat from the week's business. Someone actually told me that if you lived in Naphill, you'd made it!
Sadly Angie my wife passed away in 1994. Over the ensuing years I have changed jobs and come to terms with living... Read more
Buckinghamshire memories
The Best Roast Lunches Ever
I worked in High Wycombe as a young man in my 20's and discovered the Swan pub, see the sign? Every weekday lunchtime they did a roast dinner and pudding and a coffee for a set price. No menu. I remember the dining room having some big and some small tables and the same people went there for lunch every day. Because I had only been going there 2 days a week for 2 years no-one actually spoke to me yet. The most fantastic roast lunches would be served up by two old ladies and a daughter I think. I would guess the daughter to be forty and the other ladies to be ancient. It was like school dinners on steroids. Sometimes tourists would call in and you would see them looking for a menu, "perhaps a little salad, darling, or some tuna on brown bread?". Suddenly roast lamb and three veg would clatter onto the table in front of them and they would always be too scared of the... Read more
1949 Onwards at West Wycombe
I will always consider myself fortunate to have been born in West Wycombe as it presented the ideal place for people growing up in the 50's and 60's. The village was a dream location and the school even better with a super set of friends and teachers well managed by Mr. Holdbrook the Head. We enjoyed one of the best playgrounds on The Hill that anyone could have wished for.
The Summers seemed long in those days with wall to wall football and cricket at The Pedestal Stadium accompanied by our main passion of Trainspotting. West Wycombe Station was open until 1958 and well manged by Percy the Porter who kept our gang in check whilst watching the passing trains. When it closed we built a purpose-made Camp at the north end of the down platform and watched the world go by with many friends.
Revisits are today infrequent but I am delighted to see how little things have changed due to excellent stewardship of the National Trust. The station... Read more
Bleckberry Picking at West Wycombe
Dear Readers, This is a brief extract from a book I have written called 'The Old Time' about West Wycombe and High Wycombe between 1947 and 1961 describing a day when we went over to Hell Bottom woods picking blackberries. I was in West Wycombe primary school then, in my last year or thereabouts. It was the best school day I ever had.
Mrs Robertson had brought some huge aluminium cooking pans from the canteen and set them up in the middle of the picking area. As soon as we had filled our bowls, we ran back and tipped the blackberries in. The mound of blackberries seemed to get bigger and bigger by magic.
The brambles stretched into the distance across the common with a few spindly elderberry bushes poking through here and there. We were all over it, picking with the fury of animals, and the shouts and the screams of triumph reached us from... Read more
The Chequers
At the age of 16 I remember picking cherries on the trees (still existing in the photo and just shown to the left of the picture) while being too embarrassed/shy to acknowledge the presence of my first "girlfriend", Valery, on her bike below.
The Chequers was my fathers local from the mid twenties until the mid eighties. He hardly missed an evening's visit during the whole of that time, so the Chequers became a rather "looming" object throughout my childhood, rather like a third (naughty) parent. But it did provide the odd Vimto and packet of Smith's crisps in the late forties/early fifties.
Prestwood Village
I was 12 and lived in Prestwood for about 6 months, Oct 41 to March 42. Lived at Delsyde, Hockley Road with my parents in the house of the Adams family including Isabel aged about 10 and Leslie about2, Mr Adams had a business in Wycombe in the tyre trade.
The landlord at The Chequers was a widow, cannot remember her name but she had a son at RGS Wycombe and I cycled to school with him a few times. At that time there was a brickworks in Prestwood and I went with Isabel Adams to watch bricks made by hand, that works was later used as a storage for war surplus. Great excitement when the greengrocer got a crate of oranges. There was a baker on the road to Missenden, bread made on the premises, he had a gas engine to mix the dough, speed control was by a 'hit and miss' governor. Someone must remember it. ... Read more
High Wycombe, 1956 On.
I was born in the Shrubbery Nursing home in 1956. I grew up in Lane End, about 5 miles away. I have photos of me looking awful in baggy knickers on the Rye (the park in Wycombe town) as a toddler. There was a play area on the Rye that is still there, but in my day there was a little waterway for kids to play in, long since closed as deemed dangerous by present standards. My mother always used to enter the Wycombe show with home-made wine, handicrafts & cooking. I was made to enter the 'garden on a dinner plate'. In Lane End I also had to do the jam jar & paste jar flower displays, jam tarts and I think again garden on a dinner plate. I remember when I was young the river ran through the town, and our bus stop was near it at the start of the Oxford Road. I remember the awful Woolworths, long and thin turning back on itself, lots of dark... Read more
