High Wycombe 1956 On

A Memory of High Wycombe.

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 wood and very dingy. You had to stand holding your hand up at the counters to get served, often waiting ages as pushier people got served first.  We had a Lions corner shop tea rooms. Murrays, the department store, privately-owned big store in Wycombe, it had a fancy clock that travelled up & down while the stairs circled around it. I was a bit like John Lewis is now. I remember being taken to Wycombe to see Father Christmas, I guess that was in Murrays but I can't remember. Anyone interested in the Red Lion Statue in the High Street might be suprised to know it is made from wood.