High Wycombe
High Wycombe photos (96 available)
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Map of Buckinghamshire
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High Wycombe books (6 available)
High Wycombe memories
Read and share memories of High Wycombe and Buckinghamshire inspired by Frith photos
Heady days in 1955-1956
In January 1955 I started as a sixth former at the Royal Grammar School. It was a culture shock after an independent school, but a very good way to get focused. I lived at Frieth and commuted on the Thames Valley bus. The sixth form were a good crowd and a year later, when I left, we celebrated in the evening by downing loads of beer. Those that took part were Syd Sales, Leo Clements, George Greenwood and Jim Portlock. Where are they all now?
I used to visit the 3 cinemas, which all showed good films. Like everywhere else things have changed. The extension to the RGS is simply hideous.
Contributed by John Nurcombe
1949 onwards at High Wycombe
I was born in 1949 at home in West Wycombe Road and lived in the area until 1969. My family owned one of the two Corn & Seed Merchants businesses called Jones and Rivett Limited in Oxford Street and Dovecote Mill on the Dovecote Lane. I went to school at Wycombe Technical High School in Easton Street and then worked in my family business from 1965 until I left home to go my own way in the same industry for the rest of my life ending up managing the biggest Agricultural Merchants Business in Poland and also farming there until recently before I returned to the UK.
My memories of Wycombe are many and very good ones especially the watching of ...read more here
Contributed by gerald rivett
CASTLEFIELD
BORN IN THE FRONT ROOM OF 49 SPEARING ROAD ON 16/02/53. I MUST HAVE BEEN LUCKY, THAT WAS WHEN CASTLEFIELD WAS POSH, WHEN THE TALLY MAN WAS UNARMED. ALL OUR SCHOOL UNIFORMS WERE ON TICK, BUT THE COMPANY GOT PAID. I CAN REMEMBER GOING SWIMMING ON THE RYE WITH MY WOOLLEN TRUNKS THAT GOT BIGGER THE LONGER YOU WERE IN THE POOL. I CAN REMEMBER THE COFFEE, TEA, SOUP, AND CHOCOLATE ALL TASTED THE SAME FROM THE MACHINE. BUT KEEP HILL WHEN YOU WERE A TEENAGER WAS THE PLACE TO BE. MANY A YOUNG LOVE MADE OR LOST THERE. STILL LIVE HERE NOW. DID MOVE TO NORTH YORKSHIRE FOR FOUR YEARS BUT AS THEY SAY YOU CAN TAKE THE MAN OUT ...read more here
Contributed by RONNIE BERRY
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 ...read more here
Contributed by vicky searle
Birthplace
I was born in 1945 in High Wycombe (which I don't remember!) in a nursing home called The Shrubbery... Has anyone heard of the place, know where it was, have any pics?
Contributed by Jean Philip
Frogmoor, High Wycombe
I arrived in High Wycombe in as a young girl in 1946, from Scotland. I attended St. Bernard's Convent school. It was situated in a very large old house on the London Road, across from the Rye. We wore school uniforms, green color, which changed to maroon later. The nuns were very strict. But we got a good education. We played field hockey on school property on Daws Hill, walked up Marlow Hill to get to it. After I left school I worked on Frogmoor. First at The Repertory Theatre, I was a secretary for The Director, a Mr. Gibson. Then I changed jobs and worked for an Accountant, Mr. Rowland, on Frogmoor. He was a great man to ...read more here
Contributed by maureen ingram
Vicky mentions that Woolworths
I had a Saturday job in that Woolworths and at the end of the day one of my jobs was to oil that old and dingy wooden floor. I have two glden memories. One was being asked by Mr Ch***** (removed for legal reasons) to turn the boxes of loose biscuits around and date stamp them again a year hence. They had reached their Best Before date already. The second is working in the cage where the soft drinks were kept and being very thirsty on a hot day. I used to carefully remove the foil covered tops from Lucozade bottles and drink the top inch and then carefully replace the tops. I did this a number of times.
Contributed by Donald Macdonald
What else happened here
There used to be a Saturday market on the left in that covered area and I used to buy a plate of cockles there and eat them with a cocktail stick. That's not very interesting though but I'll tell you something that is. When I was in my early twenties (late '70's) I met a guy, through work, called Charlie Winston who must have been 50 years old then so I am guessing he has moved on by now. He had a reputation for being a villian and, alledgedly, was a mate of the Crays. Anyway, he told me that he lost his virginity under the cornmarket. I don't know who with though, sorry.
Contributed by Donald Macdonald
Extracts From High Wycombe & Buckinghamshire books
Still alone and flanked by old trees from the carriage drive to Wycombe Abbey, the Town Hall is two years old in
this view, a fine building in Queen Anne style. In the distance the white building survives - it is 16th-century with an
18th-century façade. The other two buildings went when Crendon Street was rebuilt and widened in the 1930s.
An extract from from"High Wycombe - A History & Celebration".
Frogmoor was once surrounded by prominent citizens’ fine Georgian houses, which have now all gone. The 1893
School of Science and Art with its ogee turret became a swimming pool, next The Intimate Theatre and finally in
the 1980s offices.
An extract from from"Buckinghamshire Photographic Memories".
Taken east of Bassetsbury, this view looks across the mill pond (now filled in) to Marsh Green Mill, first mentioned in
1759, but probably much earlier. Most of it survives, now converted to dwellings, except the tall building on the right
and the chimney.
An extract from from"High Wycombe - A History & Celebration".
Going back to the beginning of the 19th
century, Loakes Manor together with its
park was sold in August 1798 to the Right
Honourable Robert Smith, Lord Carrington,
a prosperous banker and friend of the Prime
Minister, William Pitt the Younger. Thus
began the Carrington association with the
town and the transformation of the manor
house. Carrington renamed Loakes Manor
the much more romantic Wycombe Abbey,
and set about Gothicising and extending
the house. He employed the architect James
Wyatt (1746–1813), whose main work was
undertaken between 1803 and 1804, with
other estate buildings added soon after. The
old Georgian house, enlarged by Henry Keene
for the 2nd Earl of Shelburne in the 1750s,
was entirely cased in Denner Hill stone, a
very hard silicaceous stone dug a mile or so
north of the town, and also used by Wyatt in
his work at Windsor Castle.
The house sprouted battlements, turrets
and Gothick windows, all of which survive
today. In the grounds Wyatt built a Gothick
screen to the older ice house and a series
of lodges built in Denner Hill stone. These
included the lodges which were built on the
High Street at the end of the carriage drive
(their sites are now the Library Gardens),
by 1901 re-erected half way up Marlow Hill,
and the lodge at the foot of Marlow Hill. The
gates from the St Mary’s Street entrance were
re-erected on Daws Hill Lane at about the
same time.
An extract from from"High Wycombe - A History & Celebration".
Wyatt clad the brick house in the local hard granite-
like Denner Hill Stone and gothicised the house with
turrets and battlements. In this view the creeper
clad house has been a school for ten years.
An extract from from"Buckinghamshire Photographic Memories".