Lacey Green

The earliest artefacts to be found in Lacey Green parish are a Lower to Middle Palaeolithic handaxe and a Mesolithic tranchet axe found between Loosely Row and Lacey Green villages. A number of prehistoric monuments also exist in Lacey Green parish. A ring-ditch, which is often the only surviving portion of a barrow after many years of ploughing, was seen on an aerial photograph near College Farm. Possible lynchets were identified on Risborough Cop and were associated with prehistoric artefacts including fifteen Neolithic flint flakes. Other Neolithic flint artefacts have been found on Pink Hill, Parslow’s Hillock, Windsor Hill, Brimmer’s Farm and in a field near Bell Cottage. Part of Grim’s Ditch, which is thought to be Iron Age, lies north-east of Lacey Green and south-west of Lilybottom.

A number of artefacts dating to the Roman period have also been found in Lacey Green parish. This includes pottery near Bell Cottage and on Pink Hill, and a more mixed group from Soldier’s Mount on Risborough Cop, found by metal-detectorists. The finds included pottery, pins, bottle fragments and glass beads as well as metalwork. A Roman jar was dug up in the early twentieth century at Speen.

The Black Hedge is one of the oldest recorded boundaries in England. It was first identified in a Charter of 904 AD that described a Saxon Estate that was to become the parish of Monks Risborough. It also includes the parishes of Longwick, Kimble, Lacey Green and Hampden. The hedge is 14 miles long.

Some of the listed buildings in the parish date back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, such as Speen Farmhouse, Well Cottage and Woodway Farm. Many of the other listed buildings are eighteenth and nineteenth century in date, including the church of St John the Baptist and Salem Chapel, Speen, a Baptist chapel. One of the most famous buildings in Lacey Green is the windmill. This was moved to this position from Chesham in the nineteenth century. It was used as a look-out by the Home Guard during the Second World War.