Wooburn
Several prehistoric artefacts have been found in Wooburn, many coming from the Thames. The earliest have been found during ground disturbances to the gravel terraces. Two Lower to Middle Palaeolithic axes were found digging a septic tank at a house on New Road, Bourne End and one was found during the building of the Meare housing estate at Wooburn Green. A Mesolithic pick was also found digging for drainage at Camden Lane. During regular dredging of the Thames some artefacts, including Mesolithic flint tranchet axe-heads, cores, flakes and picks, Early Bronze Age daggers, Middle Bronze Age rapiers and a Late Bronze Age sword have been found. A flat-bottomed oak dugout boat possibly dating to the Bronze Age or Iron Age was found in the river near the railway bridge in the nineteenth century.
Back on dry land other artefacts have been found. Several Neolithic to Bronze Age flint flakes were found digging a water pipeline on Wash Hill, for instance. A number of Roman pottery and tile sherds were also found along the pipeline. A small amount of Roman material has been found elsewhere, such as pottery and tile found during the railway cutting at Bourne End in the nineteenth century; coins at Wooburn Green and pottery in Wooburn churchyard. This is a relatively small amount of material for an area that may have two Roman roads running through it. A suggested route from Londinium (London) to south Oxfordshire may run across the north of the parish at Wooburn Moor, although no evidence for this has been found. A road from Verulamium (St Albans) to Silchester on the Berkshire/Hampshire border runs through Wooburn, crossing the Thames somewhere near Bourne End or Hedsor. This road is now known to follow a slightly different route than originally identified. Further evidence of Roman occupation was the discovery of two lead coffins and another burial in 1949 near Blind Lane in Bourne End. This may be part of a first to third century cemetery.
Anglo-Saxon items were discovered in Bourne End, including a cemetery, with skeletons packed close together with weapons - spear heads, sword, knives, and a bronze thread box, found at Jackson’s Mill and Bourne End station. The cemetery dates to the seventh and eighth centuries AD. Metalwork of a similar date has been found at Bourne End, whilst ninth to eleventh century spears have come from the River Thames.
The earliest written reference to Wooburn is in about 1075, and the earliest forms of the name are 'Waburna', 'Waborne' and 'Wauburn' in the eleventh and twelth centuries, with 'Woburne' first appearing in 1201. In the Domesday Book of 1086, Wooburn manor had 26 households -12 villagers, 13 smallholders and 1 slave, 9 ploughlands, 2 Lord’s plough teams, 200 pigs, 8 mills and a fishery of 300 eels. The smaller manor of Lude (Lude Farm) had 4 households - 2 villagers, 1 smallholder and 1 slave, 2 ploughlands and 3 mills. Before the Norman conquest Wooburn manor was owned by Earl Harold; afterwards the manor was confiscated by William the Conqueror and split between two of his supporters.
Bishops Wooburn manor – now Wooburn Green was given to the Bishop of Lincoln and included Lude. Although he owned land stretching from the Thames to the Humber, Wooburn became one of as his main southern residences, known as Wooburn Palace. It contained a chapel and a prison cell for heretics. In order to create a moat and fishpond, the Bishop diverted the River Wye around the palace. In the seventeenth century Philip Lord Wharton lived in Wooburn Manor, entertained nobility & royalty whilst generously spending money on the estate and giving to local causes including free bibles. Wharton charity bibles are still handed out free today. The medieval palace was demolished in 1750 and replaced in 1756 with Wooburn House, gardens were created and a footbridge built across the moat for direct access to the parish church. In 1862 the Gilbey family moved in. Alfred Gilbey during his short life planned and financed the working men’s club on the green, he died shortly before it opened 1881. The Gilbey family set up W & A Gilbey wine merchants the largest at that time in Britain, followed by Gilbey gin which is still made today. Wooburn House was later rented by the War Graves Commission before being demolished 1963 to build Wooburn Manor Park. The footbridge over the moat remains.
Wooburn D’Enycourt manor – now Wooburn Town was given to Walter Deyncourt. His successors built the manor house, chapel, and a park, close to the medieval parish church of St Paul. The D’Eyncourt family remained in possession of the manor until it passed to the Lovell family in the fifteenth century. In 1922 the manor house was demolished for road widening.
From its source at West Wycombe the picturesque River Wye flows through the parish and the power generated was sufficient to drive nine medieval watermills. Initially many of the watermills located along the Wye were corn or fulling mills, with some being used for metal working; all were converted to paper mills in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the Wye became known as Paper Valley. Hedge Mill and Clapton Mills at Wooburn Moor, Glory Mill and Lower Glory Mill in Wooburn Green, Soho Mill in Wooburn Town, Princes Mill at Cores End and Lower Mills and Hedsor Mills at Bourne End are all recorded in the medieval period. Soho Mill opposite the Old Bell closed in 1984 and Glory Mill was the last mill to close in 1999.
There is also evidence of medieval fairs at D'Eyncourt manor held on the feast day of St Edmund and from 1687 fairs were held on The Green at Wooburn originally selling horses, sheep & cows every May and November. Many pubs were dotted round The Green and Wycombe Lane, these included the Red Cow built in 1570, the Red Lion of 1714, and the nineteenth century Queen and Albert. Thomas Williams (the Soho Mill owner) opened the Royal Stag Brewery in 1833 using water from the Wye for brewing, with the Tap House and Harrow pub close by. Williams lived in Bridge Cottage in Town Lane.
In recent centuries as well as making paper, the parish had brick and tileworks and a lime kiln at Niplands on Hawks Hill; another brickworks on White Pit Lane in Wooburn Green; Gunpowder Mill, which made gunpowder in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but later switched to paper-making, and several gravel pits, for instance at Mill Wood, on Boundary Road and The Chase.
Of the 53 listed buildings in the parish, the most notable are clustered around The Green – 1 and 2 The Green, 22 The Green, 23 The Green, 25 The Green, 30 and 31 The Green, 36 The Green and 40 The Green. Other buildings include the fifteenth century Mulberry House (The Old Vicarage), seventeenth century Old Bakery Cottage, Boscobel and Boscobel Barn. Dell House of 1708 is thought to be the first schoolhouse, before the town school was built in 1851 opposite the Old Bell Pub.
Notable buildings in Bourne End include Cores End Church built in 1804, the sixteenth or seventeenth century Heart in Hand Public House (now a private dwelling), the Walnut Tree Public House, the Thatched Cottage, and the Toll House at Cookham Bridge was built in 1839 when crossing the Thames between Bourne End and Cookham. The first school was set up in 1806 and later rebuilt in 1865.
The Thames remained an important routeway to transport bulky goods such as corn, coal and other materials to markets and to the boat yards at Bourne End for boat building. The Thames flooded in 1894 and froze over 1895, while in 1897 more than 3,500 people took the ferry over the river to the Berkshire side in just one day. Bourne End began to expand when in 1854 Great Western Railway extended the railway line from Maidenhead to High Wycombe with stations at Bourne End (then Marlow Road), and Wooburn Green. In 1873 the branch line to Marlow was added, and the station re-named to Bourne End. The line was closed in 1969 following the Beeching report.
Wooburn war memorial was built in 1920 and honours the 149 men from the parish who died in WW1 & WW2.
Many thanks to Karen Savage who updated this page in 2023.