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 dredging of the Thames some artefacts, like 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 log boat that may have dated to the Bronze or Iron Ages was found in the river in the nineteenth century but has since been lost. Other artefacts have been found on dry land. Several Neolithic to Bronze Age flint flakes were found during digging for a pipeline on Wash Hill, for instance. A number of Roman pottery and tile sherds were also found in this excavation.

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 very small amount of material for an area that may have two Roman roads running through it. A hint of more extensive activity comes from two lead coffins and another burial being found in 1949 during the digging of a service trench on Blind Lane in Bourne End. This may be part of a first to third century cemetery.

A Saxon cemetery may have been found at Bourne End station during the Second World War. It seemed to date to the seventh and eighth centuries AD. Metalwork of a similar date was found along the line of the railway in the nineteenth century. Other inhumations were found at Jackson’s Mill in Bourne End in 1905 and also date to the same period. A couple of ninth to eleventh century spears have come out of the Thames as well.

There is a great deal of evidence of the medieval period in Wooburn parish. There were many manors, which are recorded in historic documents. These include Wooburn Deyncourt, Bishop’s Wooburn, Lillyfee and Lude manors. There are also records that Lude and Lillyfee were hamlets. Lude is recorded in Domesday and Lillyfee in twelfth to fifteenth century records. Wooburn Deyncourt manor also supported a fishery and there are sixteenth century records of a park, probably a deer park. Deyncourt Farm was the centre of this manor and the old manor house, now an outbuilding, dates to the fifteenth century and is a cruck construction. A fifteenth century chapel has been incorporated into cottages. Bishops Wooburn manor belonged to the Bishops of Lincoln and the old eighteenth century Wooburn Manor House, which was demolished in 1963, stood on the site of the medieval manor house, which was also in effect a Bishop’s Palace. It was surrounded by a moat and also had fishponds to provide fresh fish. Nonconformists used the medieval chapel until 1750 but earlier there had been a room in the chapel to confine heretics.

There were also a great many mills in Wooburn in the medieval period. Lower Mills in Hedsor, Robyn/Hochedes/Hedge Mill, Clapton Mills, Glory Mill in Wooburn Green, Lower Glory or Wooburn Mill, Soho Mill, Princes Mill and Hedsor Mills are all recorded in the medieval period as well as later. All became paper mills in later centuries, usually the seventeenth and eighteenth, and Clapton Mill also made tarpaulin.

None of the medieval mill buildings survive, so the oldest surviving building in the parish is St Paul’s church, which dates back to the twelfth century, though it has been altered through the years and restored in the nineteenth century, though the medieval font was lost at the same time. Mulberry House and the Old Vicarage also contain medieval fabric. It dated originally to the fifteenth century, but the hall was replaced in the seventeenth, though one older cross-wing survives. It was also added to later and divided into two houses. The site of a couple of medieval buildings were identified in Wooburn Park and some artefacts such as pottery, tile, bone and shell were found in excavations. At least one of the buildings may have stood until the eighteenth century as a sixteenth century bellarmine, some seventeenth century clay pipes and eighteenth century pottery were found as well. Another medieval to post-medieval building was identified in excavations for the pipeline on Wash Hill.

In recent centuries as well as making paper the parish had brickworks and a lime kiln called Niplands; Gunpowder Mill, which did indeed make gunpowder but later switched to paper; a brewery called the Royal Stag; brickworks on White Pit Lane and several gravel pits, for instance at Mill Wood, on Boundary Road and The Chase.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were not just about industry, however. Wooburn House was built in the eighteenth century on the site of the medieval manor house, though it was demolished in 1963, as mentioned above. Manor Farmhouse was originally built as an eighteenth century pavilion for the Manor House. A Congregational Chapel and cemetery were established at Cores End at the same time, as was the Wooburn Working Mens Club. Many of the other listed buildings in the parish also date to the eighteenth century, such as the Walnut Trees pub, Thatched Cottage, Cores End House and Dell House. Some have older parts, such as Minions Cottage, the Old Bell, Boscobel and Boscobel Barn, and the Red Lion, which all have sixteenth century timber-framed sections. Schools were also built at this time. School House and the Old School reflect this interest in education, but neither are still schools.

The Bourne End to High Wycombe railway also made an impact on the parish when it was built in the nineteenth century. There are two stations in the parish, at Bourne End and Wooburn Green, and numerous level crossings, at Bourne End Station, Cores End Road, Whitepit Lane and Juniper Lane. Before the railways the parish controlled the roads and tollhouses were set up to charge travellers. One such tollhouse still exists in Wooburn parish, now a private dwelling.