From the archive
Village Pond dries up
For the first time in living memory, Cippenham village pond has almost completely dried up. The pond is connected to the stream that runs underground from Brook Path to the Millstream Lane…
THE CIPPENHAM COLLECTION
Articles
People, places and stories from our village’s past.
19 stories
WW-1
The strange tail of the Chalvey Stabmonk
Few people today will have heard of the bizarre ‘Stabmonk’ ceremony that took place annually on Whit Monday in Chalvey where a plaster-cast effigy of a monkey was given a mock funeral and…
WW-2
Author Susan Cooper and WW2
Susan Cooper is an acclaimed author of children’s books and is best known for her fantasy series, The Dark Is Rising. She was born in 1935 and grew up on Westlands Avenue in Huntercombe…
19th Century up to WW-1
Ploughing Match 1913
The photographs below are from The Royal South Bucks Ploughing Match and Agricultural Show held at Cippenham 1 st October 1913. The ploughing competition took place on Josiah Gregory’s Farm…
Uncategorized
Queen Anne’s Well, Chalvey
Queen Anne’s Well is said to have first been used to supply drinking water to the monarch at Windsor Castle at least 300 years ago. It wasn’t a well in the sense generally recognised today,…
era
The Slough Bomb Mystery
Of the many secret files of World War Two that have been declassified, only one contains the word ‘mystery’ in its title. The event that confounded the British War Cabinet and the…
WW-1
How Cippenham Court Farm became The Slough Dump
Cippenham Court Farm, 1909/10. Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies D11/12/14 Prior to the 20 th century, Cippenham was a quiet country village consisting of humble terraced cottages…
WW-2
Cippenham's Cinema
The six month old Commodore Cinema, 20 May 1939 Cippenham has only ever had one cinema. Originally named the Commodore it opened its doors on 30 November 1938. A stone’s throw from…
WW-2
The Mystery of the Cippenham Duck
In the late 1960s when I was a small boy, I was playing one day on Cippenham village green with two other local boys when they announced that they were going to play on the “duck”. I didn’t…
WW-2
The Cippenham V1
In World War 2, Cippenham escaped relatively lightly from German bombing. At around 8:40 AM on 23 August 1944, however, a V1 flying bomb (doodlebug) fell from the sky and exploded near to…
19th Century up to WW-1
Disastrous Fire at Cippenham Green, 1908
A century ago, house fires were much more common than they are today. Open hearths and naked-flame lighting created opportunity for accidental fires to start and the higher flammability of…
Medieval
Cippenham Royal Palace
There is a tradition that in Cippenham there was once an Anglo-Saxon palace which was home to the Kings of Mercia. In A Topographical Dictionary of England published in 1848 [1], the entry…