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More about High Wycombe

Wycombe is a combination of industrial and market town. There has been a market held in the High Street since Medieval times. There is also a craft market found in the Octagon shopping centre.

The town has always had a presence of industry, which in the 17th century exceeded the market town and now Wycombe remains more industrial in character. An interesting and individual custom of High Wycombe is that it is the only place in the world that weighs its Mayors.

The name Wycombe comes from the river Wye, and the old English word for a wooded valley, combe. Wycombe appears in the Domesday Book and was noted for having six mills. The town once featured a Roman Villa, which was excavated three times, most recently in 1954. Mosaics and a bathhouse were uncovered at the site on what is now the Rye parkland. High Wycombe was the site of a minor English Civil War battle featuring John Hampden, and the home of Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

The existence of a settlement at High Wycombe was first documented in 970, as Wicumun. The Parish church was consecrated by the visiting Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester in 1086. The town received market borough status in 1237, although the market has featured in the town since early in the 12th century.

High Wycombe remained a mill town through Medieval and Tudor times, with the manufacture of lace and linen cloth. It was also used as a stopping point on the way from Oxford to London, with many travellers staying in the town's taverns and inns. The paper industry was the most notable in 17th and 18th century High Wycombe. The Wye's waters were rich in chalk, and therefore ideal for bleaching the pulp. The paper industry had soon overtaken from cloth.

Wycombe's most famous industry, furniture (particularly chairs) took hold in the 19th century, with furniture factories setting up all over the town. Many terraced workers houses were built to the east and west of town to accommodate those working in the furniture factories. In 1875, it was estimated that there were 4,700 chairs made per day in High Wycombe. This figure consistently increased towards the end of the century. The towns population also grew quite rapidly, from 13,000 residents in 1881, to 29,000 in 1928. When Queen Victoria visited the town in 1877, the council organised an arch of chairs to be erected over the High Street, with the words "Long live the Queen" printed boldly across the arch for the Queen to pass under. Wycombe was completely dominated, socially and economically by the industry, so it came as no surprise that there was considerable unemployment and social problems when the industry declined in the 1960s.

By the 1920s, many of the housing areas of Wycombe had decayed into slum conditions. A slum clearance scheme was produced by the council, whereby many areas were completely demolished and the residents were re-housed in new estates, that sprawled above the town on the valley slopes. Some of the districts demolished were truly decrepit, such as Newlands, where most of the houses were condemned unfit for human habitation, with sewage pouring down the street and people sharing one room in cramped courtyards of subdivided flats. However, some areas such as St. Mary's Street contained beautiful old buildings with fine examples of 18th and 19th century architecture, which was a terrible shame and an injustice to the town.

During World War II, from May 1942 to July 1945, the U.S. Army Air Force's 8th Air Force Bomber Command was based at a former girls' school at High Wycombe. This became formally Headquarters, 8th Air Force, on February 22, 1944.

In the 1960s the town centre was redeveloped. This involved culverting the River Wye under concrete, and demolishing most of the old buildings in Wycombe's town centre. Two shopping centres were built along with many new multi-storey car parks, office blocks, flyovers and roundabouts. Areas of quaint old cottages and grand period buildings have been replaced with a town centre which looked like any other built in the aesthetically challenged decade of the 1960s. On the open area known as Frogmoor the original cast iron fountain and some Georgian buildings have gone. A current town centre regeneration project is uncovering the Wye, and is focusing on the conservation rather than the exploitation of the town centre.

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