Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. First edition 1960. Please use photographs to ascertain condition.

About the book >.>.> The clay-covered chalk slopes of its flanks provided a stiff but well-drained soil good for growing corn. In the floor of the valley water flooding from many springs fed a river some ten miles long flowing with the gradual south-easterly slope of the Chilterns down to the Thames. North-westwards beyond the head of the pass a rivulet rising at Saunder- ton flowed briefly into the vale of central Bucks and so into the Thame. As its name Wycombe suggests this valley in which there were streams was for that very reason rare among the valleys of the Chilterns. Strung along its well-watered length William the Conqueror’s commissioners found most of the population of Desborough Hundred as recorded in Domesday Book. The southern boundary of the Hundred marches with the Thames and Hambleden and Marlow were as we should expect among the most populous places in Buckinghamshire. Medmenham and Fawley were also villages of Thames-side. But apart from these and the small settlements of Ibstone and Turville above Hambleden almost all the rest of the villages of 1086 were to be found in the Wycombe gap. From a point near where the borough eventually grew up the valley pushes a finger northwards and here a little over a mile away at the head of a tributary of the Wycombe river was the small manor of Hughenden an outlying settlement but still essentially of the gap. The hills themselves for miles on either side of the way through them were largely uninhabited. (SP)