Around the neighbourhood

Originally published 9 years ago. Much has changed since then, including my writing style, no longer so quaint or twee, I hope. Why take such pains concealing the fact that Karleen and I live in High Wycombe, Bucks? (there’s another High Wycombe in Perth, Australia—the town where I was born).

I shall take you on a guided tour of our part of town. We are in the valley bottom, where the factories were built at the end of the nineteenth century. I don’t know what was there before. I haven’t seen any houses older than 1872. This area of the Chilterns has plenty of beech woods, which were used to make furniture, principally chairs. The process started in the woods themselves, as the Oxford Dictionary relates:

chair bodger A local name in Buckinghamshire for a chair-leg turner. Hence (chair-)bodgering, the action or process of chair-leg turning.
1911 G. ELAND Chilterns & Vale vi. 136 The men who thus work in the woods are called ‘chair-bodgers’. Ibid. 137 The purchaser then employs the ‘bodger’ to turn it [sc. a ‘fall’ of beech] into chair-legs. 1921 K. S. WOODS Rural Industries round Oxford II. i. 102 Most village turners or ‘chair bodgers’ confine themselves to the making of legs which they sell to the factories, mainly at ————*. 1939 D. HARTLEY Made in England i. 23 The shed for bodgering jobs may be left standing the whole year.

*Burt’s Hill, Polish lads looking for work*

*St Birinus Church on the skyline, venue for grand funerals of West Indian workers who came over by invitation from 1948 onwards, to work in the furniture factories*

*Bridge Street Sawmills, still in business*

*where the sawdust comes out from a local furniture factory*

The following photos are all taken within a few yards of my house. . They don’t make furniture “from scratch”. There is only one factory in town which still does that, making solid wood tables, chairs and so forth.

*the Saracen’s Head, a pub built in 1895. Since the district is now 90% inhabited by Saracens (Muslims) who don’t drink, its bars closed more than ten years ago*

*the Saracen’s Head from behind with a view of The Pastures. It’s quite a steep slope but The pasture land has been repopulated by housing on the steep slope by weaving short roads back and forth*

*This old factory has been extensively “done up”*

*This workshop stands opposite the derelict factory in the previous photo*

This is now the largest factory building left in town I think, after the Broomwade factory was demolished in the last few months. That one was used for a scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Perhaps they built a sound stage in it. I hear that Johnny Depp nearly caused fainting of female staff at the local supermarket when he went there to buy a snack in between scenes.

In the foreground are things designed to sit on roofs, catch sunlight and take it down into illuminate interiors. They also make windcatchers, using an idea known for a thousand years to architects in the Middle East. They extract heat and stale air but unlike air-conditioning use no energy. The owner (pictured) is soon to retire. He doesn’t think anyone will take over this business (making fibreglass & plastic components). He can’t get any white person to work for him. They don’t like the hard work and the fumes. I nearly offered him my own services. But then I reflected that I don’t want to work in a factory and breathe acrid fumes either.