Category: History

Nettlebed Past and Present photo presentation was produced by Malcolm Lewis, for display at St Bartholomew’s Church for the Queens Diamond Jubilee. ...

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    Deborah Dobson thought locals might be interested in this receipt for her parent's honeymoon in 1942. A short journey after a wedding in High Wycombe!  ...

Pat Sparrowhawk has kindly made pictures of the following 1842 map of Nettlebed available. The original is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. This copy was made by Col Frank Wilson, It details the residents of most of the properties. Overview: Detailed maps:   ...

My Dad, Baker Reg Sparrowhawk, came to Nettlebed in 1927 at 18 years old. He came from Aston in West Oxon to work for Mr Cave Saunders in the bakery. The hours were long and hard having to start each morning at 3.30 to make the bread and afterwards go with a horse and cart around the villages delivering it. Then at six in the evening back to work to make the dough for the following day.         In those days doughs had to prove for 8 hours before being weighed up according to the size. He had a set of scales but not really needed as he could cut off a piece of the right weight from years of experience. Following that each piece of dough was moulded and tinned, all by hand, and baked for half hour and ten! Never 40 minutes, always ‘alf hour and ten. The ovens were coal fired and stoked from a furnace. These very...

JAN 15TH 1971 Bill Sarney retires today (Friday) on his 65th birthday after 51 years on the Nettlebed Estate. During that time he has made bricks, felled trees, driven engines, carts and tractors, milked cows, and done a thousand other jobs for three generations of the Fleming family. When Bill started work on the estate at the tender age of 14 there were probably something like 150 men working there. Now there are only sixteen. Bill came to the estate from a small farm at Catslipe where "They gave me the sack when I was 14 for feeding the horses and cheeking the girls". He had done farm work when he was still at school - from 7 to 9 o'clock in the morning, another hour at twelve and then from 4 to 7 in the afternoon. When he started full time the hours were 5.30 am until 5.30 pm and that was a six day week. The estate included Nettlebed Potteries in those...

Click here to read Herbert Godwin's Reminiscences....

A Brief History Of The Nettlebed Cricket Club c1870 - 1981 CRICKET AT NETTLEBED We decided to celebrate our centenary in 1981 because tradition in the village has it that the Club was founded in 1881. However, research has now shown that we are older than we thought: the earliest match of which we have been able to find a record was played in July 1870. Moreover, it is clear that cricket was already well established in Nettlebed at that date; so we can say with confidence that the age of the Club is 111 +. Thus we are celebrating in the knowledge that cricket has been played in the village for well over a century. And yet, oddly enough, if one subtracts the years not completed or lost on account of the two world wars - five in the first and six in the second - one arrives at the fact that 1981 is Nettlebed's 100th recorded season, The first known match...

The Godwin Family During the Second World War The Godwin’s can be traced back to the 1600s in Nettlebed Church records. During the war years (1939-45) my family lived in the property next to Stable Cottage at Joyce Grove. My father Tim had worked for the Fleming family and stayed on as Caretaker when the Grove was passed on to St Marys Hospital Paddington around the end of the 1930s. My Sister Betty worked there for a time too. They originally lived in one of the houses at the bottom of the lane but then moved nearer to the House. Tim was not deemed fit enough to be a fighting man because of an injury he sustained as a young man in an accident, so he joined the Home Guard but as the war progressed he joined up and served as a batman for an Officer in the Army. My eldest brother Leslie lied about his age, he was not quite 16 when he...