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Key to pubs (the Gordon Arms and ‘new’ Morning Star are not in the area covered by the map) 1 Jolly Waggoner 2 Steam Engine 3 Compasses 4 Morning Star 5 Iron Duke 6 Porter’s Arms 7 Masons’ Arms 8 Rising Sun 9 Duke of Clarence 10 Belle Vue |
This is the second of two posts about pubs on the eastern side of High Wycombe. The first part – The London Road from Bassetsbury to Pann Mill – covered the old pubs along the London Road from Bassetsbury Lane to the start of Abbey Way at Pann Mill.
Railway Place
In 1854, members of the Wheeler family bought plots of land in a meadow from the estate of the late Thomas Edmonds, who had also owned the Coach & Horses, opposite Pann Mill on Easton Street. In the same year the Wycombe Railway arrived from Maidenhead.
Other plots had been for sale in Edmonds’ meadow and, between them, was the ‘new road’, later called Railway Place. At the top, by the new railway line, Wheeler’s had two plots on which, by 1862 and possibly several years earlier, a beerhouse and chairmaking factory were erected. In 1866 the beerhouse, named the Steam Engine (2), got a full licence to serve spirits.
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| The west side of Railway Place with the former Steam Engine at the top in 1963 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
In 1871 the Steam Engine’s licensee was George Hobbs, a chairmaker employing 31 men and boys in his factory, six of whom lived in. The whole premises was described as a public house, yard, workshop, drying room for timber and a blacksmith’s shop.
At the bottom of Railway Place was Coach & Horses yard in which stood the Jolly Waggoner (1) beerhouse.
The Jolly Waggoner was owned by William Jones and first appears in 1860 when the beerhouse keeper, William Cox, is a witness at the Borough petty sessions (equivalent to today’s magistrates’ court) in a case involving the theft of some boots from his pub.
Another witness was a lodger at the beerhouse. Several pubs on Easton Street were common lodging houses and the Jolly Waggoner appears to have been another of these. In the 1861 census, William Cox has eight boarders, including a mother and her four children.
The August 1864 petty sessions hears about the assault of a female lodger by her partner after she decided to leave the house. The plaintiff, Emma Hoare, tells the magistrates ‘In the room where we have been sleeping there were four men sleeping beside us; it was not decent, and that was the reason I wanted to come away’.
Justice Wheeler (possibly the supplier of the house’s beer) ‘said he was afraid the doings in that house were very bad’. Emma’s assailant, Edward Russell, was fined 10s with 12s costs. The pub’s landlady, Mrs Baker, appears to have aided and abetted Russell.
After several more offences committed at the Jolly Waggoner, including Mrs Baker admitting to handling stolen goods, the beerhouse was taken over by chairmaker Joseph White. The pub was renamed the Duke of Cambridge – a common tactic, used to this day, to sweep away a pub’s previous bad reputation.
In 1903 the local pub owners and Borough magistrates agreed to close 12 pubs in the town on the basis that there was a national drive to reduce the numbers of pubs – there’s more about this in link to Newland 3. As a result, the Duke of Cambridge closed on 10 October 1903. The house, outbuildings, a plot of building land and three other cottages were for sale at auction on behalf of Wheelers Wycombe Breweries, but they did not reach the reserve price and were withdrawn.
Joseph White was still the tenant in 1901 and, at the age of 75, may still have been at the pub when it closed.
Saffron Platt
Parallel to Railway Place is Saffron Platt. This area was heavily developed from the mid-1860s and three pubs within a stone’s throw of each other opened on Saffron Road.
First to appear, in 1866, was the Compasses (3), half way along the road on the east side, owned by John Williams’ Royal Stag brewery of Wooburn. This beerhouse with garden, in the middle of a terrace of small houses, was first occupied by John Woodhouse.
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| The house with a rendered front – with a person walking past it – is probably the former Compasses in 1974 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Society) |
The Masons’ Arms (7) opened on the corner of Station Road and Saffron Road in 1867. This fully licensed house, shop and yard was owned by Wethered’s of Marlow, the first tenant being George Curtis. It was a larger building than the Compasses, possibly built specifically as a pub. By the early 1900s it comprised five bedrooms, parlor, tap room, kitchen, scullery, two lavatories, a well-fitted bar (with one beer engine) two entrances, a good garden and stabling for two horses. The annual rent was £30. And the ‘incoming’ – a fee, like a deposit, charged to a new tenant – was a not insignificant £230.
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| The Masons’ Arms in 1975, with Whitbread branding and with a rendered frontage to Saffron Road – probably an early 20th century addition. The bottle and jug department could be reached from the door on the Station Road side (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Society) |
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| A group about to take a coach to Hayling Island from the Masons’ Arms on a wet August day in 1958 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Finally, at the other end of the road, on the corner of Easton Terrace, was the Rising Sun (8) beerhouse of 1868. This large house was, according to the poor rate records, owned by Albert Hooper. The first beerhouse keeper was coachman George Dicker. He applied for a spirit licence in 1870 and was refused. There was a swift turnover of licensees after Dicker, perhaps demonstrating how difficult it could be in the depressed 1870s to make a living running a pub.
Even George Lacey, who arrived in 1875 and ran the building firm of Lacey & Co, lasted only until 1877, despite letting out an adjoining shop and drying store. However, the Rising Sun’s fortunes began to stabilise in 1879 when it was hosting the Victoria Football Club, and the turnover of licensees slowed.
But, like the Duke of Cambridge in neighbouring Railway Place, the Rising Sun was one of the chosen 12 pubs to be closed in 1903. By this time it was leased by Brakspear’s brewery of Henley whose lease was to expire on 6 April and who, in any case, had decided not to renew it. The former licensee, Thomas Humphreys, continued in business as a shopkeeper, and owned the house in 1910.
North Town
On the other side of the railway from Saffron Platt were Shrim’s Piece field and Town Field. Houses, cottages and workshops began to be built here from 1864 until, by 1871, the area was officially renamed North Town in preparation for the census of that year. Shrim’s Piece became Railway Street, also known as Vine Terrace, while between the railway and Totteridge Road appeared Pennington Row, Albert Street, Duke Street and Slater Street. Pubs opened on almost every corner.
The earliest of North Town’s pubs was the Morning Star (4) beerhouse of 1866. Built at the top of what was to become Pennington Row it was granted a full licence the following year on the grounds that there were now 60 to 70 houses in the locality. Like some other property in Pennington Row, the Morning Star was sold at auction in 1869. The Lucas family’s Frogmoor brewery had leased the house since it opened and it’s likely they then bought it. George Harman was the first licensee and stayed until his retirement over 20 years later.
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| The Morning Star in 1931. At the very far left of the picture is the Iron Duke (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
A little further along Totteridge Road, on the corner of Duke Street, the Wheeler-owned Iron Duke (5) beerhouse opened in 1867. Described as a ‘tin tabernacle’, it was a structure largely made of corrugated iron, similar to many churches that appeared at this time.
And at the foot of Duke Street, where it met Shrim’s Piece, the Porter’s Arms (6) beerhouse was trading by 1868. Owner Daniel Church may have been trading the year before when he was at a house and shop belonging to Thomas Stratford. He also owned a house adjacent to the pub in 1868.
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| Landlord Walter Godfrey and his family outside the shop attached to the Porter’s Arms in 1910. Daniel Church had both houses creating a beerhouse, shop and slaughter house (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum) |
Church was a good, and bad, example of a mid-Victorian entrepreneur. As well as being a publican, he ran a slaughterhouse and a shop from his pub, while later branching out into chairmaking. He appeared regularly before the magistrates on various charges – often being acquitted – until he got into irreversible trouble in 1878, falling into bankruptcy, absconding from his responsibilities and being, unsuccessfully, prosecuted for fraud in 1880, by which time his marriage was over, he was living with his father at the Gate in Newland and trying to beat his alcoholism. He disappears from the records after this.
The pub, though shown in the poor rate books as owned by Church, was owned by the Frogmoor brewery in 1872 – the reason for his 1880 fraud prosecution. Church’s application for a spirit licence was refused in 1869. It remained a beerhouse throughout its life.
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| The Porter’s Arms beerhouse c1905. The small building on the left is probably the slaughter house (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
The Belle Vue (10) opened in 1868 on the corner of Shrim’s Piece and Slater Street. It appears to have been a fully-licensed public house from the date of opening. Owned by Wheeler’s, the first tenant was chair manufacturer Richard Stallwood. By 1869 the pub had been joined by a shop.
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| The Belle Vue in 2003. We can see how the pub was an amalgamation of two separate buildings (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
We might today be surprised at the pub’s name, but auction and other sales notices talk about the wonderful prospect across the railway to Wycombe Abbey, the Rye and Keep Hill, all of which, in 1868, could be seen clearly from Shrim’s Piece.
The last pub to open in North Town had a short life. Chairmaker Russen Howland opened the Duke of Clarence (9) beerhouse at 13 Pennington Row in 1868. The house, owned by David Spicer, had closed by time the magistrates met to renew licences in the autumn of 1871. Perhaps that was the signal that there were now more than enough pubs in North Town.
The Gordon Arms
What was once referred to as Shrim’s Piece, then Railway Street and, unofficially, Vine Terrace, had been renamed Gordon Road in 1885 after it reached the London Road. The Gordon in question was the recently-killed hero, General Gordon of Khartoum.
In 1892, the Borough Corporation wanted to widen Queen Square – part of the main east-west road through the town – where the Wheeler-owned Queen’s Head stood. At the September 1892 licensing meeting, George Wheeler proposed he transfer the old licence to a site in Gordon Road he had bought.
Thomas Thurlow was Wheeler’s architect. His plan showed a modern pub with a bar, taproom, parlour, kitchen and offices, while upstairs it would have five bedrooms. There was a cellar, stables, a coach house and further land should stabling require expansion.
However, there was opposition from local residents and the licensee of the Pheasant. This led to the application being rejected, but Wheeler was invited to apply again next year.
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| The Gordon Arms not long after opening in early 1895. A comparison with a more recent view below shows how little the pub changed (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum) |
In fact, George Wheeler waited until autumn 1894 before trying again. His solicitor had a petition for the new pub signed by 44 heads of local households. The opposition had 103 signatures on their petition, though after scrutiny it appeared only a proportion of these were the heads of households. The magistrates agreed to grant a provisional licence.
New pubs for old
By the 1920s it was clear the Steam Engine was on the licensing magistrate’s list of pubs to be closed on grounds of redundancy. Since 1904, compensation could be paid to a pub’s owner and its tenant should the renewal of the licence be refused on the grounds the pub was redundant and must close. The building could never be licensed premises again.
The Steam Engine was put in the spotlight in 1923 and then almost every year until 1928, each year escaping with a new annual licence having argued against closure. Licensee, Ellen Ball, argued strongly that the trade in beer had doubled between 1923 and 1928 and that did not demonstrate redundancy.
It seems Mrs Ball had more than a trade in beer to preserve as she described the parts of the house she sub-let. There was a kitchen in the basement let to a family who also had bedrooms, as did another family, while the yard contained a cart shed, chair workshop, buildings and stabling. The magistrates were suspicious of this activity and sent the case to the county committee, who then renewed the licence.
The Compasses on Saffron Road had been refused a licence in 1931, and the county compensation committee had considered the building’s value without a licence, compensation of £1,225 was paid to the owner – Wethered’s, who had taken over Williams’ brewery in 1927 – and £25 to the tenant, who had been at the pub for a very short time.
The end came for the Steam Engine as a pub in 1932. By this time Wheeler’s Wycombe Breweries had been taken over by Simonds of Reading. The new owners recognised the pub estate needed to be modernised and reduced in number. Simonds offered to give up pubs unsuitable for modernisation, without compensation, in return for the magistrates’ agreement to a rebuilding programme.
Simonds would give up the Steam Engine and rebuild the Iron Duke, transferring the full licence of the old pub to the new but keeping the Iron Duke name. The new pub would have a public bar, games room, saloon and private bars, bottle and jug department – off sales – all with their own entrances. All the tenant’s rooms would be on the first floor and include additional bedrooms and a bathroom. Some land would be given up for road widening, an offer the magistrates could never turn down at a time of increasing motor traffic.
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| The new Iron Duke just after completion in 1932 (courtesy of Raymond Simonds) |
The licence of the Porter’s Arms, also being a Simonds pub by 1933, was to be surrendered so that alterations and extensions to the Belle Vue could be undertaken. Again, the magistrates agreed.
Charles Crump was the last tenant at the Porter’s Arms, then taking over at the altered Belle Vue. The old beerhouse, which had also had a grocer’s shop and, later, a china shop, before the front bar was established, was sold at auction to Frank Adams for £570.
A new Morning Star
In the 1890s, when a new tenant was sought, Horley’s pub brokers advertised the Morning Star as ‘Situated in a growing part of the town close to the station. A nice compact house comprising a pretty and well fitted bar, smoke room, parlour, living room, kitchen and 6 bedrooms. House is in thorough repair and very clean.’
By 1932 the house was crowded and inadequate and, on the basis that the Bowerdean Estate had been developing since 1923, Simonds had plans to close the old pub and move it to a new site at Bowerdean crossroads. They also offered to surrender another pub, counsel for the brewery pushing a folded piece of paper with a pub name on it across the table to the licensing magistrates hearing the application.
The new house, as described to the magistrates, was three-cornered, with a separate off-licence, perfect accommodation for the tenant, a very good club room and commodious kitchen to prepare meals the old house could not, and it would be in harmony with the district. It would take six months to build at a cost of £4,500, reported architects Thurlow and Lucas. There was both support and opposition from residents and the inevitable adjournment to the next magistrates’ meeting.
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| The new Morning Star. A 1991 watercolour by Anthony Mealing (courtesy of the artist ©Anthony Mealing) |
At the next meeting the magistrates granted the application, and revealed the Fox in Temple End’s name had been on the piece of folded paper. The new pub opened and the old closed in February 1933.
From 1933 to 2020
The Duke of Cambridge, in Railway Place, did not sell at auction after closure in 1903 and it’s likely it reverted to being a private house until the area was levelled in 1966 and turned into a car park.
Another pub that closed in 1903, the Rising Sun on the corner of Saffron Road and Easton Terrace, still stands today as a private house.
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| The former Rising Sun in 1978 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Society) |
The Steam Engine has led a fuller life since closure, firstly becoming the High Wycombe Trades and Labour Club and Institute in September 1933, then the Irish Club in 1970 until 2013 when it was renovated and converted into supported living accommodation, Shamrock House.
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| The former Steam Engine in 2025 in its new life as Shamrock House (the author) |
The Compasses became a private house after closure until replaced by Saffron Court in 1984.
The Porter’s Arms became the New Subway Stores, replacing the original on the corner of Saffron Road and Station Road. It closed in 1959 when Duke Street was about to be cleared. The entrance to the railway station car park now takes its place.
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| The former Porter’s Arms as the Subway Stores shortly before closure (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum) |
The old Morning Star, sold at auction after closure, disappeared in 1960 with the rest of Pennington Row, including the former Duke of Clarence.
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| The old Morning Star shortly before the demolition of Pennington Row began (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
The new Morning Star at Bowerdean Crossroads appears to have become the premier pub in the area, supporting teams in such sports as darts, bar billiards, pool, football, dominoes and shovehalfpenny. The other east end pubs that survived until recently followed much the same pattern, supporting teams playing pub games as well as football.
The Morning Star also seems to have led the way in providing musical entertainment, particularly from the late 1980s when it hosted the music clubs, Ponton’s and Heroes and Zeroes. It is surprising that it was the first of the modern or modernised pubs to close.
All but one of the east end pubs that were still open in 1989, when the Beer Orders came into force, were owned by Courage brewery. Courage had taken over Simonds in 1960; a golden cockerel replaced a hop leaf on the pub signs.
The Beer Orders restricted the pub estates of Britain’s six national brewers – of which Courage was one – to 2,000 and required them to stock a guest beer in their pubs. Brewers responded by spinning off pubs into pub companies (pubcos), and, in Courage’s case, this meant pubcos such as Inntrepreneur. After many mergers, demergers and renaming, Courage ceased to exist and pubcos dominated the industry.
The Morning Star went from Inntrepreneur to Phoenix Inns in 1993 and then closure in 1997. Dave and Olwyn Skinner rescued it, changing its name to the Skinners Arms. However, in 1999 it closed permanently after planning permission was received to demolish the pub and build flats in its place.
The Iron Duke was run by sisters Miss Gertie Short, Miss Clara Short and Mrs Mabel Ball from 1936 until 1953. They had come from the closed Railway Tavern on Crendon Street, sacrificed for road widening. After the sisters, the pub led an unremarkable life until a shocking incident in 2002. Bar worker Jennifer Brooklyn was shot three times by her foster father Drosos Saroukos while working in the pub. She survived; Saroukos was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
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| The Iron Duke in 1993 with rather brash Courage signage already looking out of date (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press) |
Like the other east end pubs, the Iron Duke went through difficult times after the dramatic changes in the pub and brewing industry after 1989. Its final owner, Enterprise Inns, sold the pub to the Wycombe Islamic Mission in 2009 and, not surprisingly, it did not reopen. It doesn’t appear that a change of use has ever been agreed, nor to what use the former pub is now put.
The Gordon Arms was sold to Morland’s brewery in 1993 along with a number of other Courage pubs. Morland was later taken over by Greene King, who sold the pub for development in 2013. It became flats in 2015.
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| The Gordon Arms in 1994. Comparing this scene with the picture from 100 years earlier (above) shows minimal changes: the large lettering above the pub’s main entrance has been replaced by a gallows sign at the apex of the garden, and the iron fencing has gone, probably during World War Two (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
The last of the east end pubs to cease operation – at least, that’s the position in 2025 – was the Masons’ Arms. Unlike the other pubs we’ve discussed it was not owned by Courage in 1960, but by Wethered’s of Marlow. However, Wethered’s parent company, Whitbread, was already in charge by the early 1970s. They then sold it to Grand Metropolitan – Courage’s parent company – at auction in 1991.
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| The Masons’ Arms in 1993 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library) |
Enterprise Inns were the owners in 2007 when the pub was renamed the Sausage Tree, and emphasis was placed on food sales. Then in 2018 the Masons’ Arms name was restored until the Covid pandemic of 2020 proved too much. Conversion to flats began in 2023.
The Belle Vue
At the time of writing, the only operational pub in the east end of Wycombe is the Belle Vue.
Like all the other east end pubs it has had its share of difficulties; the first licensee, Richard Stallwood, was bankrupt by 1876, for example. It was never a candidate for rebuilding in the 1930s; modest alterations in 1933 amounted to a reorganisation of the interior layout, with the jug and bottle department being integrated with the public bar, and some old outbuildings being demolished for a new office.
The pub survived the major redevelopment of the area during the 1960s and early 70s, only losing part of the garden to a compulsory purchase.
Post-Beer Orders ownership was traumatic, the pub closing in 1992 after licensee Terry Palethorpe’s bankruptcy. A short period of management was followed by sale to Inntrepreneur – advertised as ‘free of tie’ – in 1993.
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| The Belle Vue in 2025, looking smart after some repairs, a new coat of paint and a pair of new signs (the author) |
Ownership passed to Punch Taverns – now Punch Pubs – in 2005. Photographer Alan Hedgecock became the licensee, setting up the Snug Gallery in 2010 with regular art exhibitions and providing the Belle Vue with a Bohemian atmosphere. He left during lockdown, but his pub survives now operated by Belle Craft Ltd since 2024.
Sources
Licensing, rating, property deeds, pub broker’s records and tithe records held at The Buckinghamshire Archives.
SWOP (Sharing Wycombe’s Old Photographs).
The Bucks Free Press archive.
Trade directories held at High Wycombe Library and online at the University of Leicester special collections.
Companies House GOV.UK
Census records accessed online at The Genealogist.
Ordnance Survey maps held at Wycombe Library and online at the National Library of Scotland.
ROE, David (editor) 1995, Real Ale In Bucks, CAMRA books: St Albans.
Simonds Family website https://simondsfamily.me.uk/
Wellington Boot https://wellingtonbootblog.wordpress.com/
