The London Road from Bassetsbury to Pann Mill

This is the first part of a two-part survey of the pubs on the eastern side of High Wycombe. 

We will follow the London Road from Bassetsbury Lane to the start of Abbey Way at Pann Mill.

The Nag’s Head above the former pub’s doorway in 2025 (the author)

The second part will visit Railway Place and Saffron Platt before crossing the railway line to North Town.

All of the pubs we consider in this post were in the Bassetsbury estate. Bassetsbury Manor was the principal manor of Wycombe by 1203. The estate comprised farmland, woods, mills and access to fishing along the river Wye, and on either side of the valley.

Reverting to the crown in 1326 Bassetsbury estate was then granted to the College of St George in Windsor in 1478, with the Dean and Canons of Windsor as administrators. The Dean and Canons leased the estate to a variety of people until, in 1719, Sir Francis Dashwood added the lease of Bassetsbury to his existing landholdings. The Dashwoods renewed the lease from time to time, an offer to buy the estate in 1855 being rejected.

The Ecclesiastical Commissioners took over Bassetsbury estate in 1867, selling it at auction in 1882 when the Dashwood’s final lease expired.

We can trace the Chequers alehouse – attached to the mill on Bassetsbury Lane – to 1758 when James Johnson was the licensee. The pub was then known by the singular sign of the Chequer, a name often indicating that money business could be done there. Although the mill can be found in the Domesday book, the age of the current mill buildings is not certain; one source has the main part of the mill dating to the 17th century, while the Chequers – the miller’s house – may be even older.

The former Chequers (the pale building on the right) and Bassetsbury mill c1895, 20 years after the pub’s closure (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

John Clarke, or Clark, was the licensee from 1789. The poor rate records of 1838 show a John Clark as the occupier of a corn mill, public house, premises and garden at Bassetsbury and George Dashwood as ‘owner’ – the headlease holder in this case – though he would probably, by this time, have sub-let to Wheeler’s brewery whose tenant Clark would have been. Clark was also the miller, as were the pub’s tenants until at least the 1850s.

A further view of the former Chequers taken on the same day as the photograph above (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

Wheeler’s gave up the Chequers licence in 1873, transferring it to the Nag’s Head on London Road. The mill continued working until 1933, after which Fred Skull used it for his antiques business. In 1963, the whole property was sold for conversion into a number of dwellings, including the former Chequers, empty since 1960.

The Chequers today (the author)

The earliest record of the Pheasant on London Road, at the junction with Gordon Road, is in the poor rate records of 1838, when it is likely to have been a beerhouse. Beerhouses first began to appear after October 1830 with the passing of the Duke of Wellington’s Beerhouse Act. Unlike alehouses, beerhouses could not sell wine or spirits and had to close between the hours of 10pm and 5 or 6am. They were not regulated by the magistrates; any ratepayer could turn their house into a pub by paying two guineas (£2.10) for an annual excise licence, then either selling their home-brewed beer or beer supplied by a brewer.

The Pheasant’s licensee in 1838 was paper maker Edmund Atkins, while the lease was held by Thomas Edmunds. Like the Chequers, the Pheasant was part of the Bassetsbury estate. The pub acquired some workshops next door in 1843, while the Frogmoor brewery of the Lucas family held the sub-lease in 1855, by which time the pub may have acquired a full, alehouse licence.

The Pheasant in 1989 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library)

It’s likely the Frogmoor brewery then bought it when the Bassetsbury estate was sold at auction in 1882. Along with the pub were three cottages and gardens, the lot sold for £600. The pub was rebuilt in 1887 by the then owners of the brewery, Thomas Lucas and Alfred Leadbetter, to a design by Arthur Vernon.

The ornamented gable shows the date of rebuilding and Arthur Vernon’s decorative detail (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

The Frogmoor brewery merged with Wheeler’s in 1898 to create Wheelers Wycombe Breweries. Wheeler’s were taken over by Ashby’s of Staines in 1929 and then by Simonds of Reading in 1930. The Wheeler’s brewery in Easton Street closed immediately and the Simonds’ hop leaf trade mark appeared on all Wheeler’s pubs until Simonds merged with Courage in 1960.

The Pheasant passed out of brewery ownership in the 1990s and into the world of pub companies (pubcos) until it ended up with the Wellington Pub Company who closed it in 2019. An application – presumably unsuccessful – for change of use to a fish and chip shop being made in the same year.

A closer view of the Pheasant in 1974 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

At the time of writing the Pheasant stands empty and semi-derelict, awaiting demolition for new housing. It is one of the last original Frogmoor brewery buildings, the other being the Saracen’s Head on Green Street. 

A little way west along the London Road was the Nag’s Head. Like the Pheasant, the first record is in the poor rate for 1838 when it was a beerhouse called the Jolly Miller. The first licensee, James Brown, was a miller, perhaps at the adjacent Rye Mill. The Nag’s Head – as it had become by 1851 – was leased to Dashwood and sub-let to Wheeler’s brewery. Like the Pheasant, it was sold at auction in 1882, fetching £700 with two cottages and gardens. It had become an alehouse by taking the licence of the Chequers in 1873. 

Wheeler’s rebuilt the Nag’s Head in 1885, reopening it in January 1886 with a celebratory dinner for Mr J T Harris, builder, and his men. That is the building we can see today.

Beating the Bounds ceremony in 1911. The crowd, including Mr Cox the mayor, pause at the Nag’s Head (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum)

Another view, probably from 1974 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Society)

The Nag’s Head followed much the same ownership route as the Pheasant. Perhaps the main difference between the two was the Nag’s Head’s connections to football and music. It was the Wycombe Wanderers’ HQ in the late 1880s and early 90s. Then, famously, it hosted the Blues Loft, inherited from the White Hart in 1968. Despite its musical importance to the town it went through difficult times in the 1990s, changing its name to the Office and the Pride before reverting to its original name and hosting bands again in 2005. Owner, Admiral Taverns, closed the pub in 2012 and it has been converted to flats. 

The Nag’s Head in 1989 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library)

Not much more than 150 yards further west along London Road was Rose Cottage. This curiosity first appears in the 1838 poor rate records, leased by Weller’s of Amersham brewery from George Dashwood with John Davis as licensee. It’s shown as the Rose public house with two gardens. 

Although the building existed in 1800, according to a land tax document, it does not appear in licensing records before 1828, after which such records stopped being kept until 1866 when Rose Cottage is shown as being fully licensed.

James Stone was the licensee in 1841. Stone also ran the London Road Saw Mills – employing 20 men – which appeared to envelop Rose Cottage over the next few years until in 1867 he gave up his alehouse licence. Two years later, Stone reopened Rose Cottage as a beerhouse.

Like other components of the Bassetsbury estate Rose Cottage, along with the saw mill, was sold at auction in 1882 for £800. Come the 1896 licensing sessions – where publicans, including beerhouse keepers since 1869, applied to the licensing magistrates to renew their licences – Stone did not apply for a licence as, it is explained, he had sold little or no beer, the pub was within a private yard and was now used as a store. 

The site of the saw mill and pub is where Riversdale, 41 London Road now stands.

Sources

Licensing, rating and property deeds held at The Buckinghamshire Archives.

SWOP (Sharing Wycombe’s Old Photographs).

The Bucks Free Press archive.

KERNER, Frances 2019, A new approach to understanding enclosure and survival of common land vol 59 Records of Buckinghamshire, Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society.

FREESE, Stanley 2007, The watermills of Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society.

Trade directories held at High Wycombe Library and online at the University of Leicester special collections.

Census records accessed online at The Genealogist.

Ordnance Survey maps held at Wycombe Library and online at the National Library of Scotland.

Wellington Boot https://wellingtonbootblog.wordpress.com/