Wycombe's Suburban Pubs

 

The Bottle & Jug (off sales) at the Castle in 1953 with players and officials of Castlefield FC. Many new or rebuilt pubs in the 1930s had these off sales ‘departments’ where the public could buy beer to take away without going into the main bars (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

Fewer and better

The Royal Commission on Licensing in England and Wales ran from 1929 to 1931 and reported on the state of public houses in 1932. It said ‘the ideal…is to make the public house…a place where the public can obtain general refreshment…in decent, comfortable and pleasant surroundings.’

The concept of ‘fewer and better’ public houses wasn’t new in the early 1930s, but it was enthusiastically taken up by Simonds brewery of Reading who had acquired Wheeler’s Wycombe Breweries in 1930. Simonds recognised that many of the Wheeler pubs were old, uncomfortable and unsanitary. Their proposed programme of alterations and rebuilding would cost about £80,000.

While Wycombe town centre pubs such as the Bull could be rebuilt on their original footprint, others, such as the Royal Oak in Paul's Row, were too small and hemmed in by other buildings to make improvement feasible. In these cases, giving up the licence and proposing new houses in developing areas of the town would be Simonds’ strategy.

Simonds also recognised that encouraging the licensing magistrates to agree to their proposals would mean promising to use Wycombe companies and Wycombe builders to construct public houses to meet modern licensing standards.

The Hour Glass in the 1920s

Wheeler’s Wycombe Breweries opened what might qualify as the town’s first suburban pub. They had bought land in the growing settlement of Sands before they applied to the magistrates in February 1923 to build the Hour Glass – a play on the sands of time. It opened in January 1924.

The Hour Glass not long after completion (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Society)

The Bucks Free Press reported that ‘every modern convenience had been taken into account’ and great credit was due to Mr Hedges, the architect, and to builders White Brothers. It had a large ‘draw up’ – the front car park today – a roomy bar and spacious club room that could take 50 people, a parlour with smoke room and a bottle and jug department – off-sales – all having separate entrances. The licensee could see every part of the house from the bar – this was of great importance in getting a licence because it reassured the police and magistrates that the pub could be properly supervised. The licensee, Mr Rolfe, was provided with four bedrooms and a bathroom as well as hot and cold running water and modern lavatories. 

Wheeler’s had to pay £550 for the Hour Glass’ ‘monopoly value’ – this was a sum assessed on the increase in a building’s value by virtue of it having a publican’s licence. Pubs in modern times now tend to be worth less if they have a licence.

When compared with the suburban pubs that appeared 10 or so years later there is something still Victorian about the Hour Glass in the 1920s. It had a slate club (a combined Christmas and sickness savings scheme), an air gun club (shooting at an indoor target common until replaced by darts in the next decade) and a cork club (an eccentric social club where members dressed a bottle cork as a character and went off by coach for an annual dinner).

New building in the 1930s

Wheeler’s application to rebuild the Half Moon in Oxford Street had been refused in 1930. By 1933 the magistrates were presented with a new plan: Simonds would surrender the licences of the Half Moon and the Pine Apple on West Wycombe Road and build a new house at the junction of Dashwood Avenue and Desborough Park Road.

The new Half Moon would have a central servery, recreation room, snack bar, saloon, private and public bars, coffee room, kitchen and scullery, and a downstairs living room. Upstairs would be four bedrooms and a sitting room. The architects were Thurlow & Lucas.

A petition supporting the new pub had been signed by more than 1,100 people and witnesses from the local area gave evidence at the licensing hearing in support of the proposals. The opposition view was modest and did not persuade the magistrates to reject the application. The new pub opened in 1934.

The Half Moon in 1997 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

Simonds next made an application early in 1935 to remove the licence of the Railway Tavern in Crendon Street to a new house – the Castle – to be built in Rutland Avenue, Castlefield. The application was approved. On the one hand, the Railway Tavern was in the way of the final stage of widening and modernising Crendon Street and would have been compulsorily purchased before being demolished, while on the other hand, the new Castlefield estate was in need of a pub. The Castle opened the following year, with Benjamin Betts of the Iron Duke as its first licensee.

A Thames Valley bus passes the Castle c1960 (courtesy of Gerald Croxford and Facebook group High Wycombe now and then)

The last new build in 1930s suburbia came in 1938 when the licence of the Henley Ale Stores – originally the Old Angel – in Oxford Street was removed to Desborough Avenue at the junction of Deeds Grove. 

The Wendover Arms in 1973 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

The application from Brakspear’s brewery of Henley to remove the licence suggested the original name be used, while the magistrates asked for a new name as they ‘did not want more than one Angel in High Wycombe’. The old pub did a good trade but it was incapable of extension or modernisation owing to its hemmed in position and party walls. The new pub, costing £8,000, would have a large car park – a necessity by 1938 – separate off licence, an extensive bar where meals and snacks would be served, central servery, large cellar, a lounge, five bedrooms and downstairs living room for the licensee.

The Wendover Arms was the new name chosen, the arms in question belonging to Viscount Wendover, the son of Lord Carrington, who had died of his wounds in World War One. 

The ornate pub sign for the Wendover Arms in 1973 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

Pub life from the 1930s to 1950s

All the new pubs we have discussed so far led similar lives during the 1930s.

Games featured strongly and every pub had a games or club room, or a games area. Bar billiards, dominoes and shovehalfpenny were popular. Darts took over from air gun shooting as the 30s wore on. Perhaps the most unlikely sport was greyhound and whippet racing behind the Hour Glass, held on ‘England’s Highest Natural Track’ in 1932.

Despite their newness, alterations were needed at the Hour Glass in 1934 and the Castle in 1937. All changes, including the most minor, to the licensed area of a pub had to have approval of the magistrates. There was a constant worry about how the pub could be supervised by the licensee and the police, and a suspicion of any proposed changes leading to an increase in the drinking area. The modest changes at the Hour Glass involved many plans and meetings until they were agreed.

Though pub life was quiet, at the Hour Glass in 1937 there was a murder by shooting that Mike Dewey has covered in depth in the Bucks Free Press.

Games naturally took a back seat during World War Two. Although beer wasn’t rationed – it was considered a vital foodstuff – it often ran out. Robert Green at the Hour Glass ran up a union jack to show he had beer and he advertised this in the local paper. 

Sports were supported at the Hour Glass – Sands Rovers FC – and at the Castle – Castlefield United FC and later Castlefield Cricket Club.

Pubs that never were

After 1930, the three main brewers having pubs in Wycombe – Simonds, Wethered’s and Benskins – were looking to buy land in the town’s suburbs for new pubs. Some of these projects were successful, while others were not.

Benskins went to great lengths to remove the Golden Fleece from Desborough Road and we’ll cover those efforts later. Simonds also proposed the removal of several old licences until they finally succeeded, as we shall see.

Wethered’s were probably the more ambitious of the three, and also the least successful.

Their first attempt was to apply in 1937 for a licence to build a pub to be called the Five Alls on the corner of Desborough Avenue and Marlow Road in Cressex. They had bought the land for £850, which they had intended to use to improve the Royal Oak on Bridge Street before the magistrates refused their application. Until 1936, Wethered’s had a pub of the same name in Studley Green.

Despite the brewery solicitor putting up a good argument for the licence – a developing area, a well-planned modern pub, many new houses and factories – the magistrates threw it out. Undeterred, Wethered’s bought another site in Cressex for £650.

In 1946, they again thought about Cressex, swapping sites with another developer and talking to Wycombe Borough Council about the possibility of a pub on Bookerhill estate until the licensing magistrates put an embargo on any more applications for pubs in Cressex while they considered the distribution of licences in Wycombe.

Eventually, Wethered’s decided to dispose of their Cressex land, and by 1957 it had all gone. 

The Micklefield Inn

Although brewers owning pubs in Wycombe did not appear to compete with one another they were keen to preserve what they had and take advantage of new areas where they could.

Wethered’s bought some land in Micklefield in 1933, which, by 1949, was in the Kingscote estate, later the Micklefield estate. By this time ownership had passed to Whitbread who then were refused a licence for being ‘too premature’. They were refused again in 1951 and yet again in 1952 after spirited opposition from local churches, though what seems to have concerned the magistrates most was that 75% of signatures on a petition supporting the building of a pub were those of women.

Whitbread sold the land to Simonds who were then successful in their 1953 application. Crucially, Simonds proposed to give up two town licences – the ‘little’ Red Lion on St Mary Street and the Ship on Oxford Road – as part of a continuation of their pre-war ’fewer and better’ scheme. 

The plan for the pub was a curious one: it was to be built in three phases owing to building regulations. The first phase would see a lock-up licensed shop containing a lounge bar, games ‘recess’ and a servery. Phase two would ‘put the top’ on phase one; in other words, the licensee’s accommodation. The final phase would provide ‘general enlargements’ and a function room.

The name Simonds originally proposed for the pub was the Pig & Whistle. The other suggestion was the Coronation. 

The 1953 Coronation pub design and sign shown at the Ideal Home Exhibition (courtesy of Raymond Simonds, picture enhanced by Godfrey Clements)

Simonds had been heavily involved with the design of a pub called the Coronation that was being shown at the Ideal Home Exhibition in March 1953. They acquired the pub sign specifically to use on their new Wycombe pub.

The magistrates didn’t like either name and suggested Micklefield Arms, which Simonds thought might be corrupted to Mickey Arms. The Micklefield Inn opened in July 1955, a name thereafter regularly shortened to Mickey Inn.

The Micklefield Inn just after completion in 1955 (courtesy of Raymond Simonds)

From Happy Wanderer to Bell & Mast – Wycombe’s suburban pubs to the 1970s

It’s unlikely that Wethered’s ever lost money on land deals. All the plots they bought eventually had a pub on it making money, or was sold for further development.

They had bought a plot at the top of the new Bowerdean estate from Frank Adams in 1936, though it wasn’t until 1956 that Wethered’s decided to apply for the removal of the Woolpack in Oxford Street to the bottom of the new Arnison Avenue. Work began in April 1957 and was expected to cost £16,000. 

The new pub opened in May 1959. Appropriately, as it had been bought from an ex-Wycombe Wanderer, it was to be called the Happy Wanderer, and, just as appropriately, the first licensee was to be another ex-Wanderer, Norman West. The Happy Wanderer tune had had some Wycombe Wanderers-specific words written for it back in 1955.

The former Happy Wanderer in 2026 (the author)

Then in late 1959, Ind Coope, who had taken over Benskins of Watford in 1957, opened the new Golden Fleece at the junction of Hatters Lane and Hicks Farm Rise bringing to an end over 25 years of trying to find a new home for the old Desborough Road pub. The story of that struggle can be read here and here.

The Golden Fleece’s sign in 1973, in need of a coat of paint (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

And the pub itself in the same year (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

Simonds had bought a site at Booker in the 1930s on which they made several unsuccessful applications to build a pub. The first was the proposed removal of the Masons’ Arms from Newland in 1936 and the second, in 1938, was for the Carrington Arms in Oxford Road. In 1960, a successful application was made to open the Jolly Sandboy near the junction of Cressex Road and New Road having agreed to surrender the licence of the Three Horse Shoes in Horns Lane, Booker.

It’s not clear why the Jolly Sandboy name was chosen. The locals didn’t like it, so Courage – the owners by this time after merger with Simonds – allowed them to choose an alternative. The Turnpike opened in November 1962. The area had been known by this name since the early 1930s. It acknowledged the turnpike road that came up from the West Wycombe road, through Sands and divided into a branch to Cressex and another to the Marlow to Stokenchurch road.

The Turnpike in 1993 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

The second suburban pub of the 1960s was the Jolly Bodger opened in 1969 at the top of Chairborough Road in the Castlefield estate. This was Wethered’s replacement for the Royal Oak on Bridge Street. The full story of this change can be found here.

Like the Turnpike a few years before, the Jolly Bodger name was selected from about 100 entries in a competition, which was won by Miss Janice Eldridge. Her prize was a cheque for £25. The pub was designed by Diamond Redfern and Partners. Licensees – who were managers rather than tenants – Len and Margaret Rowlinson would be pleased to enlighten you if you didn’t know what a bodger was. They would probably have pointed out the eighth-scale model of a bodger’s pole-lathe and tools made by L J Mayes, the town librarian.

The former Jolly Bodger in 2026. Surrounded by vehicles and fences, it is difficult to believe this was once a pub (the author)

The final Wethered suburban pub in Wycombe was the Bell & Mast in Bellfield estate. Although it opened in 1975, the brewery had chosen the site and paid a deposit for it in 1961, paying the remaining £7,000 in 1963. 

The Bell & Mast replaced the Globe in White Hart Street. The first licensee, Leslie Shotter, came from the Whitbread-owned White Hart, while the new Bellfield pub carried the Whitbread branding having become Wethered’s parent company in 1968.

The Bell & Mast around the time of closure (Movement80 courtesy of the Lost Pubs Project)

Changes to existing pubs in the 1960s and 70s were few. The Hour Glass had an extension and alterations approved in 1962, the Happy Wanderer extended their saloon bar in 1966.

By 1967 the public bar at the Hour Glass had doubled in size catering for two bar billiards teams, and three male and one female darts teams. Bar billiards was gradually replaced in most of our pubs in this period by pool. Pub football teams began to emerge in the 1970s.

Wethered’s were already employing managers rather than letting to tenants by 1960 and Courage and Brakspear did likewise in the 1970s. The Hour Glass became an Allied Breweries house in 1978 when Courage and Allied swapped some pubs. The Wendover Arms had a major refit in 1972 when it became a Tabard Inn – a subsidiary of Brakspear. Its Edwardian restaurant opened in 1977, but it was suffering from declining trade and changes of management by 1979

The Castle reintroduced music in 1960, though music licences weren’t common at this time. They also offered B&B from 1968 and were advertising their Portcullis Bar in 1973. 

Pub life from the 1980s to today

The Half Moon opened up its original multi-room layout, introducing meals and live music in 1980. The Wendover Arms opened a wine bar and bistro in the same year. Live music appeared and in 1985 it opened a Country Carving Room, by which time it had had another refurbishment (the last being 13 years earlier) to become a Clifton Inn – a joint venture with Brakspear. 

At the Golden Fleece, Allied Breweries spent £55,000 on a refurbishment in 1987 to include a games room for pool, bar billiards, a quiz team and darts, while the pub’s emphasis was firmly on families and food. Courage followed the fashion for refurbishment at the Turnpike in 1988. This may have been the result of reputational damage after a riot at a gig in 1987 forced manager of four months, Phil Wicks, to leave. Live music stopped for a while too. Not to be left out, Wethered spent £190,000 on a 1990 refit to revive the Happy Wanderer.

The final pub in this survey is the Cressex in Crest Road, Cressex. A Whitbread Roast Inn, the Cressex opened in late 1989 after having an initial application refused. Essentially a carvery, it lasted little more than three years before changing into another Whitbread brand, Flat Foot Sam’s, a ‘Canadian-style bowling bar’, in early 1993. This brand was replaced by another, a TGI Friday restaurant, three years later. It remains a TGI Friday, a brand no longer owned by Whitbread.

The former Cressex, now a TGI Friday in 2026 (the author)

The 1990s saw ownership changes following the Beer Orders of 1989, which restricted the pub estates of Britain’s six national brewers to 2,000, and required them to stock a guest beer in their pubs. Brewers responded by spinning off pubs into pub companies – pubcos – or selling them entirely. 

The Wendover Arms in 1995 was owned by Scottish & Newcastle brewery who carried out the pub’s third major refit since it was built – while the pool tables disappeared, it offered ‘Whole Hog monster portions’. The pool tables returned in 2000. In 2005, Escape Pubs was the owner before ‘a large property and restaurant group’ based in Buckinghamshire carried out yet another refurbishment in 2008 and now offered Thai food.

The history of the Castle during the 1990s makes for shocking reading. 

The pub’s owner, Inntrepreneur – a joint venture between Courage and Grand Metropolitan – put the freehold up for sale in March 1992 for £275,000. On landlord Joseph McGuinness' last day at the Castle in May the pub was the victim of an arson attack causing £100,000 worth of damage. 

Repairs were complete within a year, though the pub remained empty for nearly another year. The owners had been unable to find a tenant who could persuade the licensing magistrates to grant them a licence. Once they had found their man the pub was torched again in January 1994, this time causing damage estimated at £25,000. In April there was a further attack, and yet another in August.

Pressure was building in 1994 for a community centre in Castlefield and the Castle became a candidate for the site. Despite planning permission being granted, a separate community centre had been planned by the end of the year.

January 1995 saw the Castle reopen, with a function room added in April. The new community centre opened in July 1997. In August, after several changes of licensee, the pub was firebombed. The licensee at the time, Mohammed Ramzan, asked the police for protection after receiving death threats. The then owners, Spring Inns – a joint venture between Grand Metropolitan and Fosters – reported they had had interest in the pub from Wycombe Mosque. The Castle was attacked again in September. 

An arrest was made in 1998 for the most recent arson attacks, though charges were later dropped. Andrew Czerwiwiec took over the licence from Mr Ramzan in May 1998, but when the pub is attacked three times on one August day it is the end. The pub is closed by October and sold to Wycombe Mosque for £170,000.

The former Castle in 2026 (the author)

Both the Turnpike and Golden Fleece were rebranded in the 1990s. The Turnpike was a Scottish & Newcastle pub – a successor to Courage – by 1993 and was then sold to the Magic Pub Co who rebranded it as a Hungry Horse despite the emphasis being on live music. In 1996 it was sold to Greene King. 

The Golden Fleece had been an Ind Coope pub until 1994 when it became a Big Steak Pub – a brand within Allied Domecq – until it was sold to Punch Pubs in 1999.

The Happy Wanderer escaped 1990s branding by being owned by Whitbread – as successor to the closed Wethered brewery – and advertising itself in 1995 as ‘an exciting family pub’ with a play area and pets’ corner. Whitbread sold it to Allied Domecq in 1999, who then sold it to Spirit Group – a subsidiary of Punch – who sold it back to Punch in 2003.

The new century’s vanishing pubs

In early 1996, a Council report highlighted the level of deprivation in Mickelfield, Castlefield and Hicks Farm. Councillor Ted Collins – one of the authors – said “the poor feel frustrated and let down by society. If you are very poor and cannot get a job, some people will say that ‘I do not want the community.’ We have to make everyone feel that they are part of the community.”

While some people did not want the Castle as part of Castlefield’s community, the Micklefield Inn was fighting to remain part of the community in an estate that was becoming mired in increasing violence and prostitution by 2000.

The Micklefield Inn was owned by Punch subsidiary Heritage Pub Company Trading Ltd. In 2005, they were seeking planning permission to close and redevelop the pub. That application must have failed as Admiral Taverns were the owners later that year. They quickly sold the pub to a property company and by 2007 it had gone, to be replaced by Wrights Place.

It seems that by the turn of the 21st century, the community pub in Wycombe’s suburbs was under serious threat. The next to close was the Turnpike. Despite a refurbishment in 2001 it closed in 2008 to become a Tesco Express two years later. Pubs were now worth more closed than open.

The former Turnpike as a Tesco Express in 2026 (the author)

We saw that the Wendover Arms was refurbished again in the year the Turnpike closed. Always looking for a new clientele, its owners – Wendover Hotel Ltd –  put in plans to change the pub’s use to a 39 bed hotel in August 2008. Although the change of use was agreed in 2009, there was a revised plan the following year for 46 beds and an extension to the rear car park, while keeping the remainder of the pub. 

Not satisfied with the 2010 plans, Buckingham Hotels Group – the owners in 2011 – planned to demolish the pub and redevelop it as a new hotel. Not all of those plans have come to fruition, though its owners have not lost the appetite for planning applications since 2011. And it is also clear that the Wendover Arms is no longer a public house.

The Wendover Arms in 2026, now the Wendover Hotel with extensions on both wings and bedrooms being added above (the author)

The Admiral Taverns-owned Jolly Bodger slipped away in 2010, though it’s not entirely clear when exactly it stopped trading. The local council – through Red Kite – are still the freeholders and the lease runs to 2067. In 2010, the lease was sold to private individuals. As recently as 2025 a planning application was made to turn the building into flats with a retail unit below.

The Punch-owned Golden Fleece was operated by the Cavalier Pub Co in 2001; they also ran the Antelope and Flint Cottage in the town. The pub was owned by Punch Pubs who closed and sold it to Tesco in 2013. Apparently, no planning permission was needed for a change of use to a shop.

The Golden Fleece as a Tesco Express in 2026. Despite the boardings up and trollies the original design of the pub is still apparent (the author)

In the Bellfield estate, the Bell & Mast had changed its name to the Masters by 1987. The original name appeared to be based on a bell on a ship’s mast, though behind the pub is a TV mast. The new pub sign showed a group of school masters wearing mortar boards – the connection remains unclear. The pub reverted to its former name in 2012. The owner, Admiral Taverns, sold the pub in 2013. It has since been demolished and housing has been built on the site.

In Bowerdean, the Happy Wanderer was in the Punch stable by 2005 and planning permission was sought for a change of use to a convenience store in 2014. However, Wycombe Islamic Society bought the building in 2015 when the pub closed. It became the Hive in 2017 – a multifaith community centre.

The Half Moon was refurbished by its owners, Enterprise Inns, in 2006, fully opening up the interior of the pub. It was for sale in 2016 and sold for development into flats by the following year.

The Half Moon as flats in 2026. The building still sports its pub signs. Are the exposed pipes a modernist touch or simply cheap? (the author)

Full circle

We started this post by discussing the opening and early years of the Hour Glass, and we end by discussing the history of the Hour Glass – Wycombe’s sole suburban pub since 2017 – from 1990 to the time of writing.

A games bar was added in 1990. In 1999, Punch Pubs bought the freehold from Allied Domecq and immediately transferred it to their subsidiary, Spirit Group. Spirit demerged from Punch in 2002 but were reacquired in 2006, demerging again in 2011, by which time the Hour Glass was owned by Scottish & Newcastle, who had been taken over by Heineken before Heineken renamed its pub division Star Pubs & Bars. 

By 2022, Alex Spittles and Luke Gregory had taken the lease, and made it clear how much they wanted Wanderer’s fans to use Wycombe’s last suburban community pub on match days.

Last one standing. The Hour Glass in 2026 (the author)

Sources 

The Bucks Free Press Archive.

SWOP (Sharing Wycombe’s Old Photographs).

Buckinghamshire Archive for licensing records and Wethered brewery minutes.

Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) website camra.org.uk

ROE, David (editor) 1995, Real Ale In Bucks, CAMRA books: St Albans.

Companies House website GOV.UK

Simonds Family website simondsfamily.me.uk

Wellington Boot website wellingtonbootblog.wordpress.com

The Lost Pubs Project website closed pubs.co.uk