Wycombe Marsh part 2

This post was last updated on 19 November 2025 to add a photograph of the old Disraeli Arms, kindly supplied by Carmel Grace. It was previously updated on 25 July 2025 to include new information about the Swan and Dolphin.

Our first post about Wycombe Marsh’s pubs looked at those along the Oxford turnpike, now the modern A40. This second post examines the history of the pubs in Lower Marsh, between the main road and the back stream of the Wye along Back Lane, now Kingsmead Road. 

The socio-economic history of the Marsh revolves around mills. Although there is evidence of corn milling at the Lower Marsh since the 11th century, by 1837 it was a paper mill. Henry Wheeler bought Wycombe Marsh Paper Mill in 1850, by which time the area was industrialising rapidly, with dozens of artisan cottages erected. Another paper mill, Beech Mill, at the junction of Beech Road and Kingsmead Road, operated from 1740 until 1900. As well as milling, the area was occupied by farming enterprises and furniture manufacture. 

The earliest pub we can find was the Old Swan, an alehouse in Abbey Barn Road dating from 1820. Close by was the Swan, another Abbey Barn Road alehouse dating from sometime between 1828 and 1838. The third alehouse was the Disraeli Arms of 1840 in Ford Street.

Later came the General Havelock (1856) and the Dolphin (1864) beerhouses. There were also two short-lived beerhouses open around 1840.

A mixed group of characters outside the General Havelock c1920 (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

The Old Swan appears in licensing records that were kept between 1753 and 1828 as an alehouse called the Swan with John Scott as the licensee. The licensing act of 1828 no longer obliged the clerk of the peace to keep records of alehouse licenses granted by the magistrates, and none were kept again until 1866. But study of the poor rate records, available from 1838, shows the pub as a beerhouse run by William Scott, a paper maker, and owned by Lydia Moreton. It’s reasonable to assume the alehouse of 1820 is the same pub as the beerhouse that we first find in 1838. So why did an alehouse become a beerhouse?

There are several reasons why alehouses became beerhouses. Firstly, beerhouse licences, which had been introduced in October 1830, were cheaper than the licences alehouses required, though, as the name suggests, only beer could be sold. Secondly, it’s possible that the magistrates refused, for some reason, to renew the Old Swan’s licence after 1830. There was nothing to stop a ratepayer buying a beerhouse licence after October 1830, as magistrates had no control over beerhouse licensing until the law changed in 1869. 

Close to the Old Swan was the Swan on Abbey Barn Road, an alehouse that is not in the 1828 licensing records but appears in the first poor rate records in 1838 with Emmanuel Webb as the licensee and Wheeler’s brewery as the owners. The poor rate overseer that compiled the assessment books regularly confused the two Swans, the Old Swan being within spitting distance of its neighbour on the other side of Abbey Barn Road.

However, the Swan must also have been an old building as, in 1867, Wheeler’s brewery built a new pub and transferred the licence to it. Their explanation to the magistrates was that the old building ‘had been built round and rendered otherwise unfit.’

The poor rate record for 1839 shows a beerhouse occupied by William Massey and owned by the Reverend Geneste on the Back Lane, now Kingsmead Road. This beerhouse is unnamed and disappears after 1840. Another beerhouse recorded only in 1840 was occupied by William Long and owned by Thomas Robinson. It included a bakehouse, a combination with brewing beer that was not uncommon.

Long then appears in 1841 as the licensee of the Disraeli Arms that, just the year before, had been opened in Ford Street by William Hughes. This was a fully licensed public house acquired in 1845 by Marlow brewer Richard Gibbons – see footnote for a short history of this brewery. Wethered’s brewery were the owners from 1853.

Landlord William Perry and his wife outside the Disraeli Arms. Perry was landlord from 1909 to 1916. In June 1916 he appealed against his conscription to military service on the grounds that he had an elderly mother to support. The Tribunal gave him six weeks to find a man to replace him at the pub. He left in November 1916 (courtesy of Carmel Grace, photoshopped by Godfrey Clements)

The Disraeli Arms in 1931. The new building would be to the left of the photographer (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library)

1856 saw Thomas Taylor set up a beerhouse on Back Lane in property owned by Lord Carrington. No pub name is recorded at this time, but it is later the General Havelock, probably after Major-General Sir Henry Havelock who had died of disease in India after the battles for Luknow during the Indian Rebellion of 1857. The original pub building was part of a farm though Taylor was a labourer.

Then in 1864 the last Marsh pub, the Dolphin beerhouse, opened in the end house of a row of six owned by James Williams on the corner of Ford Street and London Road, where the ornamental gardens are today. The house had been built in 1838 and used as a shop. The Dolphin was leased to Brakspear’s brewery of Henley with Benjamin Sheen as licensee.

It was common for dwelling houses to be adapted for use as beerhouses and shops, or a combination of both, as little work would be involved in the adaptation. Often the only way to tell Victorian and Edwardian pubs apart from dwellings was a pub sign or a notice attached to the building saying who held the licence. 

Benjamin Sheen wasted no time in applying for a spirit licence as the Bucks Herald report of 3 September 1864 makes clear. His solicitor told the magistrates that his client had ‘produced a memorial signed by several of the inhabitants, testifying to the good character of the applicant, and stating that the house was constructed and adapted for a licensed public house.’ However ‘Superintendent Hodgkinson said there were three public houses within 100 yards of the applicant's house, and five within a quarter of a mile. The Bench considered there was no necessity for another licensed house, and refused the application.’ 

On 27 October 1883, though tied to, and possibly owned by, Brakspear’s brewery of Henley, potential new licensee, Jacob Nottingham, asked the magistrates if it were necessary for him to take out a licence as he did not wish to use the house to sell beer. The Bucks Herald reported that ‘The Chairman said certainly not, if the applicant did not sell beer or any other intoxicating liquors. Superintendent Sargent said there were several licensed houses in the Marsh, and it would be a very good thing if this was done away with as a licensed house. The Chairman said he thought so too. He wished others would imitate the applicant's example. When it was stated [on the application] that the applicant was a total abstainer of many years’ standing he thought it was rather an incongruous thing that he should want to take a public house’. 

These two reports demonstrate the keenness with which beerhouse keepers would often pursue a full licence application, the role of the police in influencing the licensing magistrates to refuse full licences to beerhouses and the relish with which beerhouses were done away with. It would be interesting to know what Brakspear’s brewery’s reaction was to Mr Nottingham not renewing his licence. Once that had happened the magistrates would not have granted a new tenant a licence if the brewery removed Mr Nottingham.

The house that contained the Dolphin and, later, Nottingham’s shop was pulled down in the slum clearance programme of the mid-1930s. The row of houses had become known as the Quicks by that time.

Meanwhile, the Old Swan had been acquired by the Lucas brewery of Frogmoor in 1863 after Lydia Moreton’s death. The brewery may already have leased the pub and supplied its beer. The Lucas brewery was taken over (‘merged with’ was the term used) by Wheeler’s to form Wheelers Wycombe Breweries in 1898.

The 1902 annual meeting of licensing magistrates held to renew, or refuse, licences for the year ahead – often called a ‘brewster session’ – had been postponed from October of that year to February 1903. The reasons for, and the outcome of, the meeting are worth a post of its own, but as far as the Old Swan was concerned it meant closure on 10 October 1903. In the 20 years to the date of the meeting the pub had seen seven different licensees, while the neighbouring Swan – now in the same ownership – had seen eight changes of landlord.

It’s likely that both pubs had been struggling to make a living – a working men’s club had also opened in 1897 – and Wheeler’s chose the Old Swan to be one of the licences that would not be renewed. The property, consisting of the pub, adjoining cottage, large gardens and outbuilding was sold at auction on the day before closure to Joseph Mayo for £300. It then became a shop.

A parade on Abbey Barn Road passes Mayo’s shop (the brick and flint building next to the Methodist Chapel) c1918. This is probably the former Old Swan (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum)

The Disraeli Arms is by far the best documented of any pub on the south side of the London Road. There were only two families there between 1841 and 1903, the Longs and the Wrights. However, length of service didn’t help Sarah Wright in February 1903 when she was summoned to appear before the magistrates to answer charges that she had allowed drunkenness on her premises. The case, reported in the South Bucks Standard of 27 March 1903, seemed to rest on whether the police officer who found the alleged drunken man in the Disraeli Arms knew the man was drunk. The defence cast sufficient doubt on the constable’s evidence in the magistrates’ minds such that both the offender and Mrs Wright were acquitted. 

Allowing drunkenness was a serious offence for a licensee. The brewery was concerned enough about the 67-year-old widow’s ability to deal with such situations that they pensioned  her off the following month. In early Victorian times, brewers would often, sometimes under pressure from magistrates, refuse to allow a widow to take on the tenancy after their husband had died. One can’t help thinking that if she had been a man Mrs Wright might have kept her home. 

In the records of Maidenhead pub broker, Horley & Son, the pub is described around 1910 as a ‘Nice comfortable home’ comprising a bar, tap room, parlour, kitchen, scullery, cellar and four bedrooms. All of this for a yearly rent of £20. Trade was good for the last year, with 209 barrels of beer sold as well as spirits and sundries – probably tobacco. The ingoing valuation was £110 for ‘a good inventory.’ The £110 was the price the new tenant paid for the fixtures, fittings and stock.

Wethered’s began to think about expanding the pub in 1908 by buying adjoining property, though their offer was rejected. By 1925 they had had their plans to improve the pub rejected for the fourth time, while the trade in beer had increased to 355 barrels a year. Further land was bought in 1928 for £215 and still the magistrates refused plans to improve the building. It took a private meeting between the directors and chairman of the licensing magistrates, as well as a complaint to the Brewers’ Society, before approval was given in 1931 to put up a new building next door for £2294, which opened the following year.

The plan for the old pub was to let it. The new pub tenant, Walter Pierce, was offered a 10% commission on rents for finding a tenant for the old building. Not satisfied with the size of the new pub Wethered’s bought the house next door for £600 in 1936 to develop into a tea garden. This house may have been Brook Lodge, which Wethered’s then sold for £1000 in 1948 along with the old pub building for £300.

The new Disraeli Arms in 1971. The pub sign bears the Disraeli coat of arms (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

After the Old Swan’s closure in 1903 the Swan began to gather a reputation as an HQ for a variety of clubs and organisations – such as a Buffaloes Lodge, Marsh Cricket Club, an air gun club and, famously, Marsh Gordons Football Club – it had also had been altered in 1931/32, without the magistrates’ taking issue.

The Swan closed in 2010 and the Disraeli Arms followed in 2012. Both had been in Enterprise Inns’ ownership. While the Swan became a restaurant the Disraeli Arms was turned into flats, like the Red Lion across the London Road. The restaurant in the Swan failed and the building, though seemingly occupied at the time of writing, lives in a twilight world.

The Swan after closure and conversion to a Thai restaurant (courtesy of Movement 80 and closedpubs.co.uk)

The General Havelock is now the only surviving pub in this part of the Marsh. Owned by Lord Carrington until 1896, it was probably bought by the Royal Stag brewery of Wooburn who are recorded as the owners in 1910. Royal Stag was taken over by Wethered’s in 1927 who closed the brewery. 

The General Havelock before its 1933 rebuilding (courtesy of Marc Porter)

Like the Swan and Disraeli Arms, alterations were made to the Havelock in the 1930s. And, as at the Disraeli, the first set of plans of 1930 were refused. A further application in 1933 was approved, so long as a strip of land at the front of the pub was given up for road widening. The alterations – which must have been significant – cost £1931, including £37 for the installation of electric lighting. 

Despite the inter-war changes the Havelock retains a rural feel. It was granted a full licence in 1960. The Porter family took over the pub’s tenancy when Wethered’s swapped the Havelock for a Fuller’s pub in London in 1986, and a Porter has been there ever since.

The General Havelock today, still possessing a rural feel 

Footnote

Richard Gibbons was a brewer in St Peter Street, Marlow between 1842 and 1854. The Gibbons and Wethered families were intermarried, so there might have been some family dispute that led to Richard setting up on his own. The brewery and the pub estate, that included the Disraeli Arms, were sold at auction in 1853 and Wethered’s may have acquired other assets, as well as the pub.

The Disraeli Arms after conversion to flats (courtesy of Movement 80 and closedpubs.co.uk)

Sources and acknowledgements

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

Newspaper reports, particularly the Bucks Herald accessed through the British Newspaper Archive.

The Bucks Free Press archive.

Trade directories held at High Wycombe Library and accessed through University of Leicester special collections.

Census records accessed through The Genealogist.

Lost Pubs of High Wycombe in wellingtonbootblog

BROWN, Mike 2007, ABC: A Brewers’ Compendium: A Directory Of Buckinghamshire Brewers, Brewery History Society: Longfield.

 

West Wycombe’s historic pubs

This is an edited and updated version of an article published in the Bucks Free Press on 1 March 2024. It was updated on 27 September 2024 after new information about the Lord Le Despencer's Arms, the Plough, Nag's Head and Friend at Hand was discovered. It was further updated on 18 February 2025 to clarify the leasing of pubs in the early 19th century and the fate of the Lord Le Despencer's Arms.

West Wycombe parish had three alehouse keepers and an inn holder recorded in 1577. We don’t know the names of these houses but there’s a good chance they were all situated on the medieval highway from London to Oxford, Worcester and mid-Wales through West Wycombe village. The licensees were: Thomas Challenor (inn holder), George Hunte, James Hawle and Margaret Neighbore (alehouse keepers).

Over 100 years later, in 1689, a tax assessment has Georg Russell of the Unicorn paying two shillings and four pence, Tho[mas] Ryman of the Black Boy 10 pence and Mr Wells of the Geog [sic] two shillings and 10 pence. The 18th century The road through West Wycombe became part of the Beaconsfield and Stokenchurch Turnpike Trust in 1719. West Wycombe Road was realigned and surfaced between 1748 and 1752 using chalk dug from the hill behind the village. The Dashwoods’ West Wycombe Park was laid out from the 1750s to 1770s. All of this work led to West Wycombe village becoming an estate village and the West Wycombe Road a modern coaching road. Licensing records in Buckinghamshire were first kept from 1753. The White Hart is not mentioned by name in 1753 but is likely to have been licensed in that year, and earlier, as the building is 16th century. Francis Green was the landlord from 1754 when the sign name is first recorded. In 1768 the name changed to the Lord Le Despencer's Arms, most likely because owner, Francis Dashwood, had inherited the barony of le Despencer in 1763 becoming the 11th Baron le Despencer. The considerable sum of nearly £68 was spent on the pub in 1769, while the rent was increased from 10 shillings to 17 shillings, suggesting major alterations had taken place.

The Apple Orchard guest house (left) around World War Two. Once the Lord Le Despencer’s Arms (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library)

The Coach & Horses name appears just once in the 1766 licensing records with Thomas Barnes as licensee. Barnes had been at the Plough until 1765 and it’s probable that the Coach & Horses was the same premises. The location was the old sweet shop next to the Church Loft. Neither Barnes nor the Coach & Horses appear again in licensing records, but, as we shall see, the Plough name returns.

The Lion appears in the 1753 list of licences granted as the Red Lion. It was opposite the Church Loft and had gone by 1768. The Wheel was on the Oxford side of the Lion and was also licensed in 1753 but disappeared after 1770. The Chequers is recorded between 1753 and 1767. It was where the Village Hall is today.

We saw that a Unicorn and a separate Black Boy appeared in a 1689 tax assessment. In 1753 both a Black Boy and a Black Boy & Unicorn appear in the licensing records. The Black Boy disappeared after 1761 while the Black Boy & Unicorn remained, becoming simply the Black Boy in 1812. Looking again at the 1689 tax assessment tells us that the George and the Unicorn must have been of similar size and value, while the Black Boy was much smaller, so it’s unlikely the Black Boy competed with its near-namesake for custom. The Swan was licensed by 1753 and probably earlier. We’ll return to it shortly. The 19th century By 1828 West Wycombe village had a Swan, a Black Boy and a George, which was to become the George & Dragon around 1853. The Swan and Black Boy were leased by the Dashwood estate to John Rotton in 1808. He sold all his leaseholds to Messrs Biddle and Wheeler (a forerunner of Wheeler’s Wycombe Breweries) in 1812. Biddle & Wheeler had a lease on the George from 1808. The Lord Le Despencer’s Arms seems to have fallen on hard times after 1799 having 11 different landlords until it closed in 1815. Referred to for many years after as the 'late' Lord Le Despencer's Arms, the building later became Weller’s grocer’s shop, then the Apple Orchard guest house, a cafe and is now a homeware and gift shop with a cafe attached. However, the pub name reappeared in the parish at Downley Common in 1823. The coming of the railway between London and Oxford in 1844 put paid, almost overnight, to the coaching trade. Only the George and the Black Boy & Unicorn had the facilities to service long-distance coaches and there’s little evidence that they were much affected by the demise of the stagecoach. Back in 1830, the Beerhouse Act enabled ratepayers to brew and sell beer on their premises once they bought an annual licence from the Excise for two guineas (£2.10). This act gave West Wycombe High Street the Plough and the Nag’s Head. The Plough dates from 1841. Owned by Wethered’s of Marlow it is in a building dating from 1727 opposite the George & Dragon. The Nag's Head dates from the 1830s. By 1840 John Wingrove was the licensee and Richard Lucas, the Wycombe brewer, the owner. It adjoined the Plough in a much more modern-looking building out of keeping with others on the High Street, though it might be that an older building had received a Victorian brick facing.

The Plough in 1973 when still a Wethered’s pub (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

The Wycombe Railway’s extension from High Wycombe to Oxford and Aylesbury arrived at West Wycombe in 1862. A new beerhouse had been erected on railway land where a station was built. This was the Friend at Hand, leased by Frogmoor brewer Thomas Lucas from the Great Western Railway. A full licence was granted to licensee Thomas Bowler the following year.

The 20th century to the present

The Friend at Hand shortly after the new West Wycombe station was constructed (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by High Wycombe Library)

The railway through West Wycombe was brought up to main line standards between 1900 and 1906 by the Great Western & Great Central Joint Railway. Trains then began to steam through from Marylebone to Manchester, joined by trains from Paddington to Birkenhead in 1910. A new station now incorporated the Friend at Hand pub. Part of the building became the booking office and there was a dedicated public right of way through the pub from the road up to the platforms.

The Nag’s Head, run by the Harman family for 36 years, was considered by the licensing magistrates to be redundant in 1909, closing at the end of that year. Harry Harman received £37 10s for the loss of his licence.

The Nag’s Head, with the Plough next door, in December 1895. The West Wycombe Brass Band serenading licensee Harry Harman perhaps? (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

West Wycombe village was in a poor state of repair by the late-1920s. Sir John Dashwood, short of money to carry out repairs, put the village up for auction in 1929. The intention was to divide the village into 63 lots and give tenants the opportunity to buy before the auction was held. At short notice the auction was cancelled. The Royal Society of Arts (RSA) had offered to buy all 63 lots, while the Dashwoods agreed to sell.

Wethered’s had decided not to bid for the three Dashwood-owned pubs on the south side of the High Street. However, they opened negotiations with the RSA to buy the old Nag’s Head so they could extend the Plough. These negotiations came to nothing. Then in 1934 the RSA sold West Wycombe to the National Trust who then offered the old Nag’s Head to Wethered for £1100. Again, those negotiations came to nothing, and later plans to absorb the post office into the Plough foundered too.

A recent view of the old Nag's Head (courtesy Movement80)

The Plough was eventually sold to the National Trust in 1990 after Wethered’s brewery had closed and its parent company, Whitbread, was divesting itself of pubs. It’s now leased to a private operator. The three oldest pubs in the village, particularly the Swan and the mid-16th century Black Boy, were in a poor state in 1931. The licensing magistrates approved plans to rebuild the Swan and close the Black Boy, which was in a very bad state of repair. Compensation of £250 was paid to licensee Thomas Martin for the loss of his licence and another £1350 to the RSA. The Black Boy closed on 31 December 1931 later becoming the village hall, and an antique shop by 1970. Today it houses Brocklehurst Architects.

The Black Boy in 1925 close to the end of its life as a pub (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Bucks Free Press)

The Swan, still leased to Wheeler’s, was sensitively extended and refitted in 1932, retaining much of its old character. One oddity is that while the bar was refitted so that beer could be drawn up from the cellar using hand pumps, the pumps were never installed. Beer is still drawn straight from barrels on stillage behind the bar. In the same family since 1910, the pub is three-star rated by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) for its important historic interior, and is Grade II listed.

The Swan c1903 with the horsebus about to set off for Wycombe and Loudwater and a Wheeler’s dray making deliveries (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum)

The Swan shortly after the 1932 upgrade, with the extension on the left, and perhaps licensee, Mr Beauchamp, standing proudly at the door (courtesy pubhistory.com and Peter Wonnacott)

Perhaps the oldest of all the pubs in the High Street is the George & Dragon. It’s thought to date back to the mid-16th century and was refaced in 1720. The sign is thought to date to that time. Like the Swan it was leased to Wheeler’s by the RSA and then the National Trust.

A High Street scene c1900. The George & Dragon is on the right, the Plough and Nag’s Head the left, with a large gathering in the distance (courtesy of SWOP, copyright managed by Wycombe Museum)

There was great excitement in May 1963 when new licensee, Peter Maddock, tested his theories about hidden rooms, a bag of gold, a blocked-up cellar and the inevitable ghost. Sadly, he found nothing but empty space behind the facade that dated back to the construction of the Georgian brick facing. The grand unveiling of the hidden room took place in front of TV cameras; at least the publicity must have been worth the effort. The Trust sold the George & Dragon to Unique Pub Properties in 2003. The owner is now the Stonegate Group.

The George & Dragon with its grand Georgian brick facing (courtesy of CAMRA)

West Wycombe station had closed in 1958 together with the right of way from the West Wycombe Road through the Friend at Hand pub to the platforms. The pub was sold by its then owners Courage to Morland of Abingdon in 1993 and then closed in 1998 being converted to housing.

The Friend at Hand after conversion to housing (courtesy Movement 80)

Sources

SWOP (Sharing Wycombe’s Old Photographs)

Buckinghamshire Archives for poor rate assessments and property deeds

National Trust Land Map

HM Land Registry

Lost Pubs Project

The EurekA Partnership, The People of West Wycombe

H Harman, Notes on West Wycombe, 1934

British Newspaper Archive

Gary Marshall, West Wycombe Village: An Archaeological Appraisal Of The Church Loft And Village Buildings, Records of Bucks vol 55, 2015

Special thanks to historical research expert Dr Frances Kerner for additional information about the Lord Le Despencer's Arms and the Dashwood archive.