Chepping Wycombe

This article is about the modern civil parish. For the former borough of Chepping Wycombe, see High Wycombe.

Chepping Wycombe
Green Dragon, Flackwell Heath, 2010
Chepping Wycombe is located in Buckinghamshire
Chepping Wycombe
Chepping Wycombe
Location within Buckinghamshire
Population14,455 [1]
14,648 (2011 Census)[2]
OS grid referenceSU905908
Civil parish
  • Chepping Wycombe
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townHigh Wycombe
Postcode districtHP10
Dialling code01494
PoliceThames Valley
FireBuckinghamshire
AmbulanceSouth Central
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Buckinghamshire
51°36′29″N 0°41′50″W / 51.6081°N 0.6972°W / 51.6081; -0.6972

Chepping Wycombe is a civil parish in the ceremonial county of Buckinghamshire, England. The parish includes the three large villages of Tylers Green, Loudwater, and Flackwell Heath. The central part of the parish comprises extensive business and industrial development lying adjacent and underneath an elevated section of the M40 in the valley of the River Wye.

The name is a variant of earlier Chipping,[3] from the Old English word cieping, 'market' or 'market-place'. Historically, Chepping or Chipping Wycombe was the formal name of the ancient borough and later municipal borough of High Wycombe or Much-Wiccomb.[3] It was also the name of the ancient parish which included the borough and extended further than the borough boundary to also cover the surrounding rural area.

The ancient parish of Chepping Wycombe was split in 1866, with the part inside the borough becoming a separate civil parish called "Wycombe" or "Wycombe Borough", leaving the reduced parish of Chepping Wycombe covering the more rural areas outside the borough.[4] Between 1868 and 1880 the parish of Chepping Wycombe was governed by a Local Board of Health. The board was abolished in 1880 when the borough boundaries were extended, notably taking in Wycombe Marsh and other areas from Chepping Wycombe parish. However, the parish boundaries were not changed to match the new borough boundary in 1880, and so the parish of Chepping Wycombe again found itself part inside and part outside the borough. In 1894, when parish councils were introduced under the Local Government Act 1894, the civil parish of Chepping Wycombe was split between the urban area of High Wycombe (Chepping Wycombe Urban parish) and the rural areas outside the borough to the east (Chepping Wycombe Rural parish).[5] The parish was reduced in size in 1901 ceding land to the adjacent High Wycombe parish and its boundaries were further changed in 1934.[6] Chepping Wycombe Rural parish was renamed simply Chepping Wycombe in 1949.

Today the areas which comprised the historic borough and that of the civil parish, (the residual part of the ecclesiastical parish) together with West Wycombe constitute the majority of the present-day High Wycombe Urban Area.

  1. ^ Neighbourhood Statistics 2001 Census
  2. ^ "Civil Parish population 2011". Neighbourhood Statistics. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 18 November 2016.
  3. ^ a b "Chipping", Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. II (1st ed.), Edinburgh: Colin Macfarquhar, 1771.
  4. ^ Youngs, Frederic A. (1979). Guide to the Local Administrative Units of England, Volume 1: Southern England. London: Royal Historical Society. p. 43.
  5. ^ Vision of Britain: Chepping Wycombe AP/CP[permanent dead link‍]
  6. ^ Vision of Britain website: Chepping Wycombe CP[permanent dead link‍]