WHAT makes a village the perfect destination for weekend ramblers?
A welcoming pub? A pretty main street? A range of undemanding, easy-to-follow circular walks?
Hedgerley has got it all, it seems. And watching some visiting morris men thwacking their sticks and jingling their bells outside the White Horse on a summer’s evening, it’s not hard to see why the place is such a hit with weekend wanderers.
From the picturesque village pond and pretty cottage gardens with their hollyhocks and foxgloves to the glorious open meadows which fan out towards the M40, it’s not hard to see the appeal of a pint and a stroll around here on a sunny day.
Perhaps it also helps that ramblers can incorporate that pint into a circular route of varying lengths from Fulmer, Farnham Common or Stoke Poges, or detour here off the Beeches Way or from Burnham Beeches.
Among the most popular short circuits are routes through Kiln Wood or round the edge of Church Wood towards Hedgerley Green and back.
Bird lovers might want to stay close to the village and take a lazy meander through Church Wood itself, an RSPB nature reserve backing onto the churchyard of the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, a Grade II listed building from the 1850s.
The 37-acre reserve is a peaceful place where volunteers manage the woodland to encourage insects and wildflowers to flourish, providing a perfect environment for the most common avian residents, including blackcaps, chiffchaffs, robins, thrushes and buzzards.
There’s room enough here for visitors to enjoy a 2km circular route around the enclave, but those straying a little further afield can emerge from Church Wood onto a footpath through open fields leading towards the motorway, where the constant thrum of traffic cuts through the afternoon tranquillity.
The brutal gash carved through the countryside by the M40 provides a stark contrast to the serenity of the surrounding fields and the electric crackle from the pylons marching over the hill is another reminder of how life has changed here over the centuries.
Around these parts, agriculture has been the main source of livelihood since antiquity. During the iron age, early settlers at the nearby Bulstrode Camp fort would certainly have been farmers, while in medieval times the traditional method of open field farming was used in the area, with families allocated their own narrow strips of land.
Although the Hedgerley name is of Saxon origin, the area was occupied much earlier and kiln remains tell of a thriving Romano-British pottery industry, with a Roman road thought to have run through the parish to the south of the M40.
Local history records chronicle owners of the medieval manors that dominated life in the area, with significant local farms including those at Slade Farm, Court Farm, Metcalf Farm and Colley Hill Farm, the workers living in cottages in the village and much of the parish land used for pasture.
Before the building of new houses in the 1930s, the population was small and those not working in the fields might have been in domestic service at Hedgerley Park or Bulstrode House, or involved in brick and tile making.
The earliest mention of Hedgerley tiles dates from 1344 and the famous fire-resistant ‘Hedgerley Loam’ was dug extensively in the 18th century and used to line furnaces in the UK and abroad.
In Victorian times a third or so of parish land was devoted to arable crops, with potatoes, turnips and beans also grown for local consumption. Horse or oxen-drawn ploughs would have worked the land until the invention of the steam engine in the 19th century.
In 1881, the impressive 800-acre Hedgerley Park Estate was sold by auction in London to Mrs Ellen Emily Stevenson, the daughter of a wealthy tobacco broker and a young widow with three small children whose husband had died of a brain disease at the age of 30 after less than two years of marriage.
Her picturesque new abode comprised a 16-bedroom mansion and pleasure grounds with lodges, plantations and ornamental lakes with waterfalls, not to mention 10 servants and five productive farms.
She and her daughters played an active part in village life, with the children at Hedgerley School being regularly invited to picnics in the park grounds where the “tea, buns and bananas given by the Misses Stevenson” proved a great treat.
Ellen was to be a churchwarden at St Mary’s for more than 30 years and in 1893 she gave the use of Court Farm and about 30 acres to the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society for use as a farm home, teaching agriculture to up to 26 boys between the ages of 12 and 16.
This Grade II listed Georgian house dates from 1771 and the farm home was formally opened by the Bishop of Reading in 1893, allowing young boys to spend two years learning milking, sheep sheering and how to plan and grow crops for sale at local markets.
The home closed in 1926 but is still a prominent village landmark, boasting a swimming pool, stables, tennis court and summer house, going on the market in 2020 with a £5m guide price.
Ellen’s daughter Ethel was a suffragist who helped to form the Gerrards Cross branch of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and became its first president in 1912, going on to become the first president of the Hedgerley Women’s Institute when it was formed in 1921.
That same year saw sister Maud serve as a jury member in a murder trial at Aylesbury Assizes that shocked the nation after “musical milkman” George Arthur Bailey poisoned his young pregnant wife in Little Marlow.
The trial culminated in the hanging of Bailey, who earned his nickname because he could be heard whistling while on his daily rounds. But it was also said to be the first time women had been allowed to sit on an English murder jury.
Although the 1918 Representation of the People Act famously ended the ban on women voting in general elections, women in their twenties were still excluded, and were also prohibited from taking part in public life by joining the professions or by serving as jurors.
Around this time the Stevensons moved out of Hedgerley Park and into a new house they had built, with the estate being put up for sale. It had croquet and tennis lawns and stabling for six horses, but no electric lighting.
The estate was finally sold in 1931 to Richmond Watson and a short while later the house was demolished, although some outbuildings remained until after the Second World War.
Ethel died in 1937, a month before her 92nd birthday, and is buried in St Mary’s Churchyard alongside Maud and Ethel. The grave of Richmond Watson is nearby: he died in 1944 at the age of 70.
Today, much of the surrounding countryside is part of the Portman Burtley estate, with visitors even getting the chance to get a taste of stylish country living by renting out Slade Farm, for example, which accommodates 15 people in seven luxury bedrooms.
Here, “art deco meets glamour country chic” with exposed beams and Venetian mirrored furnishings, just half an hour from central London with easy access from the M40.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to ignore the M40 around these parts, and Hedgerley also suffers from its proximity to Beaconsfield Services, with boy racers rocketing along Hedgerley Lane and less community-spirited motorists leaving an unpleasant flurry of litter in their wake.
Ramblers heading beyond the confines of Church Wood may find it difficult to ignore the roar of traffic as they approach the otherwise pretty hamlet of Hedgerley Green, with its picturesque ponds and inquisitive horses, before looping round to return to the village.
Those prepared to venture a little further afield can strike off through an unprepossessing motorway underpass towards Bulstrode Park, the site of a house built by perhaps the area’s most notorious resident, Judge Jeffreys, in 1686.
The “hanging judge” gained his reputation during the “Bloody Assizes” of the previous year, when King James II was anxious to make an example of those who had taken part in the West Country rebellion led by the Duke of Monmouth which had been halted by the Battle of Sedgemoor in Somerset.
With Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys presiding, assisted by four other judges, hundreds of rebels were condemned to harsh and terrible deaths, or transportation to the colonies for long years of slavery.
Those doomed to public hangings were then disembowelled and quartered, their heads and quarters dipped in pitch and salt and sent to villages to be displayed on poles as a dire warning of the consquences of treason.
Jeffreys returned to London where he and his fellow judges were formally thanked by the King, but he did not get to enjoy his new property at Bulstrode long: after the king was deposed in the English Revolution of 1688, Jeffreys was incarcerated in the Tower of London, where he died of ill health the following year.
For those heading under the motorway and emerging onto Hedgerley Lane, two footpaths cross through Bulstrode Park, where Judge Jeffreys’ house was replaced in the 19th century by one erected by the Duke of Somerset.
The Bulstrode estate itself is bigger than it looks, with a series of lonely footpaths criss-crossing the woods behind the main house.
For many years owned by a Christian mission, the estate has been in private hands since 2013 and was put on the market in 2023 with a £6m price tag.
Bulstrode also provides easy access to Gerrards Cross, where ramblers arriving by rail can head off towards Hedgerley, using the White Horse pub as a handy halfway rest stop.
From the station, a quick amble across the Common towards the Bull Inn leads you down Main Drive to the bottom of Bulstrode Park, where a straight path leads across to Hedgerley Lane.
Thought to be the oldest recorded inn in Gerrards Cross, the Bull – or Oxford Arms as it was formerly known – was in an ideal position at a crossroads to capture the trade of passing travellers, with the turnpiking of the Oxford Road in 1719 giving business a major boost.
Back across the motorway, the roar of heavy traffic slowly subsides as you skirt Church Wood and head back towards the White Horse, where a welcoming pint beckons at a convivial village local known for its real ales, hanging baskets and old oak beams.
One of five historic buildings surveyed by the Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society, the original building probably dates from around 1679, with the first reference to a pub on the site coming in 1740.
Here, there’s a chance to reflect on the day’s ramblings: of woods alive with birdsong, of medieval manors and murderous milkmen, and a cemetery full of memories of a bygone age.
