Chalvey and Upton-Cum-Chalvey

-

Chalvey is part of Slough, and is the place I live in at the time of writing this note. 


I live in a council flat nearly opposite St Peter's Church. The latter sometimes hosts jumble sales, and second-hand book sales......

RS



Chalvey
Buckinghamshire
Chalvey - St Peter's Church - geograph.org.uk - 1114632.jpg
St Peter's Church
Location
Grid reference:SU965795
Location:51°30’24"N, 0°36’37"W
Data
Post town:Slough
Postcode:SL1
Dialling code:01753
Local Government
Council:Slough
Parliamentary
constituency:		Slough

     The World War I Memorial is in front of the church above but is not seen here in this pic. What is presented here is the back of the building. However, images of it appear on my blog. RS


Chalvey is a village in Buckinghamshire which is now a suburb of Slough. It forms part of the ancient parish of Upton-cum-Chalvey in the Stoke Hundred of the county.

It was first recorded in 1217 by an Old English word meaning "Calf Island", from Cealf meaning calf. As the name implies, Chalvey lies low on the plain of the River Thames, and there may have been enough of a rise for an island to stand above the slough (marsh) from which the later town takes its name.

As Slough developed, Chalvey developed as a working-class community of small terraced houses. Nonconformist churches were established starting with the Congregationalists in 1806.[1]:37

In 1849, the Slough to Windsor railway was built, passing through the middle of Chalvey. A halt was opened by the Great Western Railway in 1929 but closed the following year.[2]

At some point between 1850 and 1880, a local legend developed about the "Chalvey Stab Monkey" involving an organ grinder and a stabbed monkey; the first person to get blind drunk on the anniversary of the monkey's funeral is declared "Mayor of Chalvey". Traditionally, residents of Chalvey have been known as "stab-monks".[1]:40 A long-standing local joke suggests that Chalvey's main industry is in the Treacle Mines. On occasion, this has been taken to be a reference to the local sewage works.[3]

It was stated on the "Immigration - How We Lost Count" edition of the BBC1 documentary Panorama on 23 July 2007 that Chalvey is severely overcrowded, and that most of its residents are immigrants and members of ethnic minorities. Chalvey has a large Asian population.[4]

The first recorded Lord of the Manor of Chalvey was recorded in the year 1502. The current Lord of Chalvey, Christopher Johnson, lives in the United States.

References

  1. ↑ Jump up to:1.0 1.1 Fraser, Maxwell (1973). The History of Slough. Slough Corporation.
  2. Jump up↑ Hunter, Judith; Hunter, Karen (1992). Around Slough in Old Photographs. Alan Sutton Publishing. p. 53. ISBN 978-1845884628.
  3. Jump up↑ Slough Museum (2003). The Changing Face of Slough. Breedon Books. p. 58. ISBN 978-1859833155.
  4. Jump up↑ 2001 - Key Statistics Slough Borough Council Chalvey WardSlough




Upton-cum-Chalvey

Upton-cum-Chalvey
Buckinghamshire
St. Laurence Upton, Slough - geograph.org.uk - 71130.jpg
St Laurence in Upton
Location
Grid reference:
Data
Post town:Slough
Postcode:SL1
Dialling code:01753
Local Government
Council:Slough
Parliamentary
constituency:		Slough

Upton-cum-Chalvey is an ancient parish in the Stoke Hundred of Buckinghamshire that now forms the centre of Slough. As its name suggests, the parish originally comprised the separate villages of Upton and Chalvey.

History

The Domesday Survey of 1086 refers to Upton, and a wood for 200 pigs, worth £15. Upton took its name from its situation at the top of the slope from the river terrace — the various levels in the area having been formed in the Ice Age.

In 1894 a new civil parish of Slough was formed from part of the civil parish of Upton-cum-Chalvey, which was reduced in size as Slough expanded until it was entirely annexed by 1901. The ecclesiastical parish is still known as Upton cum Chalvey.[1]

Church

Upton's Norman Church, St Laurence's, was the marriage place (7 May 1788) and burial place (1822) of Sir William Herschel (in whose memory there stands a newly erected stained-glass window depicting Uranus, which he discovered, and other planets), and the burial place of Charles Hatchett who discovered niobium.

Other buildings

Upton Court is the name of the original manorial buildings for the parish of Upton. Parts of Upton Court were built in 1325. In the 19th century, it was a seat of the Burton family and was, up until March 2010, home to the Slough Observer newspaper. The nearby Slough Grammar School changed its name in 2013 to Upton Court Grammar School.

The Mere is a 19th-century half-timbered building, built in 1887 by the grandson of Richard Bentley, is now the head office of the National Foundation for Educational Research. Long Close School was established in the area in 1940.

Upton Park

Upton Park forms one of Slough's earliest planned estates. Laid out in 1842, the grounds (a public park as Herschel Park since 1949) are believed to have been designed by Joseph Paxton.[2]

In 2011, the nine-acre Grade-II-listed park and nature reserve underwent a restoration project to re-establish the area to its former Victorian glory with a lottery grant of £2.7m from the Heritage Lottery Fund.[3] Friends of Herschel Park, a local conservation group, was created to manage the restoration, as well as to oversee the design and maintenance of the area.[4] The park regularly holds events for adults and children throughout the year. [5]

References

  1. Jump up↑ St Mary's Church Slough website
  2. Jump up↑ p 144, The History of Slough, Maxwell Fraser, Slough Corporation, Slough, 1973
  3. Jump up↑ Herschel Park - Slough Borough Council
  4. Jump up↑ The Friends of Herschel Park
  5. Jump up↑ Whats On - Friends of Herschel Park

Outside links












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Curfew Tower of Windsor Castle

-
Image
Back in the early 1970s I knew the old guide at the Curfew Tower of Windsor Castle. He was called George Hudson. From around the ages of 13 - 16  I used to help him with the second floor of the Tower itself as an unofficial guide. The history of this building was surprisingly interesting, and quite often tourists would miss out on not visiting it. Among other things, it is the home of the "small" dungeons where beehive shaped stone cells can still be seen. One poor prisoner tried to make a hole in one of them but was unfortunately caught as he emerged through the guard room of the Curfew Tower. Nowadays, the dungeons are used for social occasions! What follows is a listed, and "potted" description of the Curfew Tower. Here, I am only relying on memory. I may check for accuracy at some later date... The Guard Room/The "First Floor" (excluding the dungeons which could be seen as being the "basement"). This was also the place where the bel
Read more

Some Pics from the past.....

-
Image
  My pater's mater..probably photographed in the 1940s. It is believed that this image above and  the one below was taken at their home in Brixton, London. It also had an air raid shelter and a conservatory of sorts if I recall correctly.  George Charles Searle KPM / My pater's pater. He was a Londoner and knowledgeable on many things                            My pater's pater carrying the former as a child  in a park in the first half of                                                                                         the 1930s                          Ferdinand Herman Ritter von Rittershausen (1831-1899) an ancestor of  my late pater's                                        mater. He was knighted by Emperor Franz Josef in Vienna 1874.                                                A somewhat blurred coloured image of the blogger's mater who passed on in 2005. This photo was probably taken back in the early 1970s.                              
Read more

The Passing Away of Pater....

-
Image
Just after 1am on the morning of January 30th 2023 I heard a bell ring and then a little later two knocks on my door at the council flat in Chalvey, Slough. Two policemen had come to inform me that my pater had died in his council flat and forced entry had been necessary to recover the body. I was not really surprised by all this as it was expected as he would die "soon" as he was  91, and moreover on the last occasion when I saw him in December last his actions seemed a bit odd . He seemed to be suffering from a degree of dementia and was  "unable" to come out of his flat to have dinner with myself  in Turham Green. Instead he asked me simply to buy 4 bottles (or rather tins)  of Guinness for him. I undertook this strange request as a dutiful son, and later returned to Slough. His previous abode was a large private house known as Croft House in East Street,  Selsey where he lived with my step mother a Russian lady called Irina. It had a large abundance of interesti
Read more