Knotty Green
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Knotty Green is a hamlet in the parish of Penn in Buckinghamshire, England. It is located in the Chiltern Hills and, over the years, has become a leafy and prosperous part of Beaconsfield. Knotty Green and Beaconsfield are, however, separated by a parish and district council boundary. Knotty Green is in Chiltern District whereas Beaconsfield is in South Bucks district. The centre of the old hamlet is still identifiable at the junction of Penn Road and Forty Green Road where there remains a remnant of the old Green from which the hamlet took part of its name.The name of the village can be traced back to the 13th century. Knotty Green, or Nattuc as it was called in 1222, takes its name from the Old English, nattuc (rough grass of tussocks) that grew on the green.
The village, in the parish of Penn, just over a mile from the Old Town of Beaconsfield, was first noted on a map of 1680. In 1841, there were just fourteen families and seventy-three inhabitants - including three shoemakers and a young lace-maker. The rest were agricultural or ordinary labourers, apart from one married couple of independent means. There were no shops, schools or churches but The Red Lion pub had already been established for perhaps a century or more. The existence of the pub, which remains at the heart of the village, is first recorded in the 'Register of Alehouse Keepers' of 1753, which reveals that the landlord was one David Grove. Today, The Red Lion - remains the only pub in the village.
Knotty Green has had many variants of its name: Nattuc (1222), Nattetok (1503), Natwoke (1588), Knoty (map 1680), Notty (1692), Nottock (1698), Naughty (1761) and later Knatty, Knaddocks and Knocklocks. Since the late 1800s the name has been consistently Knotty Green.
The opening of Beaconsfield railway station on April 2nd, 1906, along with the arrival of the railway, radically changed this small hamlet. Within two months, Earl Howe had auctioned 105 acres (0.42 km²) for development in 121 plots of varying sizes. There were country cottages for £200; superior country cottages for £250; moderately sized homes for between £300 and £400 and superior country residences for £750. Water mains had just been put in along the Penn Road, gas was close by and the railway hotel advertised large stable accommodation. This immediate post-railway development, which increased the population of the parish as a whole by nearly 50 per cent in five years, was confined to the Penn Road and Forty Green Road. There was still an obvious dividing line between the parishes of Penn and Beaconsfield, where the boundary stream ran under the Penn Road - and where Beaconsfield's pavement and new houses stopped abruptly. Electricity arrived by 1913 and the Seeleys Estate was built on the Seeleys Farm land between the late 1940s and early 1970s. The first street lights appeared in the village in 1959. The population of the village is now just over 2,000.
And at least two and a half centuries on from David Grove , Tina Massie is now the landlady of the The Red Lion. The pub, which lies at the centre of the hamlet along with the home of Knotty Green Cricket Club and a children's playground, remains as the only pub in the village of Knotty Green and is one of only two commercial entities in the village - the other being the Vauxhall showroom opposite. The pub has an Enid Blyton Room, with a gallery of original prints and a library of books donated by members of the Enid Blyton Society. The children's author, lived most of her life in a house called Green Hedges (since demolished) nearby.
Today, Val Doonican is among Knotty Green's rich and famous residents.
Sources: Penn and Tyler's Green in Old Photographs (Britain in Old Photographs) by Miles Green (Paperback - 10 Jun 1999); A Brief History of Knotty Green and the Sheep Washing Pond - by Debbie Marsden (2006); www.visitbuckinghamshire.org (official Tourist Board website).
