In 2023 the Royal Photographic Society's Landscape Group launched a project called "Postcards from Home". The idea was to create 3 postcards with images taken within 5 miles of your home and one postcard reverse summarising in fewer than 100 words the theme of the postcards.
I took as my theme three historic routes which pass within 5 miles of my home in Chinnor which have been repurposed over the centuries.
The Icknield Way is ancient trackway that runs from Wiltshire, where it joins a track from Cornwall, to Norfolk. It was an Iron Age route used for the transportation of metal and herds and flocks of livestock. The earliest written record was in the Anglo-Saxon Charters in 903. In the 1130s it was named as one of the Four Highways of England (together with Ermine Street, Fosse Way and Watling Street). There are several variations of the route near the Chilterns Escarpment probably dependent on seasonal usage when the valley would have been wetter than the ridge. Today the route is a popular bridleway and footpath that meanders up and down the Chilterns.
The Stokenchurch Turnpike was a section of the London to Oxford stagecoach route. The highway approaching Oxford from the east, down the steep face of the Chilterns, was turnpiked from Stokenchurch to Woodstock and Oxford in 1719. Turnpiking was the most effective means of ensuring that those who used the route contributed directly to its upkeep as the road was used by wagons and heavy carriages and was in danger of becoming impassible in Winter. The main visible remnant of this period are several milestones along the route that date from 1744. You can just see one in the grassy verge in front of the Dashwood Roadhouse.
There were numerous coaching inns and hostelries along the route. The Kings Arms in Stokenchurch dated from the 16th century. In its most recent form, the Kings Hotel, it was gutted by fire in 2021 and still stands derelict. Another coaching inn, the Swan at Tetsworth became an antiques centre. A few pubs still hold out including England's Best in Postcombe. The road became part of the A40 Trunk Road in 1923 but lost its trunk road status with the building of the M40 in 1967 and is now a quiet local road only.
The Chinnor & Princes Risborough Railway (C&PRR) is what remains of the The Watlington and Princes Risborough Railway, an independent English railway company that opened a line between the Oxfordshire towns of Watlington and Chinnor in 1872. The 9 mile branch line, which connected to the Great Western Railway (GWR) mainline at Princes Risborough, did not make any money and was taken over in 1883 by GWR.
Chinnor Lime Works was established in 1908 and started the production of cement in 1919. As Chinnor Cement Works it ceased production in 2000. The railway was used to bring coal to the cement works and to carry the cement away. The cement works have been demolished and the brown field site is now a housing development and a nature reserve.
The line was nationalised in 1948. British Railways closed the line to passenger traffic in 1957 but continued to carry a freight-only cement service until 1989.
When commercial operation on the line ended in 1989, a volunteer group called the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway Association was formed to preserve the line by retaining the route and acquiring period rolling stock. C&PRR was subsequently formed, and the remaining route reopened as a heritage railway. The C&PRR has reopened a platform at Princes Risborough so that the railway connects with the Chiltern Line and it aims to reopen the line as far as Aston Rowant.
