Penn is a village and
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...
in
Buckinghamshire
Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshir ...
, England, about north-west of
Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield ( ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, northwest of central London and southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High Wycombe.
The ...
and east of
High Wycombe
High Wycombe, often referred to as Wycombe ( ), is a market town in Buckinghamshire, England. Lying in the valley of the River Wye, Buckinghamshire, River Wye surrounded by the Chiltern Hills, it is west-northwest of Charing Cross in London, ...
. The parish's cover Penn village and the hamlets of Penn Street,
Knotty Green,
Forty Green and
Winchmore Hill. The population was estimated at 4,168 in 2019.
History
The name is
Brittonic in origin, comparable with the modern
Welsh typonym ''pen'', and may mean "hill top" or "end". Penn stands on a strong
promontory
A promontory is a raised mass of land that projects into a lowland or a body of water (in which case it is a peninsula). Most promontories either are formed from a hard ridge of rock that has resisted the erosive forces that have removed the s ...
of the
Chiltern Hills
The Chiltern Hills or the Chilterns are a chalk escarpment in southern England, located to the north-west of London, covering across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire; they stretch from Goring-on-Thames in the south- ...
. From the tower of
Holy Trinity
The Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the Christian doctrine concerning the nature of God, which defines one God existing in three, , consubstantial divine persons: God the Father, God the Son (Jesus Christ) and God the Holy Spirit, three ...
Parish Church, it is claimed to be possible to see into several other counties.
Penn family
Segraves Manor, the principal seat in Penn, belonged to the Penn family.
Sybil Penn, wife of David, was dry nurse and foster mother to
King Edward VI
Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and King of Ireland, Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. The only surviving son of Henry VIII by his thi ...
and Lady of the Bed Chamber to his sister,
Queen Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I (7 September 153324 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. She was the last and longest reigning monarch of the House of Tudor. Her eventful reign, and its effect on history ...
.
The Penn estate directly benefited from the Slave Compensation Act of 1837. The family owned two plantations in Jamaica and a total of 210 individuals split between the Clarendon and the Oak plantations. The estate was awarded a total of 4095 pounds, the equivalent of half a million pound today.
The Penn family of Penn were not known to be related to
William Penn
William Penn ( – ) was an English writer, religious thinker, and influential Quakers, Quaker who founded the Province of Pennsylvania during the British colonization of the Americas, British colonial era. An advocate of democracy and religi ...
(after whose father,
Admiral Sir William Penn,
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
is named), whose family came from Wiltshire. In 1735 the manor of Penn passed from the unmarried Roger Penn to his sole heir and sister, who was married to the 3rd Baronet Scarsdale, an ancestor of the Lords Curzon. Penbury Grove House was built in 1902 by the American engineer
Horace Field Parshall as a replica of
Pennsbury Manor, William Penn's house in Pennsylvania, Parshall wrongly thinking that these Penns shared a connection with Pennsylvania.
Myth
Penn is reputedly haunted by the ghost of an 18th-century farm labourer, who appears laughing, on a phantom horse.
Commons and sports
Penn Street,
Knotty Green and
Forty Green are hamlets in the parish, each within a mile of the main village.
Penn Street and Knotty Green have village commons, where the Penn Street and Knotty Green cricket clubs play. The local
public house
A pub (short for public house) is in several countries a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption Licensing laws of the United Kingdom#On-licence, on the premises. The term first appeared in England in the ...
s, The Squirrel in Penn Street and The Red Lion in Knotty Green, face their respective commons. Forty Green also has a pub – The Royal Standard of England. Penn has a
non-League football
Non-League football describes association football, football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is ...
club,
Penn & Tylers Green F.C., which plays at Elm Road.
Penn today
The area is part of the Chiltern Hills and popular with people who commute to London due to its proximity to road junction 3 of the
M40 motorway
The M40 motorway links London, Oxford, and Birmingham in England, a distance of approximately .
The motorway is dual three lanes except for junction 1A to junction 3 (which is dual four lanes) a short section in-between the exit and entry hig ...
at
Loudwater, mainline rail at
Beaconsfield
Beaconsfield ( ) is a market town and Civil parishes in England, civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, northwest of central London and southeast of Aylesbury. Three other towns are within : Gerrards Cross, Amersham and High Wycombe.
The ...
and
London Underground
The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England.
The Undergro ...
at
Amersham
Amersham ( ) is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, in the Chiltern Hills, northwest of central London, south-east of Aylesbury and north-east of High Wycombe. Amersham is part of the London commuter belt.
There ar ...
, both linked with the city.
Penn remains home to
Earl Howe of the Penn-Curzon-Howe dynasty, which gained more wealth through the
Inclosure Acts, which gave legal property rights to land previously in communal use. In 1855, ownership of Common Wood and Penn Wood passed to the 1st Earl Howe, forcing many local people and their livestock off the land. This caused general unrest within the community. For centuries, villagers had sustained themselves by grazing their animals on the common and gathering what they could from the land. When the woods became private property, many were plunged further into poverty. Years of unlawful protest followed, when poaching was rife and fences were pulled down as local people tried to retrieve what they deemed legitimately theirs.
Penn Street churchyard contains items from
Gopsall, Lord Howe's other country house in
Leicestershire
Leicestershire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It is bordered by Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire to the north, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire to the south-east, Warw ...
. The
lychgate
A lychgate (from Old English ''līc'', corpse) or resurrection gate is a covered gateway found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style churchyard. Examples also exist outside the British Isles in places such as Newfoundland, the ...
and Countess Howe memorial were moved from
Congerstone in 1919, when the family sold the Gopsall Estate.
In popular culture
The Cottage Bookshop in Penn was one location in "A Tale of Two Hamlets", an episode of the
ITV television programme, ''
Midsomer Murders
''Midsomer Murders'' is a British Mystery fiction, mystery television series, adapted by Anthony Horowitz and Douglas Watkinson from the novels in the ''Chief Inspector Barnaby'' book series created by Caroline Graham (writer), Caroline Graham. ...
''. It was also used to film an episode called "
Bookshop Chuckles" in the children's television show, ''
ChuckleVision
''ChuckleVision'' is a British children's comedy television series created by Martin Hughes and the Chuckle Brothers for the BBC. It starred Barry and Paul Elliott as the Chuckle Brothers and occasionally their older brothers, Jimmy, and Bria ...
'', and the three-acre set for ''
Nanny McPhee
''Nanny McPhee'' is a 2005 comedy drama fantasy film based on the Nurse Matilda character by Christianna Brand. It was directed by Kirk Jones, coproduced by StudioCanal, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, Working Title Films, Three Strange Angels ...
'' was constructed there.
Notable people
*The novelist
Elizabeth Taylor
Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011) was an English and American actress. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s and was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 19 ...
died in Penn in 1975.
*Medical pioneers Dr
Louisa Garrett Anderson (1873–1943), her partner Dr
Flora Murray and the children's writer
Alison Uttley
Alison Jane Uttley ( Taylor; 17 December 1884 – 7 May 1976) was an English writer of over 100 books. She is best known for a children's series about Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig. She is also remembered for a pioneering time slip novel for ch ...
, author of the
Little Grey Rabbit
Little Grey Rabbit is the lead character in a classic, eponymous series of English children's books, written by Alison Uttley and illustrated by Margaret Tempest, except for the last five, illustrated by Katherine Wigglesworth. They appeared over ...
stories, are buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity.
*The actor and singer
Stanley Holloway lived in Penn with his wife and son for many years in the 1950s and 1960s.
*The countertenor
Michael Chance was born in the village.
*The renowned Scottish preacher
Alexander Whyte (1836–1921) spent his last months in the village and preached his last sermon at the Free Methodist Chapel in Church Road.
*
Thomas Horder, 1st Baron Horder, physician to the royal family (as was
Bertrand Dawson, 1st Viscount Dawson of Penn, who chose the village for the territorial designation of his peerage) lived in the village for several years.
*David Blakely, murdered by
Ruth Ellis, lived on Hammersley Lane with his parents. Ellis was the last woman to be judicially executed in Britain.
*Canadian author
Margaret Laurence (1926–1987) lived in Elm Cottage on Beacon Hill in 1963–1973. It had been previously owned by the politician Sir Donald Maclean and Lady Maclean, parents of the
Soviet
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
spy
Donald Maclean.
*The princesses
Sophia Duleep Singh (suffragette) and
Catherine Hilda Duleep Singh (1876–1948), daughters of the
Maharaja Duleep Singh (1871–1942) and
Bamba Müller, lived in Penn during World War II and hosted children evacuated from London as well as German Jewish refugees.
*Food writer and TV chef
Mary Berry (born 1935) lived in Penn for over 30 years up to 2019.
*The philosopher
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper (28 July 1902 – 17 September 1994) was an Austrian–British philosopher, academic and social commentator. One of the 20th century's most influential philosophers of science, Popper is known for his rejection of the ...
made Penn his home after moving to the UK from New Zealand in 1946
References
External links
Penn and Tyler's Green Community and Village website– run by the Penn & Tylers Green Residents' Society – this site contains news, events, photos and a village map and articles.
Penn and Tylers Green FC
{{authority control
Villages in Buckinghamshire
Civil parishes in Buckinghamshire