No, this week’s Nostalgia article is not about the country’s favourite home-grown fruit, but will be taking a look at the Apple Orchard shop in the High Street, West Wycombe.

Many readers will have visited this, perhaps without realising that the building has a long and interesting history. 

The origin of the building where the Apple Orchard is located, like several similar buildings in West Wycombe High Street, dates back some four to five hundred years.

The original building was constructed in the middle years of the sixteenth century. 

It was a relatively large building for the period and its style and layout reflected the high status of the owner/occupier.

Buildings of this type were occupied by merchants or dealers of some local status, where the ground floor was used as store-rooms or shops and the first floor was for the private use of the merchant and his family.

After many additions and modifications were made to the building it became, probably in the early to mid-eighteenth century the White Heart Inn.

This was one of the medium-sized inns in West Wycombe catering for the traffic on the busy Oxford to London road. 

Competition for trade was fierce and some of the inns, but not the White Heart, made substantial investments to retain their portion of the market.

A map of West Wycombe village made in 1767 shows the inn, with a yard for stabling , and a large garden and orchard.

In the early 19th century the coaching business started to decline as alternative methods of transport were developed and the building underwent some refurbishment to be used almost certainly as a bakery.

Then in around 1871 it was occupied by George Brion Weller, a “master butcher and grocer” who “employed one man and two boys”.

He continued to trade there for some 30 years before moving to Easton St in High Wycombe. 

By 1931 the building, now known as the Apple Orchard, had been purchased by an unknown person, who was a keen supporter of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), and leased by Misses Alexander and Napier.

In 1927 the RSA had established a Fund for the Preservation of Ancient Cottages, which had been used to purchase two large groups of cottages.

One group was in the village of Bibury in Gloucestershire. The second group was in West Wycombe and had been sold in 1929 to the RSA by the Dashwood family, who needed to raise funds following the Wall Street Crash in that year.

To complete the refurbishment of the West Wycombe cottages the RSA needed to raise another £10,000 (equivalent to nearly £500,000 today).

So on July 29th 1931 Miss Alexander hosted a fund-raising reception for the Society, which was held in the garden of the Apple Orchard.

This was attended by “upwards of a hundred subscribers to the Fund and the leading residents of Buckinghamshire”.

The money was successfully raised and the refurbishment of the cottages completed.

In 1934 the RSA handed over the property to the National Trust.    

In the 1930’s the Apple Orchard was operated as a guest house and tea-rooms.

Regular visitors were the children from the Weston Turville Sunday School who for their annual outing journeyed by charabanc to West Wycombe.

There “they were able to indulge themselves to their hearts content with tobogganing, visiting the caves and mausoleum etc” . 

Then they would “partake at four o’clock of a sumptuous tea at the Apple Orchard, after which games were resumed until 7 pm when the return journey was made”.

It was also a popular venue for retirement parties of staff working at the local chair-making factory of B. North & Sons.

In 1939, just before before the outbreak of WWII the proprietor of the Apple Orchard was Irene G W Donald, described as a Guest House Keeper and Antique Dealer.

Miss Donald also advertised herself under the stage-name of Joan Donaldson under the heading “Drums” followed by “Specialising [in] ‘swing’ and drum solos, write Apple Orchard, West Wycombe, Bucks”.

Among the people staying at the guest house at that time were Christian G Gatey and John B Foster whose occupations were given as Assistant Secretary, National Farmers Union.

Among the well-known visitors to the Apple Orchard in the 1930’s was James Lees- Milne, who was an architectural historian, diarist, novelist and biographer. His extensive diaries remain in print and include the entry “I went to the tearooms at the Apple Orchard in West Wycombe and bought a £35 chest (about £1,700 today)”. 

In 1936 Lees-Milne was appointed secretary of the Country Houses Committee of the National Trust and, apart from military service from 1939 to 1941, he held this position until 1950.

From 1941 this job was based at West Wycombe Park, where Lees-Milne went to live. His life from 1942 to 1945 is documented in detail in his wartime diaries, and then also from 1945 to 1951.

These describe his visits around the country to organise the acquisition by the National Trust of many famous houses.    

In the history of the Apple Orchard we now move onto the time within living memory.

In the mid-1960’s the premises were acquired by famous Wycombe wood-carver Frank Hudson, after he had to vacate his workshop and home in Easton Street.

The Hudson family lived there for some 30 years, acquiring a large collection of ornaments, antiques and furniture, selling these in the shop.

For the last 16 years the Apple Orchard has been occupied by Carolyn Meyrick with the showrooms offering an extensive range of gifts, homeware, furniture and garden accessories, something to suit every taste and budget.

The Bed Barn offers a stunning collection of Hypnos handcrafted beds, head boards, & divans.

The latest addition to the facilities is a coffee-shop, which formally opened for business on Friday, May 25. You are sure of a warm welcome from Carolyn and her husband Huw, and all their staff.