The origins of Turville village date back to at least 796 AD, when the King of the Mercians granted the village to the Abbey at St Albans.

It is listed in the Domesday survey of 1086, when it was owned by a Norman called Nigel of Aubigny, who leased it to a man named Roger.

Turville was a substantial village, being assessed for tax purposes at five hides, some 600 acres, with arable land for 11 ploughs, of which three were worked by Roger, and seven by 13 villagers and one smallholder.

Turville was never touched by the industrial revolution.

The only manufacturing to have taken place in the village was of components for chairs.

Legs were turned at the business run by William Ayres, and seats at the sawmill, which in the 1920s was owned by the High Wycombe firm of J Elliott and Son. After cutting by bandsaw, the seats were taken by horse and cart to Wycombe, and dried in the Elliott’s factory kiln.

Reader Dolly Whales remembers that William Ayres lived with his sister Em in the first (next to a detached house) of a terraced row of five cottages.

William’s chair leg-turning premises were just over the road.

Dolly used to run errands for Em Ayres, and was rewarded with a piece of cake, which she did not eat because she had heard that it had been made in a chamber pot!

Only later did she find out that the pot had never been ‘under the bed’, but was used solely for cake-making, as Em needed a bowl with a large handle to hold because she had a problem with her hand! The detached house next door to the cottages was originally the Carpenters Arms pub. It closed in 1918, and then became a farmhouse.

Dolly was in-service there, before she worked for the Wycombe department store Murrays in White Hart Street.

The village also boasted a windmill, Copstone (Cobstone) Mill, which featured in the film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

A flour mill, it was built between 1844 and 1853, is 12-sided, and of the type known as a smock mill, so named because the weather- boarding is worn like an old-fashioned smock.

The mill closed around 1913, although the mill-cottage remained occupied by the Edgington family to work the adjoining farm.

It then became derelict, was damaged by fire, but shortly after that was purchased by Hayley Mills the film star, who restored the mill as well as building a modern house on the site.