AN annual Heritage Open Day was first established in 1994, as England’s contribution to European Heritage Days. What began as a Heritage festival on just a single day in September every year, soon extended to a Heritage Weekend, and is now firmly established as Heritage Open Days, held in a period spread over 7 to 10 days in September. This year, 2026, it is being held over the period September 11 – 20.
Ten years back, in the Marlow Free Press edition of September 9, 2016, Michael devoted the Nostalgia page to consideration of the two Heritage events which were taking place in the town. He wrote “This year [ie 2016] the customary Heritage Day extends to being Heritage Weekend, and you will have the opportunity to visit two unique slices of Marlow’s history, one of them rarely open to the public. Tomorrow, Saturday, guided tours will be available of the amazing Widmere Chapel and Crypt, just over a mile north of the town, a left turn into Widmere Lane. Parking is available. This is without doubt the oldest building in the local area, with Knights Templar connections, and is definitely worth seeing. In more recent times, early in the last century it was used as a dairy. Opportunities to view it are few and far between, so try and make the short trip up the B482.
Then on Sunday, there will be displays set up in the cobbled courtyard of the former Wethered Brewery in the High Street giving an account of this famous institution that brewed beer from the 1700s right up to the late 1980s. Tours of parts of the buildings, now converted to residential use, will be possible. Special emphasis will be given to the role that Wethered workers played in the First World War, as the brewery devoted a part of their premises and many staff to a munitions packing operation that was kept largely secret. A plaque will be unveiled commemorating the brewery workers who lost their whilst serving on the front lines. Wethered expert Ray Evans, author of the definitive pictorial history of the brewery, will be on-hand with many items and pictures from his impressive collection. I hope he manages to bring his delivery bicycle.”
Marlow Heritage event 2026
A reminder that on September 17 there will be an exhibition in the Seymour Room, Court Garden, Pound Lane entitled ‘Court Garden and Higginson Park 100’.
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