Gerrards Cross; A little history
It is true when people say you never know what you will find until you start digging.
After looking at the very colourful history of the Bull Hotel which dates back to 1688 and which we looked at on our site a year or so ago, I wanted to find out a little more about Gerrards Cross itself and here is a snipit of what we found.
A village in Buckinghamshire, England, Gerrards Cross is in the south of the county, near the border with Greater London, south of Chalfont St Peter. Gerrards Cross is also a civil parish within South Bucks district, which was known as the Beaconsfield district from 1974 to 1980. This had been formed on April 1, 1974 by the merger of part of Eton Rural District (including Gerrards Cross) with Beaconsfield Urban District.
The village name is fairly new, when compared with other villages that surround it. Gerrards Cross did not exist in any formal sense until 1859 when it was formed by taking pieces out of the five parishes of Chalfont St Peter, Fulmer, Iver, Langley Marish and Upton to form a new ecclesiastical parish. It is named after the Gerrard family who in the early 17th century owned a manor here. At that time it was a hamlet in the parish of Chalfont St Peter. It is the site of an Iron Age hillfort.
Gerrards Cross is one of England’s most desirable places to live and is often referred to as ‘mini Hollywood’ due to its celebrity residents. Gerrards Cross has a reputation for being very up market and exclusive, with house prices being considerably higher than average. Located in the commuter belt of London, the village is the most expensive postcode to purchase a property in the country outside London. In February 2010, Declan Curry of the BBC described Gerrards Cross as “Britain’s richest town.
In 1969 the singer Lulu married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees in the St. James church in Gerrards Cross. The large and distinctive parish church is dedicated to St. James , and was built in 1861 as a memorial to General Reid who was MP for Windsor and designed by Sir William Tite. The actress Margaret Rutherford is buried in the St James Church graveyard.
Gerrards Cross has also been immortalized in film and song, Stanley Kubrick filmed some of the exteriors in his feature 1962 film Lolita, notably “Charlotte Haze’s house”, in Gerrards Cross.
“The Italian Lesson” sketch in the first episode of the first series of the BBC Television comedy show Monty Python’s Flying Circus (first broadcast in 1969) includes the line “‘Sono Inglese di Gerrard’s Cross’, I am an Englishman from Gerrard’s Cross.”
Jethro Tull’s song “Journeyman” on their 1978 album Heavy Horses includes the line “Too late to stop for tea at Gerrard’s Cross”.
One more piece of interesting History shows that Gerrards Cross lead to the House of Lords judgment: Young & Marten Ltd v McManus Childs Ltd [1969] 1 AC 454 to the effect that a person who contracts to do work and supply materials warrants that the materials will be fit for purpose, even if the purchaser specifies the materials to be used, as a result of many houses built during development in the 1950s having defective tiles.
We look forward to seeing you at The Bull Hotel and be sure to let us know what you discover.
Garrick Reid, Deputy General Manager
