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Ham Home-cum-Hamgreen Woods

Aylesbury ValeForests and woodlands of BuckinghamshireSites of Special Scientific Interest in Buckinghamshire
Ham Home Wood 6
Ham Home Wood 6

Ham Home-cum-Hamgreen Woods is a 23.2-hectare (57-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Kingswood near Grendon Underwood in Buckinghamshire. It is composed of two separate areas, Ham Home Wood and Hamgreen Wood, and is a small part of the formerly extensive Bernwood Forest.The site is woodland on clay, and although most of it has been coppiced at different times, it has a varied structure, and rich variety of flora and invertebrates. These factors, together with the presence of wild service trees, show that the woods are ancient. The main tree is oak, with an understorey which includes wych elm, crab apple and guelder rose. Flowers include primroses and bluebells, and in wetter areas there are ragged robin and marsh bedstraw. The woods have the largest British breeding colony of the nationally rare black hairstreak butterfly.There is access from the A41 road and Grendon Road

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Ham Home-cum-Hamgreen Woods
Aylesbury Road,

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 51.8653 ° E -0.9921 °
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Address

Aylesbury Road
HP18 0QJ , Grendon Underwood
England, United Kingdom
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Ham Home Wood 6
Ham Home Wood 6
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Wotton House
Wotton House

Wotton House, Wotton Underwood, Buckinghamshire, England, is a stately home built between 1704 and 1714, to a design very similar to that of the contemporary version of Buckingham House. The house is an example of English Baroque and a Grade I listed building. The architect is uncertain although William Winde, the designer of Buckingham House, has been suggested. The grounds were laid out by George London and Henry Wise with a formal parterre and a double elm avenue leading down to a lake. Fifty years later William Pitt the Elder and Capability Brown improved the landscape, creating pleasure grounds with two lakes. After a fire gutted the main house in 1820 Richard Grenville, 1st Earl Temple, commissioned John Soane to rebuild it. After the 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the last direct Grenville male heir, died in 1889, the house was let to a succession of tenants; including, notably; the philanthropist, Leo Bernard William Bonn (1850-1929) who became deaf while residing at Wotton, and later founded (1911) what became the RNID. His son and heir, the decorated First World War hero, Major Walter Basil Louis Bonn, DSO, MC, MA (Oxon.) FRSA, FZSL (1885-1973) is also listed as resident at Wotton House; in the New College archives, at Oxford University; during his three years as an Oxford undergraduate, there, 1903–1906, while living fifteen miles away from his family home of many years, at Wotton House. In 1929 Wotton was bought by Major Michael Beaumont MP who renovated it. In 1947 Beaumont sold the estate to a charity who divided the grounds into small parcels and let the main house to two boys' schools. By 1957 the house had become derelict and was due to be demolished when Elaine Brunner found it and with the help of the architect Donald Insall restored most of the Soane features. Her daughter and son-in-law David Gladstone have continued the work she started. The South Pavilion (the former coach house) was sold separately in 1947. It has had a number of notable owners including Sir Arthur Bryant and Sir John Gielgud, and is now co-owned by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie, as well as David Gladstone, with Gladstone owning the main building (shown above) and the former British Prime Minister owning the smaller house next to it, with the fields of land being co-owned.

Wotton railway station (Brill Tramway)

Wotton railway station was a small station in Buckinghamshire, England, built by the Duke of Buckingham in 1871. Part of a private horse-drawn tramway designed to carry freight from and around his lands in Buckinghamshire, Wotton station was intended to serve the Duke's home at Wotton House and the nearby village of Wotton Underwood. In 1872 the line was extended to the nearby village of Brill, converted to passenger use, equipped with steam locomotives, and renamed the Brill Tramway. In the 1880s, it was proposed to extend the line to Oxford, but the operation of the line was instead taken over by London's Metropolitan Railway. Although situated in an unpopulated area, Wotton station was relatively well used. It saw the highest passenger numbers of any station on the line other than the terminus at Brill railway station and the junction with the main line to London at Quainton Road railway station, and it also carried large quantities of milk from the area's dairy farms. In 1906 the Great Western and Great Central Joint Railway (commonly known as the Alternative Route) was opened, crossing the Brill Tramway at Wotton. Although the lines were not connected, a station (also named Wotton) was built on the new line very near the existing Wotton station; the two stations shared a stationmaster.In 1933 the Metropolitan Railway, which leased the line, was taken into public ownership and became the Metropolitan line of London Transport. Despite being a small rural station 49 miles (79 km) by train from the City of London, Wotton became a station on the London Underground. Frank Pick, the Chief Executive of the London Passenger Transport Board, aimed to abandon freight operations on the London Underground network, and saw no way in which the more distant parts of the former Metropolitan Railway could ever become viable passenger routes. As a result, all passenger services north of Aylesbury were withdrawn between 1935 and 1936; the last trains on the Brill Tramway ran on 30 November 1935. The line then reverted to the descendants of the Duke of Buckingham, but having no funds and no rolling stock they were unable to operate it. On 2 April 1936, the line's entire infrastructure, including Wotton station, was sold for scrap at auction. Except for a small building which once housed the Brill Tramway's forge, all the station buildings at Wotton have been demolished.