HITCHAM AND TAPLOW SOCIETY
Founded in 1959 to protect Hitcham and Taplow and the surrounding countryside from being spoilt by bad development and neglect.
The Society came into being as the Hitcham and Taplow Preservation Society in December 1959 in the dining room of Lea Rig, the farmhouse of Poplar Farm on Hitcham Road, at a meeting called by Dr Maurice Rogers, the owner of the house and the first Chairman of the Society. With many village residents, Dr Rogers was concerned at the sudden and unheralded appearance of men and machinery to excavate gravel from the fields between Boundary Road and Lea Rig to build a sub-base for the new M4 motorway.
The first task of the Society was to ensure that the excavations conformed with the conditions of the planning permission regarding noise, dust, working hours and traffic movements. The second and paramount task was to ensure that the land was restored to its green belt status. We see the result of their success every day in the shape of the spacious green field boarding the east side of Boundary Road.
Through the years the Society has been engaged in several battles with the planning authority. Its strenuous expert objections brought amendments to the Flood Relief Scheme but it failed to prevent the permission for a small branch of Home Base becoming manifest as a Sainsbury
SuperStore?. Its vigorous ‘Cliveden No’ campaign brought a one-third reduction in the number of dwellings the National Trust was allowed to build in the heart of the Green Belt. It made a significant contribution to defining the reasons for the rejection of the recent application to develop the Mill Lane site.
In 2007, to reflect the many and various activities and achievements of the Society, its Annual General Meeting elected to drop the word Preservation from its name.
The Annual Village Green party, now in its 26th year and a major event in the Hitcham and Taplow Social Calendar, is the most visible of the Society’s contributions to the community. Now to celebrate this anniversary year the Society brings a new annual event to the Calendar – the Great Easter Egg Hunt.
A selection of past achievements and present activities of the Society are set out on the next page in the photographs of the posters featured on the Society’s stand at the Taplow Heritage Day exhibition last summer.
