The landscape we now see in Richings Park and Iver was created after the last Ice Age around 12,000 year ago. As the ice gradually melted the water would have flowed along in torrents carving the valleys that we now see, in particular the Colne Valley which runs across the east of the parish.
When the floods ceased a great plain of mud was deposited to the south leaving large ridges of gravel in the north and these ridges or terraces became important to the survival of early man in the area. The Iver terrace was first identified in 1938 as a continuation of one which ran across from Taplow to the river Colne.
As the water receded, the Thames was born and as this became narrower several further gravel ridges were left, one of these crosses Richings Park and is known as the Lynch Hill terrace. To early man such terraces represented a firm dry refuge above the damp, marshy floodplains on which to build his settlements and one of the finest and richest Stone Age sites in the UK is located nearby in Yiewsley.
It is not therefore surprising that evidence of a Stone Age site was found at Thorney Farm (see section on Thorney). Today, after thousands of years of agriculture and development these terraces are barely discernible other than to cyclists and walkers, but have been of great interest to gravel companies who have dug them wherever possible.
The area which now comprises Richings Park was mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086 as being part of the Manor of Evreham which extended from Denham to Colnbrook, when there were 3 mills – Thorney, Iver and Hunstmoor. The manor was known as Eure, Ever or Euere – the name Iver did not appear until 1382.
This worked on the open field system with land in 4 categories: arable, meadow, pasture and waste. All the land held by any one person did not lie together; all the land under one type of cultivation was together and divided into strips which were allocated to the various individual holders.
Medieval villages were organised so as to be virtually self- sufficient for all food, fodder and fuel. Many of the great fields acquired names that have survived.
The first time when anything resembling the name of Richings is recorded was in 1288 when Ralph at Rychy is mentioned. Rychy may be a corruption of Ridgeway, the name of the large common field on which much of the modern Richings Park is now built.
Le Rych Ing, meaning rich water meadow, must have been a favoured meadow to have deserved a mention in 1397 when John Richking is recorded as owning a tenement in Iver with holdings in Thorney and Sutton which could have included Le Rych Ing. Later in the 17th & 18th century the names Riskins, Risquens, Richkins, and Ritchkinges were also given to the Richings estate.
Another common field was Dole Slade (meaning allotted meadow), perhaps nearer a river and therefore richer – a slade being a moist pasture or a little dell or valley. Meadow land to provide hay was very important as it was the only winter feed for stock and this field was shared or “doled out” to holders. The meadow was divided into strips which were often drawn for yearly. This field name survives in the present Old Slade Lane.
The medieval arable land seems largely to have been contained within the square boundaries of Iver High Street, Thorney Lane, Richings Lane(North Park), Market Lane and Mansion Lane, all of them probably Parish thoroughfares then, as now. One of the common fields on which much of Richings Park is now built was called the Ridgeway and was crossed by a footpath that ran from Iver to the junction of Dole Slade with Thorney Lane. Similarly, the routes of access to many of the other common fields in Iver and Thorney have influenced the course of modern roads.
Apart from Thorney clustered round the mill, and the farms the only settlement was the group of 19th century cottages by the Tower Arms which is probably much older and the older houses of Thorney House and Thorney Croft (demolished in the 1980s).
In its early days the Richings Estate did not comprise one compact unit which was passed from owner to owner. At various times the estate has comprised land in Iver, Thorney, Sutton, Langley, Colnbrook and Wraysbury. In the past the estate has been as much linked with Colnbrook as with Iver.
The first record of there being a manor in Richings Park itself dates from around the mid 17th century, although the area had started to achieve some individuality, if only in the manor rolls, in 1377. Various records exist from 1379 and 1397 and early owners included the Edred, Richking, Aubrey and Martin families.
More recent owners of Richings were:
To this list should be added the Tower family of Huntsmoore (hence Tower Arms and Cottages) who owned large sections of Thorney and Iver from the late 1600s to the 1900s and whose farms including Old Slade, Larbourne and Sutton and associated land became incorporated into the last Richings Estate. There were 6 consecutive heads of the family called Christopher Tower.
Lord Bathurst entertained the notables of his day such as Pope, Gay, Bolingbroke, Addison and Swift for a break from the “smoke of London” in Richings Mansion. He laid out the park in the landscaped romantic style of the period with woodland, including the existing Old Wood, avenues of trees and a boating lake 550 yards long from the dammed Withy Brook, vestiges of all of which remain today.
The poet Alexander Pope made mention in his Moral Essays: Epistle IV – to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington – 11 177-8:
Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?
Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle?
An avenue of chestnut trees which ran parallel to the lake was named Pope’s walk after the poet.
Lady Hertford (later Duchess of Somerset) called the house Percy Lodge and described the beauty of the grounds and surrounding countryside in her letters in 1739 – 41. The name Percy lodge was later given to Eric Sykes’ house on the new estate near Old Slade Farm.
The original mansion was generally known as Richings Lodge or latterly as The Mansion and was destroyed by fire in 1786. The precise size, style and date of the original house remains unknown. It had clearly been an establishment of some affluence and importance; the will of Dame Ursula Salter in 1649 reveals possessions of significance – leather covered chairs, turkey carpets, rich carpets and coverlets, matching damask table linen, furnishings from ‘the Prince – his chamber’. The estate had never been of great extent and the house was not a Manor.
A new house was built by John Sullivan in 1786 in different location. It was then known as Richings Lodge. A regular visitor was Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington. The 3 storey square house was built in yellow brick with stone facings and a bowed garden front leading to the park. Either side was a single storey arched arcaded gallery leading to pavilion buildings housing the usual offices – kitchens, stores etc. It was furnished with Adam fireplaces and a huge staircase, which was said to be big enough to fill one of the new houses on the estate.
According to a 1938 newspaper account, there was in the library a panel filled with dummy books which was a secret entrance to a hall which at one time served as the ballroom. Some of the old kitchen quarters were demolished in the 1930s.
From the house there were 3 carriageways. The principle one in the Meekings’ time (now Main Drive) was bounded by an avenue of Turkey Oaks and comes out on North Park where a gate lodge known locally as Coombe’s Lodge (demolished c1988) was located.
There were large gates at this entrance which were taken for scrap in the 2nd world war. A shield from the gates, bearing the Meeking and Tower Arms (Col Meeking had married Adelaide, a daughter of Christopher and Lady Sophia Tower) was found in a ditch by Mr Reeves. It was found folded in half and was cleaned and preserved by Mr Draisey of North Park, to whom it was passed when Mr Reeves moved away. Opposite Main Drive was almost a continuation of it (now Richings Place) which lead to the old manor laundry (Shires End or No 5 North Park now demolished).
The north-west carriageway led to the Home farm which has been well preserved externally though it now consists of private residences/ the golf club. This route crossed a magnificently decorated bridge over the lake channel created as part of the gardens.
An engine house was located beside the bridge, which subsequently became a cottage called the Pump House. The drive divided with one part going to the home farm and one part back to North Park where another gate lodge (long since demolished) stood.
The third carriageway headed south and originally came out onto the nearest road at the time – the Bath Road or Colnbrook High Street (now Mill street), next to the George Inn. The drive runs past St Thomas’s Church and the Vicarage (built on land purchased from Mr Sullivan in 1847) and past two schools.
Opposite was Tan House Farm. There is still one of the old gate lodges there named The Lodge. This is much older and in a totally different style of architecture from the three later lodges. The coming of the Colnbrook by-pass in 1929 meant that new gates and another gate lodge were erected north of the by-pass.
When the first Richings Mansion was built, the south drive to Colnbrook was the main drive for access, with the others being ‘service roads’ to connect the house with its laundry and Home farm. North Park as such did not exist at this time although there was a long established old route to Sutton, Parlaunt, Langley and Colnbrook.
The site of the old St. Leonard’s Chapel was in the Park and according to Lady Hertford, in letters written between 1739 and 1748, it used to be “where the greenhouse now stands”. It is thought that the conservatory for the new house was built on the same site in 1786. The site of such a chapel was marked on an OS map and was about 44 yards almost due north of the western end of the ha-ha, but all that remains there now is a low mound.
Chapels to St Leonard were usually daughter hermitages to a mother-house in the not too distant neighbourhood but that for this chapel is not known. It may have possibly been Ankerwycke Priory, the remains of which are near the Thames in Wraysbury. Interestingly, Leonard seems to have been a popular Christian name in the Parish in the 17th century.
The boundaries of the estate were marked with stones. Older residents recall these located at Little Sutton, Colnbrook and Iver (Shredding Green Farm).
The Meekings bought Richings Lodge in 1855. Mr Meekings owned Wallace’s, a department store near Gamages in High Holborn. Such a country seat was seen as an asset in providing the food for the shop girls that lived in. Richings Lodge was enlarged by the Meekings who added a set of 2 storey bays on the east end.
The Sykes brothers moved out in 1930 and Richings Lodge was left empty with a caretaker, Tom Goddard, employed by the receiver until it was commandeered as an RAF Bomber Command headquarters during the second world war and named North Side.
In around 1941/2 it sustained heavy damage from a land mine dropped by a passing German aircraft and it became unsafe. Although the mine fell and exploded in the ha-ha which absorbed much of the blast, the house was badly shaken and it was eventually pulled down. By this time the Command HQ had largely transferred to High Wycombe. All that now remains are the old foundations and parts of the cellars.
Most of the manor’s auxiliary buildings still exist as private houses or in the case of the stables as Richings Park Golf Club. The ice house is also still in existence. The Golf Club now occupies the sites of the park and Home and Old Slade farms.
The laundry for Richings Lodge was built by the Meekings in around 1868 and was known as Shires End (at 5 North Park); it is now demolished. It was built in 19th century gothic style up a lane off Thorney Lane (now North Park) opposite the gates of the East Lodge and Main Drive. It consisted of a range of wash houses and a pair of cottages. It was serviced by a well and pump from a steam which ran from the Ridgeway, under the railway and down what is now Syke Cluan.
A ditch (Shire Ditch) ran from what is now 31 Syke Cluan to 7 North Park skirting the site. It then ran along North Park to the Withy Brook. The lane petered out past the laundry to become a path which meet the farm track leading from the Withy Brook on North Park to the bridge across the railway (Dog Kennel Bridge, built 1938) and Mead’s Bridge across the canal.
The laundry was not part of the 1922 purchase of the Estate by the Sykes. It seems to have been a tenancy granted for the Meeking laundry while the house was in use. It became the location of Miss Bright’s infant school and then Richings Park School for Boys. The laundry remained in its original form until about the mid-1940s and still had its old wash tubs, water cisterns and drying room intact when it was converted in to a private house.
The Simmons family came from West Drayton to Richings Park, there being three brothers and a sister. One of the brothers, George, was bothered by asthma and stayed at home. He went to Richings Park School for Boys (then at 9 North Park) around 1933 and recalled coming past the laundry down the lane on the way back to school on cross country runs and wishing that they could live there. Later his dream was fulfilled and his father purchased Shires End. George continued to live there tending the garden until his death in 2005/6.
(incorporating information from articles by Douglas M. Rust, a former resident of 10A Thorney Lane South)
Thorney is a small hamlet, to the east of Richings Park, in the parish of Iver. Its boundaries remain essentially as they were: Bigley Ditch to the east separating it from West Drayton and the old county of Middlesex, to the south the parish boundary of Colnbrook.
When gravel was to be extracted from Thorney Farm in the early 1960s, an aerial photograph of the site showed interesting crop marks and field systems. At Thorney Farm itself there were a number of very dark rings in the soil which on excavation turned out to be Celtic and later Roman, Romano-British and Saxon storage pits.
The most significant discovery was an intact dressed Sarsen stone found in the extracted gravel, with others broken up during the extraction process. These are the material from which Stonehenge is made and are not local deposits.
Why these stones were here can only be guessed, but to the west of this, in the field know as One Hundred Acre Field adjacent to Thorney Lane South, the aerial photo showed a large enclosed area on the 25 metre contour in the shape of a key-hole and some 60 metres in diameter. The lower section opened out with trench markings intersecting the main body.
A circular hut around 25 metres in diameter and several smaller huts of 3 to 5 metres appeared to have been present surrounded by a deep ditch, possibly to keep farm animals in and unwelcome wild-life out. Storage pits for grain and root crops were also evident. Part of the top section to the north east was damaged by the gravel extractions but the rest of the site remained intact following the interventions of archeologists from the County Museum.
In 1967 it was proposed to lay high voltage electricity cables along the boundaries of properties in Thorney Lane South near the Tower Arms. Initially permission was refused because of the importance of the site, but after considerable debate this was granted provided the trench was as close as possible to the boundaries of the properties and not more than 10 metres wide.
Time was not available to carry out a full archaeological investigation so permission was given for Mr Stanley from the County, along with a small group of local experienced enthusiasts, to carry out a controlled dig along the proposed route of the cables. Because of the limited area available to the dig, only a small part of the site could be investigated, but one of the important discoveries was a deep infilled ditch which corresponded to the aerial photo and from which a few Stone age implements were recovered, indicating that the land had been farmed for several thousand of years, possibly from around 2,000BC.
Small pieces of pottery from both the Bronze and Iron Ages were found in pits and sections and a Bronze Age ring was discovered at the centre of a damaged mound. There may also have been later field systems, indicating that it was still being farmed up to the early Roman period.
The indications are that the aerial photograph does show a Bronze/Iron Age farm settlement. The site is now protected by a preservation order as an ancient monument and any future development would require complete excavation and recording.
Thorney is a Saxon word meaning Thorn island. In Saxon times the river Colne was much wider and deeper than it is now and would have formed the boundary of an “island” together with the Colne Brook and possibly the Withy stream. There is a reference to a battle on Thorney Island on the banks of the River Colne in the Anglo Saxon Chronicles of 893.
During the reign of Alfred the Great, Britain was continuously attacked by Danes and Vikings and occasionally the incumbent Saxons were able to get the upper hand as at the Battle of Thorney Island.
It is thought that In 893, a Viking invading force lead by a Viking named Haesten met the Saxon army lead by Alfred’s son Edward at Farnham in Surrey. The Vikings were badly beaten and fled northward, crossing the Thames between Staines and Maidenhead and followed by the Saxons, took refuge on an island in the Colne at Thorney where the river divided.
Sadly the Saxon army was only able to besiege them for a short time (several months) until their own food ran out and the army service time of the individual soldiers ran out. King Alfred was making his way towards them when he discovered that his army had virtually disappeared.
The Vikings stayed on the island as Haesten had been badly wounded and they could not move him. No mention is made of their leaving the island but they seemed to have left a lot of their possessions buried there, possibly hoping to recover them later.
Archaeological evidence discovered at Larbourne Farm (now demolished) during excavations by the gravel extraction company in the early 1950s and 60s suggested that that was the site of a battle or at least a siege. The most important find was an intact Egyptian Ushbati or Servant of the Dead, a small statue which was placed in tombs to represent the deceased’s servant in the afterlife.
The fact that there was never any recorded later inhabitation of the site which was extensively farmed down the years and the Viking habit of plundering, it can only be assumed that such artefacts were buried during the siege in the hope of being able to recover them later. The discovery of a Viking sword and a Saxon dagger together in a Mansion Lane gravel pit in 1928 may also be the relics of this and other raids.
Other items recovered in the Larbourne digs included Romano-British and medieval pottery. Some of these were put together to form a narrow necked jar or wine bottle from the 1st or 2nd century; there were also two pieces of a coloured bowl from the 3rd or 4th century and a piece of red Samian ware with the letters MAN stamped on it from between 90 and 120 AD.
Animal bones were also found including two antler picks and a large Ox head at least 20,000 years old from a Bos primigenius, the extinct Giant Auroch which reputedly stood some six feet tall. Sadly the subsequent gravel extractions destroyed the site so badly that it will be impossible to find further material and evidence of past activities.
A large wood, Thorney Wood, had covered the area since at least the 1300s and it was an important resource and landmark; in 1546 it was recorded as covering some sixty acres or so. Part of modern day Richings Park is covers some of its original site.
In 1352 Edward III gave the Church and Manor of Iver to St George’s College Windsor and records there show that timber from Thorney Wood was used to repair local churches and other buildings.
In 1545 Windsor had to surrender Iver to Henry VIII and during 1547 the hamlet of Thorney and the Manor and Rectory of Iver were granted by Edward IV to Sir William Paget who also held the Manor of West Drayton.
Thorney Wood remained in the ownership of the Lord of the Manor of Iver (Lord Paget, Earl of Uxbridge) and by 1760, 80 acres had become cultivated fields. Thorney Wood was still evident on the 1920 map and it is possible that the trees recently felled at Main Drive were some of the last traces of Thorney Wood.
Little is known about about consecutive settlements at Thorney over the years but the common fields, the river and the mill with their associated occupations must have been of great importance.
The Domesday Book mentions a water mill at Thorney and in 1519 the tenant was William Duffield, who had a thirty year lease as well as the farm. Complaints are recorded from earlier in the century when Ralph Aubrey, clerk to Prince Authur, Henry VIII’s brother, obstructed the road to the mill. Aubrey is buried in Iver church.
The mill stood on the Colne Brook, a tributary of the river Colne further east in West Drayton. Originally a flour mill, during the 18th and 19th centuries it produced various forms of paper and there is a mention of oil milling here during the middle of the 19th century. By then the mill employed about 30 people. During the 1920s it became a tube mill and after the war it was used as a store and packaging depot for Simoniz, the car polish company.
In 1563 and Elizabethan Survey of the Diocese of Lincoln listed 30 families at ‘Trynley’ (there were 98 at Iver). The large Tower Estate map of Hunstmoor and ‘Thurney’ drawn in 1736 shows all the land, farms and houses held by Christopher Tower.
A significant number of dwellings at Thorney, mostly linked to the farms are shown as well as the medieval field lay out and a large area of ‘Thurney Wood’.
The 1801 census records 30 dwellings at Thorney and in 1811 the census lists 60 inhabited houses with 202 males and 161 females. By 1851 the population seems to have decreased to about 300 people. Most of these dwellings and the mill itself have long since vanished.
The modern Parish of Iver dates from 1862 when the boundaries of the civil and ecclesiastical parish were modified.