9) (HAS HS2 INFO) Great Missenden interviews and sources (objective and subjective)

Atkins Wood Roald Dahl Countryside Trail

a family activity walk leaflet from the Roald Dahl museum and story centre

"Classic Chiltern beech wood"

"the towering trees and dark forest floors typical of local woods provide the setting for the pheasant poaching scenes in Danny the Champion of the world"

HS2 newspaper source

High speed rail will be a "pleasant surprise" for many
... but some oppose the line on purely aesthetic grounds, arguing that the new line will be a scar on the landscape or rural Buckinghamshire, despoiling an area of outstanding natural beauty.

"Have you looked at the route? ... between Great Missenden and the HS2 route are the A413, the chiltern railway and a line of pylons. So this is not some Constable country."

Philip Hammond, the then Secretary of State for transport, the telegraph, 11 December 2010

HS2 and the environment blog

the chilterns was somehow an "inferior" AONB to Dedham vale and could be trashed with impunity

"I personally believe that the rolling wooded countryside of the chilterns is very beautiful, but Mr Hammond obviously prefers something wetter"

Peter Delow, April 2011

HS2 newspaper article - Boris Johnson

HS2 opponents are NIMBYs who only care about house prices

... the mayor of london says people who oppose HS2 railway are pretending to have an environmental objection

(NIMBY = not in my back yard)

Boris Johnson, the telegraph, April 2014

Song: Oak Tree Lament (stop HS2)

by Dirty Mavis, 2011

2 hundred years i stand on the edge of the Misbourne Plain

My roots and deep... and you should weep
for this morning strangers came
with axe and saw and cut me to the floor
so hang your head in shame

men say that time is money, half and hour could be saved
and for this bold lie i am to die and thrown down in my grave

did you fight to save this England did you stop the HS2

Environmental map of Great Missenden

Chilterns Conservation Board

- areas of ancient woodland
- parks and gardens
- archaeological notification areas
- scheduled monument
- listed buildings
- pre 18th century route-ways
- 18th and 19th century route-ways

HS2 route and tunnel cuts through an archaeological notification area, ancient woodland (Sibleys Coppice), pre 18th, 18th, and 19th century route-ways

Resident responses

"train perimeter on my patio"
...route of HS2 railway goes underneath garden
- Mark King

Guerrilla knitting on trees in Sibley's coppice in Great Missenden

Interviews: the effects of transport on business transcript

How do you think the construction of the bypass affected GM?
"... it has made a big difference to us kids; we couldn't go sledging because it cut the hills in half, especially opposite the Nag's head (pub) - that was good one!"

Do you think it adversely affected the businesses, particularly shops on the high street?
"... I don't know what Missenden would be like if it hadn't been built... you used to have everything come through, the old timber bogies come through with big horses on their way to Amersham"

"... No, I don't think it was the bypass that reduced trade; it was just how things go. You had Tesco and all those others coming in. Life moves on..."

Interviews: employment transcript

1. Where do you think people work that live in the village today?
"...Do you know, I don't know. We've really got nowhere. Wright's were very big employers and of course, Gerhardi's. I can't think of anywhere... maybe the restaurants"

(Gerhardi's = an electro-plating and stove enamelling factory which relocated to GM in 1940)
(Wright's Yard = a major business in the local construction industry, employed almost 250 people before WWII and continued up until 1980)

2. And with the arrival of all of these commuters has the community changed?
"...We're a dying breed. All the locals are going; they're either dying off or the people who've grown up here, that are younger, they're having to move out..."

"...My 2 sons moved away. They did their apprenticeships at Wright's and now one lives in Aylesbury and the other's in South Africa"