Totteridge has prospered quietly for many centuries, nestling in the Chilterns overlooking the market town of High Wycombe. It developed a unique character which still survives despite the encroachment of Wycombe's waves of expansion between the 1920s and the '60s. Surprisingly, Totteridge's long history has, until now, lain hidden in the archives, as the author discovered when he first came to live here and found no coherent account of its past. Now, after several years of intensive and systematic research, he has remedied the deficiency in splendid fashion with a very readable and flowing narrative, illuminated by many maps and pictures, mostly never previously published.

The village first appears in the records in the 12th century as part of Bassetbury Manor, but the author has pieced together clues from archaeology, place-names and topography to suggest, for the first time, a possible Iron-Age origin of the settlement. For long centuries Totteridge remained an archetypal English village with its church, pub, farms and cottages and the author reflects the daily concerns - and hardships - of country life through the eyes of the people and in intimate detail. The story is not one of toil alone, for the village had its share of excitement too!

This important new book not only tells the story of a particularly interesting Chiltern community, but also throws new light on the past of the area as a whole and of High Wycombe in particular.

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