Gerrards Cross

Gerrards Cross
Gerrards Cross town centre .
Area	10.88 km2 (4.20 sq mi)
Population	8,017 (2011 Census)
• Density	737/km2 (1,910/sq mi)
OS grid reference	SU999880
District	South Bucks
Shire county	Buckinghamshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Gerrards Cross
Postcode district	SL9
Dialling code	01753
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Buckinghamshire
Ambulance	South Central
UK Parliament	Beaconsfield

Gerrards Cross (/ˌdʒɛrədzˈkrɒs/) is a town and civil parish in the South Bucks district of Buckinghamshire, England. It is in the south of the county, separated from the London Borough of Hillingdon at Harefield by Denham. London is centred 19 miles east. Geographically large and suburban, Gerrards Cross is south of Chalfont St Peter and north of Fulmer and Hedgerley. It spans foothills of the Chiltern Hills and land on the right bank of the River Misbourne — it has a central public park, Gerrards Cross Common and Bulstrode Park Camp, a preserved area of land which was an Iron Age fortified encampment.

The town has a railway station on the Chiltern main line whose operator provides a fast service from the station to London and the M40 motorway is beside woodland on the southern boundary of the civil parish and the settlement has a commercial and leisure central area which is smaller than the nearby town of Beaconsfield.

History

The town name is new compared with the great bulk of English towns. Gerrards Cross did not exist in any formal sense until 1859 when it was formed by taking pieces out of the five parishes of Chalfont St Peter, Fulmer, Iver, Langley Marish and Upton to form a new ecclesiastical parish. It is named after the Gerrard family who in the early 17th century owned a manor here. At that time homes which were not farms were smallholdings clustered in a hamlet in the south of an elongated parish of Chalfont St Peter. Near its centre is site of an Iron Age minor hillfort, Bulstrode Park Camp, which is a scheduled ancient monument Originally named Jarrett's Cross before the times of the Gerrard family, after a highwayman , some areas retain the original name, such as Jarrett's Hill leading up to WEC International off the A40 west of the town.

In 2014, a major national surveying company named Gerrards Cross as the most sought-after and expensive commuter town or village in their London Hot 100 report, with an average sale price of £1,000,000.

Facilities

St James's Church, Gerrards Cross, built in 1861.

The large and distinctive parish church is dedicated to St. James. It was built in 1861 as a memorial to Colonel George Alexander Reid who was MP for Windsor and designed by Sir William Tite in yellow brick with a Byzantine style dome, Chinese looking turrets and an Italianate Campanile. In 1969 the singer Lulu married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees in the church. The actress Margaret Rutherford is buried with her husband Stringer Davis in the St James Church graveyard. The town has its own library, various restaurants and its own cinema, the Everyman Gerrards Cross.

Independent schools include Maltman's Green School (all girls), St Mary's, Gayhurst and Thorpe House. Students of secondary school age attend either one of the local grammar schools, such as Dr Challoner's Grammar School (Boys), Dr Challoner's High School (Girls), The Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe (Boys), John Hampden Grammar School (Boys), and Beaconsfield High School (Girls) Chesham Grammar School (Co-ed), or the local Upper School, Chalfonts Community College, which is the catchment school.

On the south side of the town is the Gerrards Cross Memorial Building, on the site of the former vicarage. The building was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1922 to commemorate the town's losses during the First World War. It is the only example of a Lutyens war memorial designed with a functional purpose.

Just outside Gerrards Cross, on the A40 to Beaconsfield, is Wapseys Wood landfill site, one of the largest landfill sites in the UK, operated by Veolia Landfill Ltd. It accepts up to 900,000 tonnes of non hazardous waste each year from south Buckinghamshire, London and other areas. The landfill gas produced from the waste yields over 10 megawatts of electricity which is fed into the power grid.

Transport

Gerrards Cross station, in 1994. The view NW from the footbridge, towards Princes Risborough

The town has a railway station on the Chiltern Main Line which opened on 2 April 1906. This provides services to London and Birmingham with a commuting time of about 25 minutes to London Marylebone. A new arch over the section of deep railway cutting to allow Tesco to build a supermarket collapsed on 30 June 2005 at 19:30. Nobody was injured but the line was closed for over six weeks. Compensation by Tesco to Chiltern was reported as £8.5m and the retailer compensated by funding a media campaign to reinstate business immediately lost by the closure. Construction of a correctly constructed arch began in January 2009.

The 11.36am from London Paddington to Gerrards Cross was an official or 'parliamentary train' recognised as an outlandish loss-making service to prevent the link to that terminus being closed or re-allocated. This train now terminates at West Ruislip. In 2011 National Rail was lobbied to phase the service out.

The town is 14 miles (23 km) from London's Heathrow Airport.

Recent history

Many houses built during development in the 1950s had defective tiles leading to the highest court reported judgment: Young & Marten Ltd v McManus Childs Ltd to the effect that a person who contracts to do work and supply materials implicitly warrants that the materials will be fit for purpose, even if the purchaser specifies the materials to be used.

2011 Published Statistics: Population, home ownership and extracts from Physical Environment, surveyed in 2005

Output area	Homes owned outright	Owned with a loan	Socially rented	Privately rented	Other	km² roads	km² water	km² domestic gardens	km² domestic buildings	km² non-domestic buildings	Usual residents	km²
Civil parish	1311	1014	123	384	58	0.787	0.079	2.728	0.353	0.070	8017	10.88

Popular culture

Stanley Kubrick filmed some of the exteriors in his feature 1962 film Lolita, notably "Charlotte Haze's house", in Gerrards Cross.

"The Italian Lesson" sketch in the first episode of the first series of the BBC Television comedy show Monty Python's Flying Circus (first broadcast in 1969) includes the line "'Sono inglese di Gerrard's (sic) Cross', I am an Englishman from Gerrard's Cross."

Jethro Tull's song "Journeyman" on their 1978 album Heavy Horses includes the line "Too late to stop for tea at Gerrards Cross".

Indie band the Hit Parade released their 3rd single "The Sun Shines In Gerrards Cross" in 1986.

St Hubert's House, a Grade II listed house to the south-east of Gerrards Cross has been used as a filming location for TV series including Inspector Morse and The Professionals, and was the location of Colonel Hyde's house in the The League of Gentlemen (film).

Notable people

Joan G. Robinson, author and illustrator, lived in Gerrards Cross. Her most well-known book is When Marnie Was There, which was adapted into an animated film by Studio Ghibli.

Kenneth More, actor, born in Gerrards Cross September 20, 1914.

Amal Clooney, barrister and human rights activist, moved from Lebanon to Gerrards Cross with her family at the age of 2.

External links

• Railway tunnel collapse pictures and info
• Railway tunnel collapse information
• Tesco information about reconstruction of tunnel and shop
• St. James Church
• Gerrards Cross Library

References

A History of Chalfont St Peter and Gerrards Cross C G Edmonds 1964 and The History of Bulstrode by A M Baker 2003 published as one book by Colin Smythe Ltd. 2003