Pictures of Great Missenden

About Great Missenden

Lying in a favoured position within the sweep of the glorious Chilterns, Great Missenden is an attractive village of charm and character, and was the home to Roald Dahl who wrote many of his best loved stories there. Most of the properties spread along its winding high street are black and white half-timbered, or representative of the gracious Georgian period. It is a gentle village, with a countrified, un-hurried air.

There is a 14th-century church dedicated to St.Peter and St.Paul, thought to have been built during the 14th or 15th-century on the site of an earlier church that possibly belonged to Missenden Abbey. The Abbey was founded as an Augustinian Monastery in 1133, it is now a residential college for adult education.

In the village you will find pleasant shops, some nice inns and traditional pubs where you can get a pleasing meal or enjoy a quiet drink. Visitors to the town will be impressed with the newly opened Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre. In his life-time (1916-1990) Roald Dahl lived in Great Missenden and the town is proud of its associations with the celebrated author of children's tales. Another literary connection is Robert Louis Stevenson, famous as the author of Treasure Island.

Tourist attraction include: The Ridgeway Path and associated wildfowl parks, Hughendon Manor, home of Victorian prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, West Wycombe Park House built in the mid-18th-century, Bucks Goat Centre, and The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre, and the gardens of his family home, Gypsy House, which are open through the National Gardens Scheme.