High Wycombe ( /ˌhaɪ ˈwɪkəm/), commonly known as Wycombe and formally called Chepping Wycombe or Chipping Wycombe until 1946, is a large town in Buckinghamshire, England. It is 29 miles (47 km) west-north-west of Charing Cross in London; this information is also engraved on the Corn Market building in the centre of the town. According to the 2001 census High Wycombe had a population of 92,300, making it the largest town in the non-metropolitan county of Buckinghamshire now that the Borough of Milton Keynes is a unitary authority area, and the second largest in the ceremonial county. The High Wycombe Urban Area, the conurbation of which the town is the largest component has a population of 118,219.
High Wycombe is mostly an unparished area in the Wycombe district. Part of the urban area constitutes a civil parish of Chepping Wycombe, which had a population of 14,455 according to the 2001 census – this parish represents that part of the ancient parish of Chepping Wycombe which was outside the former municipal borough of Wycombe.
Wycombe is a combination of industrial and market town, with a traditional emphasis on furniture production. There has been a market held in the High Street since at least medieval times. The town has always had a presence of industry, which in the 17th century exceeded the market town and now Wycombe remains more industrial in character.
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Famous quotes containing the word high:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)