Great Missenden

Great Missenden boasts an attractive medley of 16th and 17th-century buildings, which have been adapted over the years to changing needs and tastes. At the southern end of the village High Street is the medieval George Inn, behind which is the old manorial Court House. Also in the village is a handsome flint and stone church and the site of Missenden Abbey, which was founded in 1133 by the Augustinian order. A daughter community of St Nicholas’s Abbey in Normandy, the abbey has long since gone and in its place stands a fashionable Gothic mansion dating from 1810.

Great Missenden is probably best known as being the home of Roald Dahl, the internationally recognised author particularly loved for his children’s books. He lived here for 30 years and is buried on the hillside opposite his home, Gipsy House, in the churchyard of St Peter and St Paul. His daughter Olivia, who died at the age of seven, is buried at Little Missenden in a plot that was intended for Dahl himself and his first wife, the actress Patricia Neal. But this plan was changed when Dahl and Neal were divorced in 1983, seven years before his death.

At the Roald Dahl Museum & Story Centre, aimed at six to 12-year-olds, visitors can delve into the author’s archives on touch-screen monitors, visit his writing hut and make up ‘phizz-whizzing’ words and stories using the interactive exhibits. A charity was established in 2001 to promote education in literature, and a sister charity, the Roald Dahl Foundation, was founded by his widow Felicity, providing grants to individuals, charities and hospitals, and assistance to children and families in the fields of neurology and haematology. There’s also a shop and café on site.