Why King’s Lane?
By Reina Free
I so wanted to write again about the beautiful things of spring; the seas and streams of bluebells, along verges and into the hedgerows, the exuberance of cherry tree blossom against grey skies. The roe deer husband and wife in the nature reserve, he quite unafraid, she shy in the protection of last year’s sunflowers, now shrivelled and dry.
However I decided to write about something entirely different. For some time I have been wondering, walking along King’s Lane, was there ever a King who visited this part of his realm? Why King’s Lane, King’s Ash, King’s Wood?
I started with The Lee, the name, and learned that it came from Ley, which means a clearing in the wood. Then my thoughts wandered to that beautiful old church (behind the new St John the Baptist Church) built in the twelfth century.
At this part of my story I have to say that I am not an historian, although I did some research. We have no exact date, as far as I know, when the ‘Little Church’ was built. So who was or were the king or kings who reigned in the twelfth century? I found King John, King Henry The Third, Edward The First. I also learned about Missenden Abbey, which was founded in about 1133, and there was a link with the Little Church.
The fields and meadows now worked on by our own farmers were once mainly forests. And so my thoughts wandered, carried away by my imagination.
I hear the sound of the bugle. Did the King gallop on his stallion along King’s Lane? Did he hunt in these woods, with spear, and did he have a falcon on his leather-gloved hand? Was he followed by his entourage of courtiers, and behind them footmen with bows and arrows? Did he stop in the village that was once behind the Little Church, abandoned because of the Black Death, the plague? You can still see ridges in the field, and you can find pieces of red brick, reminiscent of times gone by long ago.
That time also had its problems. It was the time of the Magna Carta, sealed with the Royal Seal. In some respects we could do with a revised Magna Carta – but that is a different story.
Life was slower compared to ours, their world much smaller. There was no television, internet, email, jet travel. There was no running water, no electricity, meals were cooked over wood fires. Simple pleasures. When people got ill there were no pain-killers, no antibiotics, although there was knowledge about herbs and so on. Operations were performed in a rather barbaric manner. People were tough. There was a big difference between the rich and the poor.
But people in general do not change. Some people are happy with little; for some it is never enough. And so on. Yet in essence all people have the same needs. Respect, love, a roof over their heads, enough to eat.
Sadly wars never ceased. On the contrary, the spear, bow and arrow have been replaced by more sophisticated and powerful killing tools.
And yet we all walk behind one another. Rich man. Poor man. Clever man and not so clever man. Kings and Queens. Bishops, Cardinals, monks, the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker, and so on. You and me, all going in the same direction and to the same destination.