by Janet Kennish
                                             

View of Datchet Pharmacy by Tony Bradbury	Roger Walmsley in 1999

Outline History

This fine shop front dates from the early twentieth century, built by Arthur Squire Willcocks in about 1904. It echoes the mock-Jacobean timbered style of the Manor House on the opposite side of the Green, which was itself re-fronted in the 1870s. The shop has recently been carefully restored, keeping the original stained glass and some interior fittings. Extending back behind the shop is an older building, retained when the front was rebuilt and prhaps dating from around 1840. 

The more recent history of the building and business has been contributed by Roger Walmsley, who was the village pharmacist, at first alongside his father, from 1962 until 2000. The history of the owners and occupiers of this house, or previous dwellings on the same site, can be reliably traced back to the mid-1700s as a baker’s shop. The site can then be followed back to medieval times when it was part of a farmstead owned by Eton College, possibly first mentioned in the 1300s.

Forty Years of Recent History, by Roger Walmsley

In 1934  Charles Rayner, owner of a Gerrards Cross pharmacy, took a lease on No. 2 Club Buildings (just past the Queens Road level crossing) as a surprise gift for his  apprentice, George Walmsley (my father), and his daughter, Jacinthe. The two of them ran a combined pharmacy and hairdressing salon. Jacinthe’s hairdressing business was at the back of the pharmacy. They called their company Jacinthe Rayner Ltd., which is still the registered name of Datchet Village Pharmacy.

Now there were two pharmacies in the village. Arthur (Pip) Willcocks, a dignified, morning-suited figure, was still running his original one in the building on the Green which still houses the village pharmacy. He was not pleased to have a competitor. When the newcomer, George Walmsley, decided it would be courteous  to introduce himself, the indignant Pip saw him coming and  hid behind his pharmacy screen. He refused to see or speak to George, never relenting although they were fellow pharmacists in the village for the next six years. 

In 1940 Pip Willcocks sold his pharmacy on the Green to William A.Herbert who went on to found the Cross and Herbert pharmacy chain. Datchet was his first pharmacy. Then in 1956 George Walmsley bought Herbert’s pharmacy on the green  and moved Jacinthe Rayner Ltd to its present premises.  By then the company’s only real connection with the Rayner family was its name.  Jacinthe had married before the war and moved to a farm in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to raise horses. I qualified as a pharmacist myself in 1962 and became a partner in the pharmacy that year. My father continued to work part time in the pharmacy until he was over 80, and then in March 2000 I sold the pharmacy to Simon Carter.

After studying pharmacy and optics at Manchester University,  my father began his working life in 1926 at the Gerrards
Cross pharmacy where the owner, Charles Rayner practised as a dentist, optician, faith healer, spiritualist and homeo-
path as well as a pharmacist.  His pharmacy boasted a portable x-ray machine alongside a large,  tin bath used to ferment
a mixture of various roots dug up (often by my father) from Gerrards Cross Common. The resulting brew was perfumed
with rose water and sold as hair restorer  which people travelled from all over the south of England to buy.

In the early years of my father’s pharmacy at Datchet, most medicines were made by hand but he restricted himself to
manufacturing more orthodox cures. Like all his contemporaries, he made pills, powders, suppositories, mixtures,
ointments and creams. The present owner of the pharmacy, Simon Carter, has a fine collection of the antique gadgets
used in their manufacture on display in the pharmacy.   

Unlike most children growing up during World War II, I was not deprived of sugar. Pharmacies were copiously supplied
for the making of medicines. My mother helped me to impress many young friends with her memorable sugar sand-
wiches. Sugar may have been plentiful but drugs were primitive by today’s standards. There were no antibiotics to treat
infections until the late 1940s. My father was also an optician, supplying spectacles to the people of Datchet until the
1970s when he felt that he was no longer sufficiently up to date with modern practice. His retirement was a great
disappointment to many elderly people in the village because he had never charged modern prices for his glasses.
Pharmacy has changed over the past 50 years from a practical science to a more academic, advisory role. Now many
medicines are dispensed in calendar packs with advisory leaflets. The pharmacist’s job is to explain the effects and
side-effects of these potent treatments.

During my 40-year span as a pharmacist in the village I have known the pharmacy with three different looks. The
beautiful Victorian mahogany fittings were removed in 1960 and replaced with then modern self-service fittings. The
year 2000 has seen another dramatic change, the shop area has been increased in size and brought into the 21st Century
with the latest designs and new technology.

History of the House Before 1940

Occupier & Owner: A.S. Willcocks; Annual value: £50             (Bank value £30, Chestnut Cottage £20)

This survey entry makes it certain that Willcocks had removed from the top of the High Street to the present shop (and presumably rebuilt or re-fronted it) between 1896 and 1910. The most likely year is 1904, since his lease on the High Street shop was said (in the 1896 sale catalogue) to run for 22 years from March 1882. The valuation shows that he owned the building himself, while only leasing the High Street shop, so it was a serious business move.

The photographs which show the shop front as it is now are entirely consistent with this proposed date. On the right below shows the Jubilee Cross on the far left (1897) with the Jubilee Oak (1887) very near to it, the drinking fountain in the centre (1896). On the right of the pharmacy is the Barclays bank house, and in the distance are the old Club Buildings, where Jacinthe Rayner was first established. The date of this postcard is 1907, and the view looking up the High Street (below left) seems to have been taken at about the same time. Looking very carefully, the small Jubilee oak can be seen in front of the big elm tree outside the shop, the oak being about the same size in both photos.

Chemist's Shop, oak & elm tree from High Street		from L to R: Jubilee Cross & Oak, Club Buildings, Drinking Fountain, Pharmacy, Bank & Bank House, 1907

The photograph below shows the original buildings on the Pharmacy and Bank site, probably in the 1890s. There seem to be three old houses, one larger than the others, the present Pharmacy being a remodelling of the house on the left, with a higher roof level than the other two. The elm tree in front of it is still a landmark in later photos of the refronted pharmacy. The Bank and Bank House replaced the lower two houses. These three old houses appear in valuation surveys of 1859 and 1866 which list three cottages as owned by William Henry Dickman, the publican at the Royal Stag, and occupied by people of low social status.

The 1899 OS large scale map	Pharmacy house (L) & old houses on the bank site

Reading this map from the west end of the village, North Green and Patrixbourne are the first two big semi-detached houses fronting onto the north side of ‘The Green’, built in the 1890s. The irregularly shaped large house next is The Hall, now demolished and hence the present ‘Hall Close’ on its site. The present Hall Cottage is in the next plot, adjacent to the Hall’s drive which leads round to the stable block (now converted to a house) lying behind Rose and Chestnut Cottages. These two semi-detached houses, known to have been built soon after 1875, adjoin Hall Cottage but are small and square in plan. Next is the present chemist’s shop, with its clearly identifiable long narrow rear extension, and then the Bank and its House before the Old Priory's front wall. 

The two smaller cottages were probably built in the 1720s (see below)
 

The 1839 Parish Rate Map and the Aldridge family; dwelling houses are shown as hatched; barns, outbuildings, stables etc are solid black.

The large plot 80 is now Hall Court, but was then a farmstead including the small building, also numbered 80, which is the present Hall Cottage. The farm yard and its buildings were sold in 1875 & The Hall dates from the sale of that land, while Hall Cottage survived from the time of the farmstead.    The area now occupied by the present Rose and Chestnut Cottages, Pharmacy, Old Bank and Bank House, is represented by plots 79 and 78, with Hall Cottage adjoining as 80.                                              Plot 78 is listed as ‘House and Garden, Anderson’, and 79 as ‘Baker’s shop, Aldridge’. The frontage of the two lower cottages in the 1890s photo may both belong to plot 78. Plot 79 should then be the chemist’s shop, formerly Aldridge's the baker, but without the characteristic extended rear, so that part of the present building can be dated to some time between 1840 and 1875. Rose and Chestnut Cottages were built on the west end of plot 79 in about 1875.

The Eton College archives are relevant for Datchet because the College owned property, land and a fishery here, but in 1800 everything the College owned except for the fishery in the Thames was sold off.  The property bought by Nash from Eton is described as two cottages, £73 10s, and elsewhere in the documents as Nash’s house. In 1786 a survey of Eton’s posses in Datchet, called Meos lands, includes a house in Datchet, part of premises, now in tenancy J.Nash. A previous survey of 1777 contains more detail:

Mr Palmer’s valuation of Meos lands; Two houses built about 50 years ago by leave of the College upon part of the homestead, which are now in very bad repair and for which the tenant never received any rent. Meos lands consist of house, barn, garden, orchard and land in the open fields of Datchet.

If the sequence is correct, and one of Nash’s houses is the predecessor of the Pharmacy on that site, then the origins of the building lies in the cottages which Nash built, as it was claimed, fifty years before 1777, ie in the 1720s. 

The suggestion being made here is that the Meos homestead was The Hall site (plot 80 in 1839), which has had lesser plots carved out of it at a later date, including Nash’s houses which became the Pharmacy and bank. Meos barn may actually have survived into the 1830s as the very large block shown between plots 80 and 81 in the 1839 map.

This name for Eton College's Datchet property can be traced back to medieval times, and the homestead or barn associated with it appears to have occupied the Pharmacy site. The fishery was named Coxweare, later known as Newman’s Bucks, near the present weir on the way to Old Windsor. 

It is, of course, skating on very thin ice to equate a surviving plot of land with a medieval description, but the sequence from Meos to Mewes to Meahors and eventually back to Mayhews (below), spelling as one hears the sounds, just seems too much of a coincidence to dismiss. Houses would normally be known by the name of a significant owner for decades or centuries after, and once the Eton scribes had settled on Meos it was perpetuated in that form. 

From Eton’s archives, leases of their Datchet lands to farmers, in reverse chronological order:

        1671 & 1651 & 1633, leases of Coxweare & Meos to Richard Beringer of Iver

        1611 Lease to Robert Barker, all lands etc & barn called Mewes for 21 years

        1563 Lease to Richard Reade of Datchet, all College lands in Datchet and a barn called Mewes in Datchet

        1537 Lease to J Edwards of Datchet, husbandman, of tenement called Meahors

The College’s connection with Datchet dates from 1498 when a grant was made to the Provost  of land which had belonged to William Mayhew. Many earlier deeds and grants relating to these properties are in the College archives because when the land became theirs all the previous sale papers came as well, and an institution like Eton kept every piece of legal paperwork. Thus it is possible to track the earlier history of the Meos property and the strange name back to 1370 by following the description of the messuage (ie house) in Datchet which became the pharmacy and bank site.

To understand some of the following descriptions, it is necessary to know that the house and grounds now called Old Priory is actually the original Rectory, and that the 'King's Way' is the main road through the village, fronting our Green.

1498 a grant to Henry Bost, Provost of Eton, by three donors, of all their lands and tenements in the town and fields of Datchet,    which they lately had by gift of Richard Hopton, clerk.

1461 William Mayhew, tanner, (son of Walter Mayhewe) to Richard Hopton of Datchet, all lands as cited in 1457

1457 Grant by William and Maud Berenger of Yellinge (Maud is widow of Walter Mayhewe) to Robert Whyte of Datchet, of 10 acres land, lately had from Walter Mayhewe her late husband of the gift of Robert Erlych and J. Hunte.

1398 Quitclaim by Robert Fysshere and Walter Hunte to the wife of Walter Mayhew of a messuage and its curtilage, between the Rectory on the east and a tenement of William Erlych on the west, one end abutting onto the garden of the Rectory on the north and the other onto the King’s Way on the south

1396 Quitclaim by J. Lotherlake of Old Windsor to Nicholas Ludlawe of a messuage and its curtilage, between the Rectory on the east and a tenement of William Erlych on the west, one end abutting onto the garden of the Rectory on the north and the other onto the King’s Way on the south

1370 Grant by Adam Wodiat of Datchet to John Lotherlake and Margery his wife of Old Windsor of a messuage and curtilage between the Rectory on the east and a tenement of William Allrich (=Erlich), one end extending on the Rectory to the north and the other on the King’s Way'.

The ownership of this plot of land can be tentatively traced even further back because a description very like that of 1396 and 1370 occurred previously:

between 1314 & 1334
Grant by William de Suthle (Southlea) to John de la Haye and Julia his wife of a messuage and curtilage between the court of the Rector of Datchet and a tenement of John Erlig. He had this messuage from death of Stephen Suthle his brother.

Census returns 1841-91: online or microfilm at Slough Reference Library  
1896 Montagu sale catalogue and map: several copies in village & present researcher
OS maps: large scale 1899, Buckinghamshire Local Studies Service Aylesbury
1910 valuation: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury  
1857 & 1866 county rate surveys: Buckinghamshire Local Studies Service Aylesbury
1839 rate map: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury  + small copies in private hands
Land tax Assessments Stoke Hundred 1781-1832, Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury
Eton documents: Eton College Archives; extracts from Miscellaneous Estates Calendared Records

Researcher: janetkennish@tesco.net