Marlow, Buckinghamshire

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Overlooking river Thames and Marlow

Marlow (previously Great Marlow or Chipping Marlow) is a town on the very southern tip of Buckinghamshire, England. It is located on the River Thames, four miles south-south-west of High Wycombe, and four miles north west of Maidenhead.

The town name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'land remaining after the draining of a pool'. In the Domesday Book in 1086 it was recorded as Merlaue, though previously it was known as Merelafan.

Marlow has been an important town for many years. This is because of its location on the River Thames: a major trade route from London. It has had its own market charter since 1324 at the latest but ownership of the charter has been lost and no market has been held since at least 1940. As early as 1299 the town had its own Member of Parliament.

1 Bridge
2 Notable residents
3 Transport
4 Town twinning
- 4.1 Trivia
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Bridge

A map of Marlow from 1945

There has been a bridge over the Thames at Marlow since the reign of King Edward III. The current bridge is a suspension bridge, designed by William Tierney Clark in 1832, and was a prototype for the nearly identical but larger Széchenyi Chain Bridge across the River Danube in Budapest.

[edit] Notable residents

The Royal Military College, now based at Sandhurst in Surrey was also once located in this town. Notable residents of the town have included Mary Shelley (who wrote Frankenstein there), Percy Bysshe Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Jerome K. Jerome and General George Higginson.

More recently the town (actually Marlow Bottom, 1 mile to the North) has been the home of Quintuple Olympic Gold Medallist Rower, Sir Steve Redgrave, the greatest Olympian Britain has produced in recent times. After striking gold at Sydney 2000, he became Britain's only athlete ever to have won Gold Medals at five consecutive Olympic Games. The Marlow Town Park, Higginson Park, features a bronze statue of Sir Steven looking across the river towards the location of the finishing line of the Marlow Regatta. There is also a road, Redgrave Place, adjoining from Newtown road to commemorate the Olympic medals.

Marlow hosts a regular regatta, and is the location of one of the Thames's locks.

Marlow is adjoined by Marlow Bottom, Little Marlow via the Little Marlow Road and to Bourne End by the same road. Nearby to the south are Bisham (home of Bisham Abbey) and Cookham Dean.

The pop singer Robbie Williams has recently bought a house on the river in Bisham.

[edit] Transport

Marlow has a railway station on a branch line from Maidenhead, by way of Bourne End. The service is known as the Marlow Donkey, the nickname given to the steam locomotives based at Marlow. See the Marlow Donkey article for more information.

Commuting to London by train is simple as there are two peak-time trains an hour and one off-peak, going from Marlow to Maidenhead (during rush hour commuters must change trains at Bourne End). There is an occasional train that goes from Bourne End to London without the need to change. Tickets can be purchased at Cookham or Bourne End during peak hours, or on the train, or at Maidenhead station at other times. The train service is now run by First Great Western, who took over the franchise from Thames Trains in 2003.

[edit] Town twinning

Marlow is twinned with the French town of Marly-le-Roi and has recently twinned with a district in Budapest adjoining the River Danube with the William Tierney Clark suspension bridge.