Gerrards Cross
Town in Buckinghamshire, England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Town in Buckinghamshire, England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Gerrards Cross is a town and civil parish in south Buckinghamshire, England, separated from the London Borough of Hillingdon at Harefield by Denham, south of Chalfont St Peter and north bordering villages of Fulmer, Hedgerley, Iver Heath and Stoke Poges. It spans foothills of the Chiltern Hills and land on the right bank of the River Misbourne. It is 19 miles (31 km) west-north-west of London. Bulstrode Park Camp was an Iron Age fortified encampment. The town is close to M25 motorway and the M40 motorway runs beside woodland on its southern boundary.
| Gerrards Cross | |
|---|---|
| Town and civil parish | |
_-_geograph.org.uk_-_29075.jpg) Gerrards Cross Town Centre | |
 Gerrards Cross Location within Buckinghamshire | |
| Area | 10.88 km2 (4.20 sq mi) |
| Population | 8,017 (2011 Census)[1] |
| • Density | 737/km2 (1,910/sq mi) |
| OS grid reference | TQ00258860 |
| Unitary authority | |
| Ceremonial county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | Gerrards Cross |
| Postcode district | SL9 |
| Dialling code | 01753 |
| Police | Thames Valley |
| Fire | Buckinghamshire |
| Ambulance | South Central |
| UK Parliament | |
The town name is new compared with the great bulk of English towns. Gerrards Cross did not exist in any formal sense until 1859, when it was formed by taking pieces out of the three parishes of Chalfont St Peter, Fulmer, Stoke Poges and Upton cum Chalvey to form a new ecclesiastical parish. It is named after the Gerrard family who in the early 17th century owned a manor here. At that time, homes which were not farms, were smallholdings clustered in a hamlet in the south of an elongated parish of Chalfont St Peter. Near its centre is the site of an Iron Age minor hillfort, Bulstrode Park Camp, which is a scheduled ancient monument.[2] Originally named Jarrett's Cross, before the times of the Gerrard family, after a highwayman, [citation needed] some areas retain the original name, such as Jarrett's Hill leading up to Bulstrode Park off the A40 west of the town.
On 1 January 2016, Gerrards Cross officially became a town with the parish council becoming a town council.
The large and distinctive parish church is dedicated to St. James. It was built in 1861 as a memorial to Colonel George Alexander Reid who was MP for Windsor, and designed by Sir William Tite in yellow brick with a Byzantine-style dome, Chinese-looking turrets and an Italianate Campanile. In 1969 the singer Lulu married Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees in the church. The actress Margaret Rutherford is buried with her husband Stringer Davis in the St James Church graveyard.
The town has its own library and its own cinema, the Everyman Gerrards Cross, which originally opened in 1925.
Independent schools include St Mary's (all girls- through to sixth form). Students of secondary school age attend either one of the local grammar schools, such as Dr Challoner's Grammar School (Boys with co-educational Sixth Form), Dr Challoner's High School (Girls), The Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe (Boys), John Hampden Grammar School (Boys), and Beaconsfield High School (Girls) Chesham Grammar School (Co-ed), and the local Upper School, Chalfonts Community College, which is the catchment school.
On the south side of the town is the Gerrards Cross Memorial Building, on the site of the former vicarage. The building was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1922 to commemorate the town's losses during the First World War. It is the only example of a Lutyens war memorial designed with a functional purpose.[3]
The town has a railway station on the Chiltern Main Line which opened on 2 April 1906. This provides services to London, High Wycombe and Oxford with a commuting time of 18 minutes on the fast train to London Marylebone. A new arch over the section of deep railway cutting to allow Tesco to build a supermarket collapsed on 30 June 2005 at 19:30. Nobody was injured but the line was closed for over six weeks. Compensation by Tesco to Chiltern was reported as £8.5m and the retailer compensated by funding a media campaign to reinstate business immediately lost by the closure. Construction of a correctly constructed arch began in January 2009.[4]
The 11.36am from London Paddington to Gerrards Cross was an official or 'parliamentary train' recognised as an outlandish loss-making service to prevent the link to that terminus being closed or re-allocated. This train now terminates at West Ruislip. In 2011, National Rail was lobbied to phase the service out.[5]
The town lies 8.4 miles (13.5 km) north west of London's Heathrow Airport.
In the 2021 Census, the largest religious affiliations[6] in Gerrards Cross were Christian (46.2%), those with no religion (22.4%), Sikh (10.5%), Hindu (7.5%), Muslim (6.4%), Jewish (0.8%), Buddhist (0.5%) and Other (0.5%).
It was reported 65.5% of people living in Gerrards Cross were reported as White (65.5%), Asian (25.5%), Mixed (4.0%), Black (4.0%) and Other (1.1%).[7]
Many houses built during development in the 1950s had defective tiles, leading to the highest court reported judgment Young & Marten Ltd v McManus Childs Ltd,[8] holding that a person who contracts to do work and supply materials implicitly warrants that the materials will be fit for purpose, even if the purchaser specifies the materials to be used.
| Output area | Homes owned outright | Owned with a loan | Socially rented | Privately rented | Other | km2 roads | km2 water | km2 domestic gardens | km2 domestic buildings | km2 non-domestic buildings | Usual residents | km2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Civil parish | 1311 | 1014 | 123 | 384 | 58 | 0.787 | 0.079 | 2.728 | 0.353 | 0.070 | 8017 | 10.88 |
Gerrards Cross was one of the locations for the crime thriller “The Stalkers” (2013) by Paul Finch, a former police officer and journalist and now a full-time writer.
Gerrards Cross also featured in a true story about love and war based on real letters “The Very White of Love” (2018) by S.K. Worrall.
In the story “Carousel” (2013) depicting a spoiled boy from an Indian family the author Rajeev Rana also placed some of the action in Gerrards Cross.
This town also served as the setting for the novella “Amy's Travels” (2024) by Lilly Khripko (born in 2013 in the UK and now living in Gerrards Cross). The book tells the story of a tweenage girl recalling her early childhood.
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