The High Wycombe Society has recently received a donation consisting of a collection of Estate Agents’ brochures for High Wycombe property auctions during the latter half of the twentieth century. 

Most of these contain schematic plans which show the exact location of the various shops in the town centre as they were in 1950s/60s/70s and 80s. 

These are an absolute goldmine for those people interested in studying how the town centre developed in that period.

The plan accompanying the brochure for the sale of No.46 and 48 Frogmoor is shown here. 
This shows the premises located in the whole of Frogmoor and the adjacent Oxford Street in 1959.

Many readers might well have fond memories of quite a few of these, such as:-

The Palace cinema, which also featured a large room on the first floor which at different times was used as a cafe and a dance studio. Do any readers apart from myself remember having lessons in ballroom dancing there?

The ironmongers F.W.George was one of the iconic shops of Wycombe in the 1950s.

The business was founded by Frederick William George who was originally the landlord of the Coach & Horses public house in Easton Street. 

In the early 1900s Frederick decided to change career and become a shop-keeper. He established an ironmongers shop in Queen’s Square, which also acted as a ‘cycle agency’.

In the mid-1930s he also set up an outlet in Frogmoor and both shops became ‘ironmongers, hardware dealers & gunsmiths’.

He was succeeded in the business by his son George Eric George, known to the staff as Mister Eric. 

He was in his 30’s when WWII broke out and served as an Officer in Aden, with Stanley Hodgkiss as his Batman.

Stan was later employed in the shop.

In 1963 the George’s decided to sell the Frogmoor site to Tesco. 

At that time the supermarket company was in the early stages of its expansion programme and they bought the Frogmoor site to build their first store in High Wycombe.

Many young men from Wycombe would have spent (or should I say misspent) much of their spare time in the hall above the men’s outfitters Montague Burton. 

This was a popular place to play billiards or snooker.

Near Burton’s was the newsagent’s shop Popps. This was still the name of the shop in the 1950s, despite the fact that the proprietor Jacob Popps had died in 1939.

In the early 1900s Jacob had acquired a national reputation as the man who defied the Sunday Trading Laws, which dated from the 17th century!

Jackie Kay of the High Wycombe Society is to be congratulated for making these brochures available on the Society’s website at www.highwycombesociety.org.uk/going-going-gone/. 

The brochures are minimally introduced with links so that you can click right through to scanned versions of individual brochures.