Population 1,669 (2011 census) Civil parish Taplow Area 11.22 km² Local time Sunday 8:58 PM | OS grid reference SU9182 District South Bucks | |
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Weather 11°C, Wind E at 19 km/h, 61% Humidity Points of interest Cliveden, Taplow Lake, Taplow burial | ||
Taplow is a village and civil parish in the South Bucks district of Buckinghamshire, England. It sits on the left bank of the River Thames, facing Maidenhead in the neighbouring county of Berkshire, and is roughly 1 mile (1.6 km) west of Burnham and 25 miles (40 km) west of Charing Cross in London.
Contents
Map of Taplow, UK
Taplow railway station is near the A4 south of the settled part of the village and provides access to and from Oxford, Reading and London Paddington.
There are two conservation areas in the parish: the Taplow Village Conservation Area and the Taplow Riverside Conservation Area.
Footpaths connect all parts of the parish to Maidenhead Bridge and to Burnham Beeches, a modest, hilly wood marking the start of the Chiltern Hills.
History
The village has a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, South Lodge Pit, dating to the late Cretaceous.
The village's name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means Tæppa's barrow; the Anglo-Saxon burial mound of Tæppa can still be visited, and important artefacts excavated there are now in the British Museum, notably a gold belt buckle. Taplow was recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Thapeslau. Taplow Court nearby is also the site of an early Iron Age hill fort and was the site of the manor house.
William Grenfell, 1st Baron Desborough lived at Taplow Court. Neighbouring is Cliveden, former home and parkland of Nancy Astor in the parish. Both aspects of Cliveden are today open under the National Trust scheme though part of the main building is used as a hotel for visiting dignitaries to the UK.
In 1883 a number of important Anglo-Saxon royal grave goods were discovered, reflecting similar discoveries in Prittlewell, Broomfiled, and Sutton Hoo. Though the overall collection is less than that from the ship-burial in Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo, many individual objects are closely comparable and of similar quality.
The church was built in 1911 but includes one of the earliest surviving brass memorials to a civilian in England, made in about 1350 which would place it in the seven years of the Black Death (plague).
Demography
At the 2001 UK census, the Taplow electoral ward had a population of 1,584. The ethnicity was 96.1% white, 1% mixed race, 2.3% Asian, 0% black and 0.6% other. The place of birth of residents was 85.1% United Kingdom, 1% Republic of Ireland, 4.6% other Western European countries, and 9.3% elsewhere. Religion was recorded as 73.4% Christian, 0.9% Buddhist, 0.8% Hindu, 0.8% Sikh, 0.3% Jewish, and 0.4% Muslim. 17.1% were recorded as having no religion, 0% had an alternative religion and 6.4% did not state their religion.
The economic activity of residents aged 16–74 was 46.8% in full-time employment, 8.7% in part-time employment, 16.7% self-employed, 1.3% unemployed, 0.9% students with jobs, 2.5% students without jobs, 12.7% retired, 6.2% looking after home or family, 1.7% permanently sick or disabled and 2.7% economically inactive for other reasons. The industry of employment of residents was 12.3% retail, 11.8% manufacturing, 4.5% construction, 24.6% real estate, 7.8% health and social work, 5.7% education, 9.1% transport and communications, 2.7% public administration, 6.7% hotels and restaurants, 2.7% finance, 3% agriculture and 9.1% other. Compared with national figures, the ward had a relatively high proportion of workers in agriculture and real estate. According to Office for National Statistics estimates, during the period of April 2001 to March 2002 the average gross weekly income of households was £840, compared with an average of £660 in South East England. Of the ward's residents aged 16–74, 37.2% had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared with 19.9% nationwide.