Original town plans of 1906-1220 to be exhibited on Saturday

There's a fascinating and unique opportunity to see them at an exhibition in Beaconsfield this Saturday which has been put together by David Thorpe and Julian Hunt, local historians who have also written a book, History of Beaconsfield.
Mr Thorpe, a retired businessman and convenor of the Bucks Local History Network, said: "At the time the railway arrived, Beaconsfield was a little town marooned on the London to Oxford road and the nearest train station was at Wooburn for most of the 19th century. It had been an important coaching town in the 17th and 18th centuries, but had declined after the building of the railways in the 1840s. The railway companies and local people had been trying to get a railway to Beaconsfield for about 40 years.
"Once it arrived, the area around the station was developed very quickly, mostly by speculative builders. First was the Baring Road and Gregories Road area. The land was divided up into small pots and individual builders built a mixture of houses, mostly to rent. They were quite modest and most of them are still there today.
"Within four or five years it became clear that fairly affluent people were attracted to the area and larger houses were built in Burkes Road and Grove Road.
"The 1911 census is now available and so we now know more about the people who lived there. Some were retired people from the colonies, who had worked in the Indian civil service or in the military. There were quite a lot of senior civil servants who needed to get to Whitehall. By 1910 to 1915 there were more doctors, typically Harley Street specialists, or businessmen associated with new businesses in West London.
"Later, social houses were built by the Urban District Council in 1918 the Malthouse Square area and much later, in the 1930s, in the Maxwell Road area and Hyde Green area"
The exhibition will be fascinating to anyone who lives in a house built between 1906 and 1920 because they may well be able to view the original plans, and discover the names and occupations of the family living there at that time, as well as the whether they had servants and what the house was then worth. Also on display will be the plans of many of the town's shops and public buildings.
The exhibition is being sponsored, appropriately, by The Frost Partnership, a family run firm of estate agents whose Beaconsfield office open as AC Frost & Co in Burkes Parade, Beaconsfield, in 1908, where it is still located today.
It was founded by Alfred Frost, a chartered surveyor from London who, along with architects Julian Burgess and Walter Holden, was instrumental in shaping BBeaconsfieldas we know it today. His grandson Alan Frost is the today the company's CEO and his great grandson, John Frost, its managing director and a forth generation chartered surveyor.
The exhibition is also supported by A&Q Partnership of Bourne End.
David Thorpe and co- author Julian Hunt, former heritage manager at the Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury, will be on hand to talk about the history of Beaconsfield and sell and sign copies of their book, which contains more than 100 photographs, and many original drawings.
The book also sheds new light on the medieval origins of Beaconsfield and its development as the resort of prominent politicians, legal and medical men. It features newly discovered documents listing the contents of the town's coaching inns and explains why so many inns closed long before the coming of the railways. It traces the development of the new town.
The exhibition takes place at the Fitzwilliam Centre, Windsor End, Old Town, on November 14 from 10.30am - 4.30pm.