IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Mead Close, PRINCES RISBOROUGH, HP27 9JL

Monks Risborough, an old village, is now mostly a northern suburb of its much larger partner, Princes Risborough.

The bridge carries the Princes Risborough to Aylesbury line over Mill Lane. Image is to the right.

One of two intermediate stations on the line between Princes Risborough and Aylesbury (the other is Little Kimble), this is a station with the most rudimentary of facilities, built in the 1990s. The original station here was opened in 1929 at the far end of the current platform as "Monks Risborough and Whiteleaf Halt". However, despite the simplicity of the station, and, reading the 2007/8 winter timetable, you can catch a rush-hour train direct to London Marylebone from here, the Chiltern Railways' 0741 from Aylesbury arriving at 0835. In the evening the 1745 from London Marylebone bound for Aylesbury arrives here, without any changes being necessary, at 1838.

Chiltern Railways run services from Monks Risborough to Princes Risborough and Aylesbury and direct services to London Marylebone at peak times. It must have a very small catchment area - there is no car park and no obvious use of unrestricted parking in the adjacent road. Users must presumably walk or bus to the station. This is looking towards Princes Risborough.

Class 66 66106 passing Monks Risborough station with a stone train from Tytherington Quarry in Gloucestershire to the HS2 construction site at Calvert. These 1650 tonne aggregate trains run up to three times daily saving thousands of HGV journeys.

Monks Risborough Railway Station single line from Princes Risborough to Aylesbury

The dovecote is thought to date from the 16th century, and was originally a building on Place Farm, which was demolished in the 1970s for housing development. Dovecotes were built by landowners to house rock pigeons. The pigeons would breed between April and October and the young birds, called squabs, would be taken when about four weeks old to be cooked and eaten. The design of dovecotes has always tried to appeal to pigeons and to discourage birds of prey, although modifications were sometimes needed to cope with the later threat posed by brown rats which could burrow into dovecotes and attack nests close to the ground. This particular dovecote was constructed of chalk and originally would have had about 200 nestboxes. (Notes loosely transcribed, with thanks, from the nearby information board written by the Princes Risborough Area Heritage Society.) Image is in the background. From a cartographic point of view the dovecote somewhat surprisingly merits its own pale orange "building" on the Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 scale mapping.

A footpath through barley on the edge of Monks Risborough.

Chiltern Railways run services from Monks Risborough to Princes Risborough and Aylesbury and direct services to London Marylebone at peak times. It must have a very small catchment area - there is no car park and no obvious use of unrestricted parking in the adjacent road. Users must presumably walk or bus to the station.