Lacey Green is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

in the

Buckinghamshire Buckinghamshire (, abbreviated ''Bucks'') is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Northamptonshire to the north, Bedfordshire to the north-east, Hertfordshir ...

district, south-east of

Princes Risborough Princes Risborough () is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England; it is located about south of Aylesbury and northwest of High Wycombe. It lies at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, at the north end of a gap or pass through ...

, in the ceremonial county of

, England. It is in the

Chiltern Hills The Chiltern Hills or the Chilterns are a chalk escarpment in southern England, located to the north-west of London, covering across Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire; they stretch from Goring-on-Thames in the south- ...

above the town. In 2021 the parish had a population of 2397. The settlement was known as Leasy Green in the early 19th century.

Hamlets A hamlet is a human settlement that is smaller than a town or village. This is often simply an informal description of a smaller settlement or possibly a subdivision or satellite entity to a larger settlement. Sometimes a hamlet is defined f ...

within the parish include Loosley Row, Speen, Wardrobes and Parslow's Hillock.

RAF Bomber Command RAF Bomber Command controlled the Royal Air Force's bomber forces from 1936 to 1968. Along with the United States Army Air Forces, it played the central role in the Strategic bombing during World War II#Europe, strategic bombing of Germany in W ...

commandeered agricultural land for an airfield during World War II. The land has since reverted to agriculture, the school playing field and the village sports ground. The church of St John the Evangelist was built in 1822–1825, at first as a

chapel of ease A chapel of ease (or chapel-of-ease) is a church architecture, church building other than the parish church, built within the bounds of a parish for the attendance of those who cannot reach the parish church conveniently, generally due to trav ...

; the chancel was added in 1871 to designs of J. P. Seddon, with coloured brick to the interior. The parish is within the area of the Risborough team ministry. Primitive Methodists built a chapel on the main road around 1842, which remained in use until 2001. The village has a shop, sports club, village hall and a primary school. There are three pubs: the Black Horse in the village, the Whip Inn at Loosley and the Pink and Lily at Parslow's Hillock. It is twinned with Hambye, France. Lacey Green was home to the chef

Heston Blumenthal Heston Marc Blumenthal (; born 27 May 1966) is an English celebrity chef, TV personality and food writer. His restaurants include the Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, a three- Michelin-star restaurant that was named the world's best by the Worl ...

, whose parents used to own amusement arcades in the area.

Lacey Green windmill

Dated to 1650 by leading authority Stanley Freese, Lacey Green windmill is the oldest surviving

smock mill The smock mill is a type of windmill that consists of a sloping, horizontally weatherboarded, thatched, or shingled tower, usually with six or eight sides. It is topped with a roof or cap that rotates to bring the sails into the wind. This t ...

in England and was restored in the 1970s, from a state of almost total collapse, by volunteers under the auspices of the Chiltern Society. The octagonal structure has a brick base carrying a weatherboarded timber frame; the sails are modern but the machinery is largely original. The windmill was designated as

Grade II* listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

in 1985. Though it is widely believed that the mill was originally sited in nearby

Chesham Chesham ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England, United Kingdom, south-east of the county town of Aylesbury, about north-west of Charing Cross, central London, and part of the London metropolitan area, London ...

and moved to Lacey Green in 1821, no primary sources have been found to substantiate this and the Chiltern Society has been unable to trace the story beyond 1932. A somewhat speculative theory to perhaps explain the story's origin has been advanced by Michael Highfield, author of the Chiltern Society's guide to the mill. He recounts a conversation with a 96-year-old lady who had lived in the area all her life and remembered being chased away from "Cheshums Mill" as a child. The Mill had been in the Cheshire family since the 1860s and was sometimes referred to locally as Cheshire's mill, applying the Buckinghamshire dialect possessive suffix 'ums', Cheshire's becomes Cheshums.

References

External links

Lacey Green Parish CouncilLacey Green & Loosley Row
– community website

at petergoodearl.co.uk Villages in Buckinghamshire Civil parishes in Buckinghamshire {{Buckinghamshire-geo-stub