STEVENSON MEMORIES

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 107, 6 May 1926, Page 9

STEVENSON MEMORIES

PASSING OF AN OLD INN.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, 12th March. Great Missendea is about to lose one of its most treasured links with an historic past by the passing of the Buckingham Arms, an inn dating from the middle of the Sixteenth Century, which, like most hostelries of great age, is reputed to have housed many notabilities through the centuries, but which 18 at laat to come to the end of an honoured career and give place to a brand new bank. The inn is also associated with Eobert Louis Stevenson. One of the legends connected with it ■is that of a secret underground corridor running from the Abbey of the Black Canons. This was used for purposes of supplying wayfarers with bread and beer, but whether it was at that time an inn and the monks preferred their private entry, or whether it was merely the guest house of the Abbey, is not clear. An interesting part of the old inn is the dining-room (now part of an adjacent shop), which was built by the Duke of Buckingham in the time of George 111., and reserved at that time for his private use. Fortunately, this is still to remain. ' It is difficult to appreciate the true beauty and antiquity of the building, ,ia nearly all the walla and ceilings have been bricked and plastered over, and it was only accidentally during repair work that some of the old beams and uprights wero discovered. One association of more recent times, which is, perhaps, cherished most by Great Missenden, is that with Robert Louis Stevenson, who stayed thero towards the end of 1874, when ho walked into the village from High Wycombe ' with his knapsack on his back. It is tho inn at Wondover, however, with which his name is most, prominently associated, and about which he wrote. They still proudly show a chair at the Buckingham Arms which Stevenson is reputed to have used during his stay, j