Taplow

Taplow is a village and civil parish in the Unitary Authority of Buckinghamshire, England. It sits on the left bank of the River Thames, facing Maidenhead in the neighbouring county of Berkshire, with Cippenham and Burnham to the east. It is the south-westernmost settlement in Buckinghamshire. The village features a Grade II listed mock-medieval church, the parish church of St Nicholas, as well as a school of the same name. Taplow railway station, on the Great Western Main Line, serves the village, with services to London Paddington, Reading and Oxford. 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. 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.