The old morgue
Green Dragon Lane

No old picture available

The old morgue in Green Dragon Lane today


Have you noticed what we lack
Even to this day?
It really is the strangest fact
That things worked out this way
But cemetery we have not got,
Nor churchyard for our graves,
The dead are moved to valley plots
And parish rates are saved.

Heath End through to Northern Woods
Including Sedgmoor too
(And add The Common if you would
As most folks tend to do),
Was not one village at the start
But hamlets on their own,
Their mother churches quite apart
Who left them all alone.

So local ladies, self employed,
Were nurses in their day,
Assisting new borns, what a joy,
Or old folk on their way,
The Flackwell dead were laid in here
In this, the village morgue,
While waiting on its wooden bier
To have their graves assured.


There is no churchyard or cemetery in Flackwell Heath. Because the village was made up from four distinct hamlets, Northern Woods (North End Woods), Sedgmoor, The Common and Heath End the different areas were the responsibility of three separate parishes. The churchyard of the 'mother church' in each of the different parishes would be the place of burial or, later, the relevant cemetery (Wooburn Green, Little Marlow, Loudwater or High Wycombe). Thus, if you were unlucky enough to die here, you would be laid out in the old morgue until suitable transport could be found to take you to the correct parish for burial.
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