Chenies

Chenies

A neat 'model' village arranged round a green where, set back beyond the church, are the surviving wings of a Tudor manor house.
This must have been a huge mansion in the sixteenth century,
for it became the home of the Russells, dukes of Bedford, and remained so until, moving to Woburn,
they allowed Chenies to fall into neglect.
However, it is the nearby church that is a treasure-house, housing the Bedford Chapel, where the dukes and others of the Russell family lie.
Claimed to be the richest single storehouse of funeral monuments in any parish church of England.

What's that? Chenies was an R8 Surface GCI rotor station. The site (at the top of the hill toward Flaunden) is still owned and mainained by the MoD but not permanently manned. The small globe is used as a standby remote for air traffic control. Rotor sites were set up after the second World War as part of a defense system for the UK. The UK radar system was rapidly run down towards the end of the Second World War. It was then envisaged that it would be at least another ten years before another major conflict, but the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, and the outbreak of the Korean war one year later, dramatically changed that view.
For further information goto www.subbrite.org.uk.

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