Cookham, Berkshire

Description
Cookham, a village and a parish in Berks. The village stands on the right bank of the Thames, 3 miles N from Maidenhead, much of which town is within the boundaries of the parish. There is a station here on the G.W.R., and the village has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.) There is an iron toll bridge over the Thames here, and the portion of the river opposite and below the village is popularly considered to be the most beautiful of its whole course from the source to the sea. Cookham was once a market-town, and in Saxon times was a place of some importance. Area of the parish, 6343 acres of land and 205 of water ; population, 8752. The church is an ancient building of chalk, sandstone, and flint in the Early English style. It contains several good brasses, an alabaster monument of the 16th century to the memory of Arthur Babham and wife, with a quaint inscription, a canopied altar-tomb of 1526, and a monument to the celebrated painter, Frederick Walker, A.R.A. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Oxford; net yearly value, £256 with residence. There is a Wesleyan chapel, and there are charities worth about £70 a year. Cookham is largely used during the summer as a place of holiday resort, and there are paper mills. The civil parish includes within its limits the ecclesiastical parishes of Cookham Dene and Stubbings, and the hamlets of North Town, Ray Mill, Pinkneys Green, and Furze Platt. Cookham Dene was formed into an ecclesiastical parish in 1845. The church, consecrated in 1845, is a building of flint in the Early Decorated style. The living is a vicarage; net yearly value, £111 with residence, in the gift of the Vicar of Cookham. There are also Primitive Methodist and Wesleyan chapels. Winter Hill, at Cookham Dene, commands magnificent views of the surrounding country and the valley of the Thames. Stubbings, which is about 3 miles from Maidenhead, was formed in 1856. The church, which was consecrated in 1850, is a building of flint and stone in the Early Decorated style. The living is a vicarage; net yearly value, £153 with residence. North Town hamlet now forms part of the town of Maidenhead. Pinkneys Green is a picturesque place about 3 miles S from Great Marlow. It has large red brick and tile works. Bay Mill is a hamlet on the Thames, about a mile from the Taplow and Maidenhead stations of the G.W.R. At Boulter's Lock there is a large corn mill, which is worked by the river. Furze Platt, near Pinkneys Green, has grown recently from two or three cottages to a fair sized hamlet.