Chalfont St Giles: why one of England’s best-kept villages absolutely stinks

The Guardian
·2-min read
<span>‘If keeping village was playing tennis, Chalfont would be Novak Djokovic.’</span><span>Photograph: John Green/Alamy</span>
‘If keeping village was playing tennis, Chalfont would be Novak Djokovic.’Photograph: John Green/Alamy

Name: Chalfont St Giles.

Age: The Buckinghamshire village is mentioned in the Domesday Book, published in 1086, so at least 938 years old.

Appearance: Snuggled up to the Chilterns, Chalfont St Giles has everything you’d want and expect in a village often referred to as “quintessentially English”: village green, duck pond, Norman church …

Sounds lovely. Which is why it has attracted celebrity residents. It’s the birthplace of Nick Clegg.

Erm, celebrity? Sorry. Noel Gallagher used to live there. The Osbournes – Ozzy and Sharon – are up the road. It has been used as a filming location for the BBC sitcom As Time Goes By, an episode of Peep Show, and Dad’s Army (where it filled in for Walmington-on-Sea). “Chalfonts” is also cockney rhyming slang for haemorrhoids.

Mmm, less lovely. Got anything more … highbrow? You want highbrow, I’ve got highbrow. John Milton retired here in 1665 to escape the plague in London. It’s where he completed Paradise Lost, which now becomes rather fitting.

How so? I understand the paradise part. Chalfont St Giles has won the county’s best kept village competition, organised by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, six times since 2002. If keeping village was playing tennis, Chalfont would be Novak Djokovic.

Oh, I see. Presumably it’s going for the title again this year? Sadly not.

Why? Sabotage by Chalfont St Peter? Foul play? Foul smell more like it – the stench has been wafting across the green for months.

Djokovic pulls out due to chronic flatulence! OK, maybe let’s drop that analogy now. Anyway, can you guess the source of the smell?

I’m going to go right out on a limb here and take a wild stab in the dark. Would it have anything to do with a private water company? It would! Thames Water. The Amersham Road Balancing Tank has been overflowing, discharging sewage into the River Misbourne.

Bet the locals are delighted about that. “We’re all gutted,” the parish council’s Robert Gill said. They’ve had to close the playground, the river walk, the duck pond. And, now, pull out of the best kept village contest. “It’s important to villagers that we enter these competitions but we were left with no choice,” Gill added.

And it’s definitely that? Not just the normal countryside smells? Gill said he worried that contamination levels in the river were high after Thames Water took samples. A Thames Water spokesperson told the BBC the wet winter had resulted in high water levels, and that diluted wastewater had been discharged into the Misbourne “for which we are sorry”.

Do say: “Nationalise utilities now!”

Don’t say: “Anyone for a dip?”

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