Building starts next month on another housing and office development in Wycombe town centre. This one will cost in the region of £65 million.

Altogether, 228 flats will be created on a two-and-a-half acre site in Leigh Street, an area off the West Wycombe Road that was part of the town’s industrial heartland when Wycombe was known as the furniture-making capital of Europe.

Today, many of the former furniture factories are derelict. 
One of the units on Regency Residential’s Leigh Street site is the one-time warehouse of WM Birch. 

Following family tradition, William Birch set up in business as a cabinet maker and chair maker in 1840.

One of William’s sons became a leading local exponent of the Arts and Crafts movement. 

Walter first struck out in business on his own in a workshop at the back of The Woolpack Inn in Oxford Road. 

By 1883 he was doing well enough to move to larger premises in Castle Street and in 1895 he took over his father’s factory in Denmark Street. 

When the Arts and Crafts movement took off at the end of the 19th century Walter was an early convert.  

He bought the site in Leigh Street in 1901 as a second base for his  business. 

By then  he was employing top designers. One of them was George Walton. 

He worked with Charles Rennie Macintosh, the leading exponent of Art Nouveau.

Eventually Walter’s entire factory was consolidated under one roof in Leigh Street. 

In 1938 the company had 350 on the pay roll. 
Brother Charles’s furniture making enterprise in Castle Street closed down at the outbreak of World War 1. 

Walter’s company continued to trade under the family name until it was bought out by Gomme in 1954.

As a permanent reminder of the site’s historical contribution to the furniture industry, the new development in Leigh Street has been named The Old Works.

The development will be built in phases. The first will start to take shape in August.  

The 118 studios and one and two-bedroom apartments in the initial phase will be grouped in the de Havilland Buildings. 

The name was inspired by another of the town’s famous sons.  

The aircraft pioneer was born in Wycombe in a house set back from the road at Terriers a few hundred yards from where Geoffrey’s father was curate at the Holy Trinity church in Hazlemere.

A group of apartments in the second phase at The Old Works will be converted from a retained section of Walter Birch’s warehouse. 

The second and third phases will provide a further  110 flats  – one and two-bedroom apartments including duplexes -  as well as offices.

Prices in the initial phase will range from £199,000 for a studio. 

The overall scheme is expected to take 18 months to complete.

The Leigh Street site for the future development at The Old Works is almost on the edge of Inland Homes’  regeneration scheme on the west side of the town centre. 

The Amersham-based brownfield regeneration specialist’s Central Square  development  covers just over three-and-a-half acres stretching from the Lily’s Walk area out to the Desborough entrance to the Eden Centre.  

Buyers will soon be moving into the first  flats created from a former office block at the heart of the Inland development.

Ninety per cent of the properties due to come on stream this year at Castle House – conversions and new builds – are now either sold or reserved. 

The one-bedroom show home has just been released for sale priced at £229,950. 

Selling agent JNP in Crendon Street has more details. 
Regency Residential managing director Chris Taylor is certain Wycombe is a town on the up. 

He points out: “Given its excellent links to the capital, it’s attracting major investment resulting in an influx of new residential and commercial developments.”

Watch this space.