Knotty Green is a rural hamlet in the parish of Penn in Buckinghamshire, England and located in the Chiltern Hills near Beaconsfield. Knotty Green and Beaconsfield are, however, separated by a parish and district council boundary. Knotty Green is in Chiltern District, whereas Beaconsfield is in South Bucks district. The centre of the old hamlet is still identifiable at the junction of Penn Road and Forty Green Road where there remains a remnant of the old green from which the hamlet took part of its name. The name of the village can be traced back to the 13th century. Knotty Green, or Nattuc as it was called in 1222, takes its name from Old English nattuc (rough grass of tussocks) that grew on the green.
The development that followed the arrival of the railway in Beaconsfield in 1906 increased the population of the parish as a whole by nearly 50 per cent in five years, but it was confined to the Penn Road and Forty Green Road. There was still an obvious dividing line between the parishes of Penn and Beaconsfield, where the boundary stream ran under the Penn Road—and where Beaconsfield's pavement and new houses stopped abruptly.
The Red Lion pub, which lies at the centre of the hamlet along with the home of Knotty Green Cricket Club and a children's playground, is the only pub in Knotty Green and is the only remaining commercial entity in the hamlet. The pub has an Enid Blyton Room, with a gallery of original prints and a library of books donated by members of the Enid Blyton Society. The children's author lived most of her life in a house called Green Hedges (since demolished) nearby.
Today, Val Doonican is among Knotty Green's rich and famous residents.
Famous quotes containing the words knotty and/or green:
“Lincoln, six feet one in his stocking feet,
The lank man, knotty and tough as a hickory rail,
Whose hands were always too big for white-kid gloves,
Whose wit was a coonskin sack of dry, tall tales,
Whose weathered face was homely as a plowed field.”
—Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943)
“Chaucer is fresh and modern still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, and birds sung, and hearts beaten in England. Before the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as modern men do.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)