Marlow, Buckinghamshire
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Marlow (previously Great Marlow or Chipping Marlow) is a town on the very southern tip of Buckinghamshire, England. It is located on the River Thames, four miles south of High Wycombe, and four miles north west of Maidenhead.
The town name is Anglo Saxon in origin, and means 'land remaining after the draining of a pool'. In the Domesday Book in 1086 it was recorded as Merlaue, though previously it was known as Merelafan.
Marlow has been an important town for many years. This is because of its location on the River Thames: a major trade route from London. It has had its own market since 1324 at the latest, and as early as 1299 the town had its own Member of Parliament.
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Bridge
There has been a bridge over the Thames at Marlow since the reign of King Edward III. The current bridge is a suspension bridge, designed by William Tierney Clark in 1832, and was a prototype for the nearly identical but larger Széchenyi Chain Bridge across the River Danube in Budapest.
Notable residents
The Royal Military College, now based at Sandhurst in Surrey was also once located in this town. Notable residents of the town have included Mary Shelley (who wrote Frankenstein there), Percy Bysshe Shelley, T. S. Eliot, Jerome K. Jerome and General George Higginson.
Today the town hosts a regular regatta, and is the location of one of the Thames's locks.
Marlow is adjoined by Little Marlow via the Little Marlow Road and to Bourne End by the same road. Nearby is Cookham Dean, famous for its Cricket Pitch and the fact that Led Zeppelin recorded Travellin' River side Blues there in the 90's.
Transport
Marlow has a railway station on a branch line from Maidenhead, originally built by the Great Western Railway.
SWBGS
Sir William Borlase's Grammar School, founded by Sir William Borlase in the 17th Century. The school is built around a cloister incorporating the original 17c building to which a large number of new, specialist facilities have been added. The school has its own chapel, which is built in brick and flint, as are the oldest buildings. Recent major building programmes of the highest architectural quality have added facilities to this already listed building. Recent additions have included specialist accommodation for Modern Foreign Languages and English, Science laboratories, a drama studio, a new canteen and sixth form accommodation and specialist IT rooms. A new block incorporating music, IT and technology rooms with a theatre and recording studio is currently under construction. The school is a voluntary aided co-educational grammar school in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and, as quoted by Ofsted, it is "a good, popular and highly regarded school in which the high standards that pupils attain are substantially helped by their positive attitudes to learning and their attentive response to good teaching". (Source: www.swbgs.com)