Little Marlow
Little Marlow is a village and civil parish in Buckinghamshire, England.
It is on the north bank of the River Thames, about a mile east of Marlow. The toponym "Marlow" is derived from the Old English for "land remaining after the draining of a pool". In 1015 it was recorded as Merelafan.
Hamlets in the parish of Little Marlow include Coldmoorholme, Fern, Handy Cross, Sheepridge, and Winchbottom.
The village cottages are set around a large space, surrounded by lime trees, that is used as a cricket ground and village green where an annual fête is held.
The Church of England parish church of Saint John the Baptist lies at the heart of the village, not far from the river and next to the Manor House. The original construction of the church is Norman, dating from the final years of the 12th century. Most of the building was built during the 14th and 15th centuries.
Little Marlow was once the site of a Benedictine convent dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The convent belonged to Bisham Abbey. It was seized by the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1547 and was eventually demolished in 1740. Today the village is in a scenic location on the River Thames, although home to a large sewage works and gravel extraction plant.
The village is also mentioned in Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man, in a sequence where the novel's protagonist recounts how the village's residents went about trying to prevent themselves from falling ill with the plague.
Melanie Brown a.k.a. Scary Spice of the Spice Girls pop group lived in Little Marlow for a while. The village became the focus of a national news story in 1998 when she and dancer Jimmy Gulzar were married in the parish church and invited many celebrity guests to their wedding reception.
There are two public houses in the village: the Kings Head and the Queens Head.
