Historic Links

The South Bucks Area has a long and distinguished association with the Olympic Games. The Chairman of the first London Games in 1908 was Lord Desborough whose family home at Taplow Court was the centre of much of the frenzied planning for the first London Games over 100 years ago.

Lord Desborough was the epitome of the 19th-century gentleman amateur. President of athletics and rowing at Oxford, he stroked an eight across the Channel and fenced in the Olympics. He romped up the Matterhorn three times and swam twice across the Niagara Falls. He styled himself Punting Champion of All- England. As a war correspondent in the Sudan in 1888 he once confronted the advancing enemy alone, armed only with an umbrella.

Now owned by a lay Buddhist society, Taplow Court hosts an impressive collection of artefacts and memorabilia relating to Lord Desborough and is open on selected dates during the summer months. www.sgi-uk.org

In 1908 legendary first ever marathon over the full 26 miles 285 yards distance passed through many parts of the district. The event is remembered as the most memorable of those first London Games with the first athlete to cross the line, the Italian Doriandro Pietri subsequently disqualified for receiving assistance on his final lap of the stadium. The South Bucks District again featured on the marathon route in 1948, the year where the district twice featured in the Olympic Torch Relay.

More recent residents of the District with impressive Olympic records have included 1992 Olympic Gold Medallist Linford Christie who took the blue ribbon 100m title in Barcelona and Adrian Moorhouse who collected the 100m breaststroke gold in Seoul in 1988.