1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Burnham Beeches

BURNHAM BEECHES, a wooded tract of 375 acres in Buckinghamshire, England, acquired in 1879 by the Corporation of the city of London, and preserved for public use. This tract, the remnant of an ancient forest, the more beautiful because of the undulating character of the land, lies west of the road between Slough and Beaconsfield, and 2 m. north of Burnham Beeches station on the Great Western railway. The poet Thomas Gray, who stayed frequently at Stoke Poges in the vicinity, is enthusiastic concerning the beauty of the Beeches in a letter to Horace Walpole in 1737. Near the township of Burnham are slight Early English remains of an abbey founded in 1265. Burnham is an urban district with a population (1901) of 3245.