FOLLOWING an appeal for information about the Black Boy pub last month we have more details of the once familiar inn.

The pub once stood in the Cornmarket, High Wycombe, next to what is now Elmers Jewellers, opposite Millets camping shop.

The Black Boy was such a familiar sight in the town centre that a picture of it even features on the front of the book High Wycombe In Old Photographs.

The pub with its famous crooked chimney was a familiar landmark and was one of the public houses in High Wycombe bought by Wheeler's Brewery in 1854.

Historians tell us that the inn was demolished in the 1930s for road widening and the licence was transferred to a new house in Terriers, High Wycombe.

But the present landlords of the pub, Colin and Pauline Nicholls who have changed the named of the pub to The Terriers, have a different story.

Colin said that just over 75 years ago the original Black Boy was destroyed by fire and demolished.

A new building was already being built at the top of Amersham Hill, where it is today, and the licence and name were simply transferred to the new location.

Michael Thackery, who has been drinking at the pub for 30 years, said: "The sign for the Black Boy used to be an Indian boy in a turban but because it was considered too sensitive it was changed to a white boy peeping out of a chimney with his face covered in soot."