Forty Years On: Recording Wycombe Abbey’s History

24 November 2025 - All

Wycombe Abbey Senior, Susannah Davis, returns to School forty years later as our new Archivist.  

‘I walked back into Wycombe Abbey this June, exactly forty years on from sitting A Levels in Big School. It was exciting and daunting, with a sense of surreal time travel. I studied English, History and Latin for A Level, then English Literature at the University of Exeter, where I was able to get stuck into two other subjects I adore: Anglo-Saxon, and Medieval Art. 

Everyone here has been so welcoming and patient – it’s sometimes hard to resist warbling on about Life in the Dim and Distant past. On top of that, I feel like a genuine relic, here to conserve and add to the School’s collective memory. It’s a splendid challenge. 

I’m now over my Pavlovian reaction to the school bell (What’s next? Am I late? What have I forgotten?) and settled in happily with almost 130 years of school records. The groundwork laid by our previous Archivist, Jess Venner, has been invaluable, and I’m so grateful to her for leaving superb files of advice, links, and plans for the future. 

The bulk of the archive was, until June, stored at Daws Hill. Thanks to heroic efforts by the Estates team, and my library colleagues, we crated and moved it to the top floor of the Abbey on the two hottest days of the summer term.  

The archive has everything you could think of, from Bursary and Council minutes and correspondence, via school magazines, photo albums, pupil registers, to items of uniform, hand-painted play programmes, and the old Chapel bell. 

My priority is to catalogue everything and help to build a digital archive that is chiefly for the benefit of pupils and parents and staff: searchable, flexible, informative and fun. It’s wonderful to be here at the start of such a huge project.’ 

Ms Susannah Davis (Senior, 1985) 

School Archivist