It all started back in the 1890’s when the Local Government Act of 1894 created rural civil parish areas, before this time it was the responsibility of the ‘sanitary authorities’ to look after the inhabitants of the rural areas and administer the ‘Poor Laws’.
So in 1894 a civil rural parish was created called West Wycombe Parish, at its centre was the village of West Wycombe, and it included the outlying rural hamlets of that time some of which were Downley, Sands, Castlefield, Booker, Wheeler End and the Piddington area.
If you click on the following 1894 West Wycombe Parish you will be able to view a map of the area covered by this parish as it was around 1911.
In 1934 West Wycombe Parish was abolished by the Local Government Act of 1929 when a large area of it was added to the Borough of Chepping Wycombe, by taking the village of West Wycombe out of the parish the remaining area was used to create a new parish called West Wycombe Rural detached Parish this was made up of two wards, the Downley ward which contained Downley village, while the other ward of Piddington and Wheeler End contained the hamlets of Piddington and Wheeler End.
It was originally envisioned that reviews would be carried out every ten years, but the intervention of the Second World War and legislation in 1945 creating a Local Government Boundary Commission meant that there were no further large scale changes in administrative areas until the period 1965–1968, so this detached parish arrangement of two wards continued until the mid-1970’s when there was a local government reorganisation and each ward of the West Wycombe Rural detached parish became a civil parish in its own right. So the Downley Ward area of the West Wycombe Rural detached parish became Downley Parish Council, thus creating the original Downley Parish Council area, this is shown on the map created in 2000, which is on display at the Community Centre, School Close, it is the coloured area on the map.
When the original Downley Parish boundary was expanded in 2008 to take in the Plomer Hill area, it created the Downley Parish Council area that we have today.