Map - Great Missenden (Great Missenden)

Great Missenden is an affluent village with approximately 2,000 residents in the Misbourne Valley in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, England, situated between the towns of Amersham and Wendover, with direct rail connections to London Marylebone. It closely adjoins the village of Little Kingshill, and is a mile from Little Missenden and the larger village Prestwood. The narrow and historic High Street is bypassed by the main A413 London to Aylesbury Road. It is located in the centre of the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The source of the Misbourne is to be found just north of the village, although the upper reach of the river runs only in winter and the perennial head is in Little Missenden. The village is now best known as home to the late Roald Dahl, the world-famous Adult and Children's author.

In 2019 the village post town and postcode of HP16, which encompasses Little Kingshill, was revealed to be the most affluent place in England, with The Guardian writing that "the least deprived neighbourhood in England is an area...near Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire, and a few kilometres to the south of the prime minister’s country residence at Chequers." The Guardian has also featured an article referring to how the village has been "prime stockbroker belt for over a century" and remarked favourably on its "grand piles tucked away in the folds of the Chilterns, all paddocks, ponies and leafy lanes, such as Dahl's, Martinsend Lane, or Nags Head Lane." The article also mentions its "ancient churches, beech woods, deep valleys, rolling Chiltern Hills, higgledy-piggledy streets. That's why Dahl chose to live here." The Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, lists Great Missenden in its "List of Britain's richest villages." The Telegraph also ranked the village #4 in its "Best Places to Raise a Family in the UK" 2015 survey, describing it as a "gem of a town."

The name Missenden is first attested in the Domesday Book as Missedene, with other early attestations including the spellings Messedena and Musindone. The -den element probably comes from Old English denu, meaning 'valley', but the etymology of the first element is uncertain. It is thought to occur in the name of the River Misbourne, which rises in Great Missenden, and also in the Hertfordshire place-name Miswell. Frank Stenton and Allen Mawer guessed that it came from a hypothetical Anglo-Saxon personal name Myrsa, which they also supposed to be found in the name of Mursley. Eilert Ekwall suggested that it came from a lost Old English word related to English moss, and to Danish mysse and Swedish missne (which denote plants of the genus Calla, such as water arum). Recent researchers have tentatively preferred Ekwall's guess, in which case the name Missenden would once have meant something like 'valley where water-plants/marsh-plants grow'.