Songfacts®:

• "Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire" is a British euphemism for going to bed, specifically for children. The phrase "Up the wooden hill" refers to ascending the stairs, and "to Bedfordshire" is a rhyming slang term for "to bed."
  
  Keyboardist Ian McLagan wrote the song largely inspired by bassist Ronnie Lane's father Stan Lane, who used to have specific word plays. "It's what Ronnie's dad used to say to him as a sort of lullaby," drummer Kenney Jones told Uncut magazine. "It's about an acid trip."
• Ian McLagan joined Small Faces as their keyboardist in October 1965, and he made his debut performance with them on November 2 of the same year at the Lyceum Theatre in London. In their early days, Small Faces either played covers or songs written by vocalist Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane. McLagan received shared credits for several instrumentals, including "Own Up Time," "Grow Your Own," and "Almost Grown," but "Up The Wooden Hills To Bedfordshire" marked McLagan's first original composition for the band.
• Musically the song is a folk tune with a mod sound. "It suggests the pastoral feel where the band were headed," said Jones. "I used to go hop picking in Kent, which was a land of peace, discovery, and general well-being. Ronnie and Steve used to go to Epping Forest all the time on their bikes."
• The Small Faces recorded "Up the Wooden Hills to Bedfordshire" in the early months of 1967 at Olympic Studios with production by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, and Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer handling the engineering duties.
• The song first appeared on Small Faces' eponymous studio album, released on June 23, 1967. It was later included on the North American release There Are But Four Small Faces, which came out on March 17, 1968. For the American album, the track was renamed simply "Up the Wooden Hills," with the "to Bedfordshire" removed, probably because Bedfordshire is a relatively unknown region to most Americans.