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Chesham is a town in the Chiltern Hills, Buckinghamshire, England. There is also a Chesham in New Hampshire, USA.

Chesham is the fourth largest town in the county of Buckinghamshire, with a population of some 21,000 people (behind High Wycombe with 111,000 and Aylesbury with 63,000.) It is situated in the picturesque Chess Valley and surrounded by farmland, as well as being bordered on one side by Amersham and Chesham Bois. Despite once having a thriving set of industries (including beer, brushes, boots and watercress) these have declined, with only the brush and boot factories remaining and the town has become a largely commuter town.

History

The first recorded reference to Chesham, or Cestreham, was in the will of Lady Elgiva, an Anglo-Saxon Queen. There is archaeological evidence of a Roman villa downstream at Latimer and the planting of grapevines near the Balks.

Chesham is mentioned in 1012 AD as Cæstæleshamm, which is Anglo-Saxon for "the river-meadow at the pile of stones". Although recently many people have started to pronounce the town as "Chesh-um", people from different parts of Buckinghamshire, the Chilterns and those who have been in the area for a long time pronounce the town as "Chess-am" or "Chess-um". This traditional pronunciation has become mixed with the influx of new people from various parts of the UK and abroad. Contrary to popular belief, the town is not named after the river; rather, the river is named after the town.

The recent history of Chesham is largely defined by the local government re-organisation of 1973. During that year Chesham Urban District Council was merged with Amersham Rural District Council to create the new Chiltern District Council, which included the Chalfonts. Since then the town has seen many of its local services drift away to Amersham. There are no full-time police or ambulance stations in Chesham (although there is a police station it is mostly closed due to lack of funds) and all the main functions of Chiltern District Council are fulfilled in Amersham, where the main local government offices are. Amersham has since then become something of a more middle-upper class area, whereas Chesham has been sliding down into relative poverty, in a strange form of reverse gentrification. As it is, Chesham currently has the dubious privilege of having the most deprived council estate in the country, in the form of Pond Park.

Not helping this, the housing association which is responsible for council housing in the area, Chiltern Hundreds Housing Association (part of Paradigm Housing) now build almost all of their houses in Chesham and their under-publicised (almost secret) council house buy-back scheme involves buying back private houses almost exclusively in Chesham, meaning that those unable to buy their own houses, and generally at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, will most likely be placed in either Chesham or the outer fringes of Amersham. At the same time very little new social housing is being built (or bought-back) in central Amersham and the Chalfonts, increasing the relative economic divide between Chesham and the surrounding towns.

Chesham has appeared in some popular television series, including Inspector Morse and Midsomer Murders.

Geography

The town is located in the Chess Valley, and the nearest places are Bovingdon, Bellingdon and Amersham. Further afield are Berkhamsted, High Wycombe and Hemel Hempstead. It is situated 25 miles (40 km) north west of central London.

The River Chess runs from New Town and Pednor. It rises from springs near the old town of Chesham, along the Pednor Vale, and from behind the parish church before flowing in a south easterly direction past Waterside and towards Latimer. From there it flows to the north of Chenies and on towards Rickmansworth after which it becomes a tributary of the River Colne. Historically the fertile land around the Chess, and the very clean water of the Chess itself, made it ideal for growing watercress and this industry flourished in Chesham in the Victorian era. Today the Chess is equally well known for trout fishing.

Due to its position in a fold in the hill, TV and Radio reception in Chesham can be poor and the town now has its own TV mast. In the 1970s Chesham was one of the last towns in the south east to receive BBC2, and parts of it still cannot receive Channel 5. Houses taking their TV reception from the Chesham transmitter * have vertically polarised aerials, whilst those in a good enough position receive their signal from the Crystal Palace Transmitter in London with horizontally polarised aerials - they always could receive BBC2 (and indeed Channels 4 & 5). Digital terrestrial television coverage is patchy for much the same reason.

Mobile phones are often redundant in the steeper parts of Chesham and outlying villages - Vodafone currently plan to improve coverage, however Orange and O2 remain the most prevailant of network providers, with less primary ones (such as Fresh! and TalkTalk Mobile) 'piggybacking' on them to enable further coverage.

Politics

Chesham's constituency is Chesham and Amersham, before this, the town was part of Buckinghamshire South. The constituency is (and always has been) solidly Conservative; a non-Tory candidate has never been elected. The current MP is Cheryl Gillan. The Conservative Party won the constituency in the UK general election, 2005 with roughly 50% of the vote; the next most popular party were the Liberal Democrats, represented by John Ford, with roughly 25% of the vote. Local turnout at the last election was 68%.

Newspaper

A blow to Chesham in terms of removing it from the political landscape, has been the moving of the editorial team and journalists of the local Chesham newspaper (the Bucks Examiner *) away from the town (the advertising team remain in Chesham). Very little "new" news relating to Chesham now appears in the newspaper and it has lost all of its once highly regarded local edge - few, if any of the paper's journalists live in the town. The paper's coverage of important local events often seem to miss the mark. This is in stark contrast to 20 years ago when the paper was kept well-informed by a large local staff (the paper was also printed in the town).

Religion

Chesham has a long history of religious dissent, such as the persecuted Lollards. One of them Thomas Harding was martyred on White Hill, near Dungrove Farm, in 1532. The 18th and 19th centuries saw the rapid growth of non-conformists especially Baptists, and the later 20th century saw the establishment of a sizable Muslim community. The first proper mosque in the town was completed in 2005. Chesham still has 3 Baptist Churches (Broadway Baptist, Trinity Baptist and Newtown Baptist) and a very large number of churches overall, including a Quaker meeting house.

Demographics

92% of the town is white, with the other 8% being non-white. Roughly 6% of the town's population is Asian. There are also members of the community of Italian and Polish origin.

  • Roughly 55% of the town is within the ages of 20-59, while over-60s make up a further 20% and roughly another 25% is under 20.
  • 85% of eligible people in the town own a car, and 41% use one to get to work.
  • 80% in the town's boundaries live in an urban area.
  • 23% of those 16-74 have no formal qualifications.
  • Unemployment is roughly 2%

Source: *

Business, Industry and Transport

In the 19th century Chesham was known for its "four B's"; boots, brushes, beer and Baptists, with only two remaining - brushes and Baptists. All these industries have declined and the many people now commute to London for work, something made possible by the London Underground linkup. Due to this, it is sometimes hard in Chesham to find work outside of the retail sector, and subsequently hard due to demand to find work within it. Despite this, the town has its own building society.

Transport

Road
= Town centre
= Chesham's High Street was pedestrianised in 1990 - the benefits to the High Street have been debated ever since. However, the design of the road traffic scheme to allow the pedestrianisation was very poor with St. Mary's Way, now the main thoroughfare around the town centre, originally (and unbelievably) just two lanes wide. The designers (fortunately for them, and the town) were just able to squeeze in an extra two lanes by drastically narrowing the new lanes along St. Mary's Way. This occurred after much local controversy and after a week of traffic chaos.

However, the town has had to live with a very poorly designed road layout ever since. Traffic lanes along St. Mary's Way are now far too narrow (with buses barely able to fit in lanes) and congestion is made much worse by the need for traffic exiting Bellingdon Road to "double-back" along an already congested road system. Great Missenden bound traffic is also forced to "double-back" to make a right turn into Church Street. Many people at the time believed that both roads needed roundabouts to end the need for this "doubling-back" and so ease traffic flow through Chesham.

Access to almost all of Chesham's car parks is via one roundabout (at the bottom of Chartridge lane), causing a traffic "pinch point" that would be alleviated by the addition of the two proposed roundabouts at the end of Bellingdon Road and Church Street.

The addition of two extra, much needed roundabouts would make a long awaited addition to Chesham's road layout which sees long tail-backs especially at School-out time. Arguably, pedestrianisation robbed the high street of through traffic and at the same time created a notorious local traffic black-spot contributing to the economic decline of Chesham, relative to neighbouring towns.

= Other areas
= Some of the roads around Pond Park, typically one of the most neglected areas of the town, are in bad shape. At the end of Milton Road the road changes to become mostly a gravel path riddled with potholes which have been filled in with pieces of brick.

Sunnyside Road was becoming a major traffic pinch point, but is now completely one way which has helped considerably. Traffic calming measures have been called for around Pond Park, with little success.

The main thoroughfare in and out of town is the large road towards Amersham through Chesham Bois, which inevitably gets clogged with buses and private cars in the mornings.

Rail
The town has a tube station near the town centre, which is the last station on the spur off the Metropolitan Line, of the London Underground. The station would have linked to the LNWR, which could possibly have led to growth in the area, but the idea was abandoned as the Metropolitan Line reached Amersham. There were some sizable goods yards beyond the station, which were closed and now function as Waitrose's car park (except for one portion, which still functions as a coal merchants). Also, some pieces of what appears to be concrete embankment are visible along Victoria Road (which could not have existed until the early 1950s or so, as the required land was owned by the Metropolitan Railway/London Underground).

Up until recently, the station had two platforms; a short bay platform and a longer main platform (the one currently in use now). This arrangement allowed for far more frequent running of trains, as one train could wait at Chesham while the other went to Chalfont & Latimer (or possibly onwards to London). However, the bay platform closed (subsequently becoming an award winning garden, which has now fallen into disrepair after repeated vandalism), and now trains arrive every half an hour.

To reach the station, most passengers need to change trains at Chalfont & Latimer and catch a shuttle train. At peak times, some trains run directly from London to Chesham and back again, made possible by switching work at Chalfont.

The nearest National Rail station is in Amersham, although the LU line connects directly to Chalfont & Latimer station, which is also a National Rail station.

Bus
Arriva run several services running either through or to the town.

  • The 362 (formerly 362 and 372) runs every half an hour and runs between High Wycombe and the Pond Park district.
  • The 52 runs between Hemel Hempstead and Amersham, passing through (and sometimes terminating at) Chesham.
  • The 353 runs from Berkhamsted to Slough, and passes through Chesham.

Carousel Buses * have also started operating services in the town, some of them under contract from Bucks County Council:

  • The 4 runs the same route as the 362.
  • The 336 runs between Chesham and Watford.
  • The 373

Arriva was for a time practically the only bus company operating in the area. Most, if not all, major routes were under their control, and there were (and still are) almost constant complaints about the level of service. Carousel only started operating in 2004/5, but already have launched a route to directly compete with Arriva's 362, taken over the running of the 336 (formerly an Arriva route subsidised by Buckinghamshire County Council) and the 373 (previously operated by Red Rose).

The bus stops in the town are sometimes confusing to those not used to taking buses there. The stop outside the Brown Sugar cafe takes buses going southbound (towards Wycombe and Amersham) and the stop on the other side of the square takes buses going northbound (towards Pond Park, Hemel Hempstead and Berkhamsted). A frequent, and somewhat amusing (to those watching, anyway) sight is passengers waiting at the wrong stop running frantically towards their departing bus, hurling profanities at it.

Air
The Bovingdon stack lies above the town, and Luton airport is roughly 15 miles away.

On December 1st, 2003, at 6 am, a major disaster in the stack was narrowly avoided, in the airspace above Chesham. An air traffic controller was blamed by a later enquiry for misdirecting traffic when he ordered a United Airlines Boeing 777 into a level of the Bovingdon Hold (or stack) already occupied by a similar British Airways plane. The two planes, carrying 500 passengers, flew within 600 feet of each other. This is believed to be one of the closest air-misses in the South-east of England in recent history.

Retail

The high street has seen some decline in recent years, mirroring the decline of the "traditional" high street across the UK. There are however two supermarkets in the town and a number of other national chains and independent retailers.

Supermarkets
The two supermarkets in town are Sainsbury's and Waitrose.

The Sainsbury's is relatively new (or at the least, slightly more new than the Waitrose). An older store was knocked down and a new, bigger one built in the late 1990s, a plan which caused much controversy among local people. For the store to expand to the desired size, it required also demolishing the old Elgiva theatre and, if the building continued as planned, demolishing the library (this did not happen; if the plans carried on as intended the library would be located above the supermarket, a plan which local people disliked intensely as it would require the library to cater to the whims of Sainsbury's). Sainsbury's paid for the new Elgiva theater (which moved across St Mary's Way to where there was a car park) and the new Chesham Town Council offices as part of a "planning gain" deal with the local council. Both opened in 1998.

The Waitrose store, just opposite the Sainsbury's, opened in 1989 after moving from the building where McDonalds used to be. Its entrance and car park is not actually on the high street itself but on The Backs (a road leading from Chesham tube station towards White Hill), which seems somewhat confusing to newcomers (especially considering the large Waitrose sign on the high street end of the store). There is however a short covered path up from High Street level towards the entrance.

Iceland used to have a store in the town, which closed and is now a discount store called Circle 7.

Other shops
The McDonalds store in Chesham High Street (formerly the old Waitrose store) closed in March 2006 after apparently being unsustainable (despite the restaurant being close to full at times), and being open since the early 1990s. It remains, as of writing, boarded up and vacant, however a sign on the front says it is under offer.

WH Smith once had a store in the town, which set up shop just before Christmas in 2001 and left just after. This led many in the town to suspect a cynical grab and run on the part of the chain which did nothing except hurt local businesses. Currently there are three bookshops in the town, the oldest is Chapter One and the newest being a chain of Ottakar's and the others being independent.

As it is, for everything except food most people travel to the towns of High Wycombe, Amersham and Hemel Hempstead in case they need to buy anything; campaigns to attract major chain stores have largely failed due to this factor. Even food shopping is sometimes taken to the large Tesco store in Amersham, or further afield the ASDA in High Wycombe. The town centre attracts some derision from locals for having a large number of charity shops and antique shops.

There is a market in the town on some weekdays. The high street is, whether the market is on or not, closed to motor traffic except for small deliveries (see the Road section). The town also has a large number of pubs. The main night club in the town, Stage 2 (known colloquially as "Stages") has closed and is being redeveloped into town centre flats.

Major chains in town

Other shops
  • Chapter One bookshop
  • Track Records, a Chain With No Name affiliated record store (unrelated to The Who's record label of the same name)
  • Circle 7, a discount store which replaced an Iceland supermarket
  • Christmas Tree Farm Chesham, a large grower and retailer of Christmas Trees.
  • Harvey John's, a toy shop
  • Darvell's Bakery, which occupies a large signed building behind the shop front
  • Chittenden's, a long-standing electrical retailer
  • The Drawing Room, a cafe and erotic and figurative art gallery.
  • Native Florists, more or less the only dedicated florist in Chesham town centre

Local areas

These designations are mostly informal, if anything, and rarely used officially. Further away from the station towards Newtown, the land usage gets progressively more rural and the atmosphere quieter, with large amounts of farmland just outside the town.

Pond Park

One "district" of the town is Pond Park, from which the photo on the right was taken. This an area built on the hills to the north of the town starting in 1929, which tends to be more peaceful than the urban parts of the town which are in the valley. There is also the Greenway, a miniature high street of sorts, with a post office, convenience store, newsagents, off license and a fast food outlet. A nursery school which was previously in this area has been demolished to make way for flats, after merging with the William Durrant Secondary School across the road from it to form Little Springs Primary School in September 2002. There were calls for the former nursery school land to be made into a community centre, but these were rejected.

It has been reported * that Pond Park is one of the poorest council estates in the county, and recently lost out on a £1.5million government grant to improve the area. More than a quarter of households are on state benefits and just under 10% of potential earners are on income support. The area is mostly made up of housing association properties, and some of these are slated for redevelopment in a plan which may not be put into action for years to come. Also in Pond Park is Tom Scott House, a fairly large housing association hostel for those awaiting housing placements which also has a baby clinic on the premises (infant mortality in the area is above the Buckinghamshire average at almost 10 deaths per 1,000 babies under 1 year old). There is some consternation amongst locals that (somewhat in line with Chesham as a whole) Pond Park is getting neither the attention nor funding that it desperately needs; as of now crime is going up and roads are in bad condition, with one stretch at the end of Milton Road being basically gravel, with potholes filled with broken bricks. Campaigns for traffic calming measures have also failed to attract much attention.

Pond Park also has a number of recreation grounds, some of which are in states of disrepair and frequently littered.

Waterside

Waterside was built around the banks of the River Chess to the south, and consists of a mixture of old, 1800s era houses and more modern council properties. The Metropolitan Line link runs through this area. Local amenities include a post office, fried chicken shop and a swimming pool/fitness centre. There is also the Moor which is used amongst other things for sport.

Newtown

Newtown, which was built with the coming of the railway, consists of late 1800s era houses built for railway staff and commuters. The lines between Newtown and Pond Park are fairly blurred; it is generally assumed that everything beyond Townsend Road in the valley is Newtown, while everything past that point on the hills is Pond Park.

Education

First schools

Junior schools

Secondary schools

Further education

Amersham & Wycombe College has a campus in the town, with the other nearest campus being in Amersham.

Recreation

Opposite the town centre is Lowndes Park, a large park with playgrounds and formerly an open air paddling pool. There is also a large pond in the park, known as Skottowe's Pond. Lowndes Park was donated to the town of Chesham in 1953. Prior to this it was part of the garden that belonged to the Lowndes family.

The Elgiva Theatre is independent, and tends to show films some months after their original release date, along with hosting conventions and showing plays.

There are two swimming pools, in addition to the disused one mentioned above; an open air pool in Waterside, and a roofed pool (and leisure centre) next to Chesham High School at the top of White Hill.

A common criticism of the town is that there is very little for younger people and teenagers to do, leading to them hanging around the streets at night and causing trouble. Even in the relatively peaceful Pond Park, gangs of youths loiter and tend to amuse themselves by either putting swings out of use or (at the other extreme) lighting fires and setting off fireworks. Probably due to the lack of any other amusements, drugs are also a popular means of entertainment, for young and old alike. A large warehouse producing significant amounts of marijuana was raided and shut down in 2006.

Famous residents

Stephen Fry spent part of his childhood in Chesham, attending Chesham Prep School as detailed in his autobiography 'Moab is my Washpot'.

External links

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Chesham".

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