For centuries the settlement known as Chesham Bois was a thinly populated area with a small manor, its chapel and a scatter of farms and labourers’ cottages. There was no village centre although the farmland, common land and woodland was crossed by ancient tracks to neighbouring settlements and drovers’ routes to London. Until well into the 1900s, when Amersham-on-the-Hill developed, Chesham Bois was much more strongly connected to Chesham and its fairs and market than to Amersham. The area remained completely rural until the 1890s and the arrival of the Metropolitan Railway from London. The station on Amersham Common was originally known as Amersham and Chesham Bois Station.
A small manor in the parish of Cestreham (Chesham) was first recorded in the Domesday records, and by 1213 was held by a William du Bois, giving the settlement the name of Chesham Bois. The oldest building in the village is the parish church of St Leonard, founded in 1215 as the chapel of Bois Manor. Until 1934 the parish boundary extended to the river Chess and included the settlement’s one public house, the Unicorn (now a nursery). In fact it was only half a public house as the front bar was in Chesham Bois and the back bar in Chesham with different licensing hours!
The 1700s and early 1800s century saw little development with a population of around 130 but the arrival of the railway bought rapid change to the area and farmland was suddenly far more valuable as building plots with local landowners making substantial profits. The most desirable land was around Chesham Bois Common.
By the time of the 1911 census the population had increased to 1,253 and the parish church had to be expanded to seat 200. New houses were either in the style of traditional Edwardian villas or in the newly fashionable Arts and Craft Style. A new village centre was created at Anne’s Corner at the junction of Bois Lane and North Road with a new parade of shops and a post office. The Chesham Bois War Memorial was also sited here in 1921 on the corner of Chesham Bois Common.
See the 1925 Victoria County History article about Chesham Bois