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| Some
Local History |
| The
Background To Amersham |
The old coach
road from London to Aylesbury and Princes Risborough comes
down Chequers Hill from the direction of the Chalfonts,
passes Station Road on the right and the road to Beaconsfield
on the left, and continues through Amersham Market Square
in front of the Market Hall. History is all around us,
not only in the bricks and mortar of the buildings but
in the names that survive from ages past. The Beaconsfield
Road, for example is called Gore Hill and was reputedly
the site of a bloody battle between the Saxons and the
invading Danes in the ninth century.
The view of Amersham Old Town is largely 17th and 18th
century though, as Elmodesham, the town was mentioned
in the Domesday Survey and was known to the Romans, a
settlement being excavated at Mantles Green prior to completion
of the bypass in 1987. There is also evidence that it
was a Bronze Age settlement two thousand years before
that.
The most striking feature of the Market Square is the
fine red brick Market Hall standing on its rounded arches
and surmounted by a wooden turret and clock-tower. It
was a gift of the local Drake family in 1682 and on the
flagstones of the open space beneath, the weekly market
was held that had been granted by a charter of 1200 in
the reign of King John. A two-day fair was also granted.
Amersham Fair continues, as it has done for nearly 800
years, stretching the whole length of the town on the
19th and 20th of September, the patronal feast-days of
the parish church. A tablet on the north side of the Market
Hall, erected by the Amersham Society, gives a brief outline
of the town’s history.  Nearby
is an old lead pump dated 1749 and under the arches is
the original town lock-up.
The interior of the Market Hall has undergone a major
refurbishment and upgrading of the facilities fully in
keeping with its status as an attractive and ancient monument,
whilst at the same time providing the community and visitors
with an excellent location for meetings, exhibitions and
numerous other social and business functions.
As a staging post on the coach road, Amersham has always
had a plentiful supply of inns. The three-storey Griffin
Inn stands opposite the Memorial Gardens, which are such
an imaginative feature of the town, and facing the picturesque
row of shops made out of the medieval buildings of the
former malthouse.
On the north side of Market Square over an arch between
two shops is the date 1624 marking the original site of
Robert Challoner’s Grammar School, long since removed
to the new part of the town.
Immediately to the right of the Market Hall is Church
Street, a narrow road that widens out to become Rectory
Hill as it climbs upwards past Parsonage Wood on the right,
and on the left is the handsome Rectory built by the Rev.
Benjamin Robertshaw in 1735. |
| Amersham Of Yesterday |
It was not often that a family living
in Old Amersham in the days prior to the last war travelled
far from the old town. Even a trip “up on the Common”
to a small child was considered quite an outing.So it
was to me, and I was filled with pleasure when my mother
began to bustle about her household tasks with added impetus
saying “We shall be going up on the Common this afternoon”.
“The Common” that she and her contemporaries
referred to at the time was not some gorse covered expanse,
but usually the site of the few popular shops that had
sprung up around the Amersham Railway Station since its
construction in 1892; the Station Hotel, now The Iron
Horse and The Temperance Hotel (Amersham House, formerly
the offices of the Amersham Town Council) among the earliest.
Hill Avenue housed Profits, the photographers; Bennett’s
shoe shop; Popes, the seed merchants; Savages fish shop;
a jewellers; Geary’s musical instruments, a grocers
and a butchers.
Here it was also that the dentist, Mr Wege, pulled teeth,
hitherto pulled by Mr. Haddon in the old town and by the
end of the decade the glorious Co-op had arrived.
At the top blossomed Oakfield Comer, so named after the
large oak tree that stood there in the last century.
The establishments here dealt with the more serious and
business aspects of trade displaying the large sign of
the Bucks Insurance Bureau, the Bucks School of Driving
and on this corner also, Mr Tom Collins the accountant,
had his office.The Bucks Library
was selling and lending books and the erudite atmosphere
is still prevalent.
Sycamore Road was fast becoming the last word in ultra
modernity with the comparatively new Regent Cinema opening
its spacious doors to glistening realms hitherto unknown.
The rather sandy world of Mr Rudolph Valentino had been
shown at the Playbox, in Station Road, later the famous
Playhouse Repertory Theatre.
Down in the valley, the actual town of Amersham, although
unable to boast such new innovations as a cinema or theatre,
was still quite a large shopping metropolis with 56 trading
establishments in the length of its main thoroughfare
alone.
It was not until much later that part of Amersham Common
acquired the rather grand name ‘Amersham-on-the-Hill’,
perhaps because it was thought the very word ‘common’
was common in another sense.In the last century Amersham
Common referred widely to anywhere upon the hill and stretched
away down Woodside and White Lion Road to the Drovers’
Pond adjacent to the White Lion Public House.
An Enclosure Act of 1815 dealt with the enclosure of the
old common ‘And whereas the said open and common
fields, common meadows, wastes and other commonable lands
are in their present state incapable of any considerable
improvements…’
At the same time public highways and public and private
footpaths were established beyond dispute.Enclosure was
not a popular move, as hitherto the commons were an integral
part of the rural economy, for whilst villagers worked
the arable fields in strips, they supplemented their livelihood
by grazing cattle on the common pasture, which consisted
of meadows, woodland and wasteland.
Cattle were not allowed to graze on the common meadows
from Candlemas to Lammas when the meadows were cropped.
In the woods the acorn and the beechnut fattened the pigs
for winter killing. Therefore the common was of the utmost
importance and seemed to prove a successful experiment
in communal life.
But the Enclosures, that enclosed the large fields or
commons into smaller fields each with an individual owner,
caused considerable disturbance and changed the face of
the countryside - and they were not the only change and
upheaval the people of Amersham faced in the last century.
The railway was on its way; that great monster that rampaged
across the country, polluting the very air and, it was
thought, even causing pregnant cows to abort in sheer
terror.
George Stephenson had planned the ‘London to Birmingham’
through Hillingdon, Uxbridge, the Chalfonts and the Misbourne
Valley as early as 1835, but the many landowners along
the route, including Squire Drake at Shardeloes, had objected
so strongly to the railway crossing their land that the
planners were forced to come up with another route - one
to the north of Watford that exists today. And who could
blame Squire Drake with glorious Shardeloes parkland sweeping
down the Misbourne and landscaped by none other than the
18th Century landscape gardener Sir Humphrey Repton.
Ebenezer West from his school ‘for the sons of liberal
gentlemen’ at Elmondesham House in the High Street
conversely went so far as to raise a petition in favour
of the railway. It suited him nicely, as the railway would
provide the parents of his boys with easy access from
London.
Great controversy and argument reigned but it was felt
generally by the inhabitants that the advent of the ‘line’
would bring utter ruination to Amersham, a town of great
former repute and renown.
So Amersham was without a railway until later in the century
when the Metropolitan Line came creeping down from London
in faltering stages. The line came through in 1892, across
the common and up on the hill, thus placating the Squire,
and the Station was built in 1894.
On the common at that time were quite a few houses and
farms of former repute, one of the oldest and most historical
being Raans (now Raans Farm). Possibly rebuilt about 1540,
it was extended in the 17th century by the Proby family,
whose arms are to be seen above the entrance doorway.
A most important local manor, it was granted to the de
Mandevilles and tenanted by Jordan de Rane. This family
acquired the Lordship which later passed by marriage to
the Groves. In the 15th century it became the seat of
the distinguished Brudenell family who held it until 1608.
One Edmund Brudenell was Clerk to the parliament in the
reign of Edward III, Attorney to Richard II and Coroner
of England. He died in 1425. Another Edmund Brudenell,
Knight of the Shire of Bucks, had a son Dru who served
in the office of the High Sheriff of Bucks, and Robert
Brudenell was appointed Kings Serjeant in 1505, then raised
to the judicial seat in the Kings Bench and in 1521 was
appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
After the occupation of the Proby family, the house was
eventually purchased by the Duke of Bedford in the 18th
century and later sold to Lord George Cavendish passing
to Lord Chesham.
Woodside Farm, thought by some to be the site of the old
House of the Manor of Woodside was during the 17th century,
the home of Mary Pennington, wife of the fearless Quaker,
Isaac Pennington, and mother-in-law to William Penn, the
founder of Pennsylvania. She and Isaac had previously
lived at Bury Farm at the foot of Gore Hill, the road
to Coleshill, and it was there that Penn courted her daughter
Gulielma, but during one of Isaac’s many sojourns
in Aylesbury Gaol, Mary was forced to leave those premises
and purchased Woodside, which was in a very dilapidated
condition. Mary spent a great deal of money on it and
it is now the site of the thriving Amersham Community
Centre in Chiltern Avenue. The Weller family were prosperous
brewers in Amersham during the 18th and 19th centuries,
ending up with 142 Licensed properties (pubs) within a
radius of 35 miles of Amersham and employing over half
the population of the town. The prosperous George Weller
built a mansion on Amersham Common called The Plantation
(hence the name Plantation Road). This was eventually
divided into flats and renamed Park Place and, even later,
was demolished and the modern flats built on the site
by the local council bear the same name. The Weller dynasty
ended in 1929.
Amersham was once a Borough, returning two members to
Parliament until the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832
when it was disenfranchised. Up until that time those
returned were mostly members of the Drake family (Lords
of the Manor), although Edmund Waller, the Poet, was returned
for Amersham more than once in the 17th century, and the
return of Algernon Sidney in1656 caused a great stir,
not to mention alarm. He later was beheaded for the part
he was supposed to have played in the Rye House Plot.
E.K. Fowler, whose grandfather was landlord of the Crown,
was present at one of the Amersham elections and was highly
delighted with the fun and frolic. It was the custom for
the eligible females of the parish to assemble at the
local hostelries awaiting the return of the successful
candidates who rushed in and kissed them all. This ritual
became even more robust when the young men of the parish
were allowed in afterwards tofollow the same practice
amid great shrieks and protestations.
The candidates at the last election in 1832 were Squire
Drake and Colonel Drake (who had fought in ‘the Blues’
at Waterloo).
Two very large unhewn stones stood outside ‘the Market
House in the public street where they were proposed’
and after the usual nomination, in very brief speeches,
these two gentlemen returned thanks for their election.
They then entered their carriages, drawn by four horses,
and perambulated the town followed by a crowd of men,
women and children cheering, shouting and dancing around.
No small wonder the loss of former status was lamented
and such was the sadness felt at the coming of the railway
that a threnody was published, edged in black and headed:
“In Memorium - Amersham
In loving memory of this old town, which departed this
life virtually in 1832, when it lost the distinction of
being a borough”.
With countless verses it went on to bewail past glory
and then:
“O Amersham! What voice is this that wakes you up
so rudely.
The line is coming through thy midst ere long
The Metropolitan Extension Railway
O turn aside, do not this cruel wrong”.
It did turn aside, just as far as the top of the hill,
running along the crest, and leaving Old Amersham to bask
and Amersham Common to grow and develop into the next
century.
Amersham has received many famous visitors, one of the
most noted being John Knox (1505-1572), the Scottish Reformer,
who was sent on a preaching tour of Bucks during the nine
days that Lady Jane Grey was on the throne. Amersham Church
was his last stop on that tour and on 10th July 1553 he
preached in the Church against Mary Tudor and in favour
of Lady Jane. On 3rd August Mary Tudor was proclaimed
Queen and Knox had to leave the country in a hurry.
Approximately a century later, Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
the eminent ecclesiastical Divine, whilst being quartered
at Amersham with Cromwell’s army, also preached in
Amersham Church and had a dispute with various non-conformists.
In his autobiography he mentions that the war of words
went on until well into the night. He felt compelled to
re-visit Amersham in 1673 when he became more than a little
alarmed at the continued growth of Quakerism in the Amersham
area and decided it was time for the people ‘to hear
what was to be said for their recovery’.
Jean Archer
Mayor of Amersham (1984-1987) |
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