Two local history experts shared how two famous Buckinghamshire towns on the edge of Greater London got their modern names.

Amersham and Chesham, popular commuter towns on the Metropolitan Line in the heart of Chilterns, have rich history in name and culture tracing back thousands of years all the way to the Anglo-Saxon times. 

This is how Chesham and Amersham came to be.

Chesham

Unlike many mistakenly assume, Chesham wasn’t named after the famous River Chess flowing through the town into River Colne and eventually River Thames, a hobby historian and Bucks Free Press Nostalgia writer for Amersham and Chesham Neil Rees said.

“Actually the origin of Chesham’s name is much more interesting,” Neil revealed.

British Library houses the oldest reference to Chesham, where the will of the widow of the tenth century Saxon King Edwy Queen Elgiva (Ælfgifu) granted her Cæstæleshamm estate with the Abingdon Abbey around AD 970.

The word -ham or hamm means a water meadow often in the bend of a river, such as Fulham and Twickenham in London, Neil said.

Caestel is the original word for castle, which the English settlers called Roman buildings following Romans exiting Britain in AD 410.

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Neil said: “Caesteleshamm likely refers to the ruins of a small Roman settlement, by then maybe just a heap of stones by a river meadow.”

Remains of Roman life along the River Chess from Sarratt to Waterside have been found, including the Latimer Roman villa, coins and a Roman mosaic found at Latimer.

The name evolved from Cestreham in the Domesday Book of 1086 to Victorian era Cestreham with buildings carrying this version of the name, into the current pronunciation, which is shortened from Chester-ham.

Neil said: “The first recorded spelling as Chesham, exactly as spelt today, is from 1247. In mediaevel documents spellings were not fixed and spellings reflected the way the name was said or heard.  In 1302 the town is recorded as Chessham, in 1325 as Chesseham, and as Chesum in 1675.  The old spellings reflect the original local Chiltern pronunciation of the town name, which is still Chess-am or Chezz-um.”

“Whatever you call it, the town of Chesham welcomes you,” he added.  

Amersham

The town’s old name Agmodesham first recorded in AD 796 by the Saxons appears very different to the current day version other than the common suffix ham.

In the Domesday Book, it was known as Elmodesham after Ealmond, possibly the father of Egbert, the first king of all England, said Bucks Free Press Nostalgia writer Alison Bailey.

She said: “The first houses were on the banks of the river Misbourne and therefore the origin of the name is ‘Ealmond’s village by the water’.

“Royal connections continued as the land was held by Queen Edith, the wife of Edward the Confessor and sister of King Harold. After her death in 1075, the land passed to William the Conqueror, who granted it to Geoffrey de Mandeville.”

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