In my previous article I told how Amersham inspired Tom Gallon’s fictional town of Umberminster in his novel As He Was Born.

It was then used as the location for the silent movie of the same name in 1919 and since then, thanks to its proximity to several film studios and London, Amersham has featured in numerous films and television series.

Both the Crown Hotel and the King’s Arms were used in the 1994 Osca-nominated film Four Weddings and Funeral and Amersham even became a Cornish fishing village, without water or boats in the 2017 film of Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel. 

Murder at the Gallop 
In 1960 MGM filmed a version of Agatha Christie’s After the Funeral where Christie’s trademark suspense was replaced with light comedy.

The title was changed to Murder at the Gallop and the action was centred on a riding establishment, with the surrounding hills providing an excellent backdrop for galloping horses and fox hunting.


 In the film, the novel’s detective, Hercule Poirot, was changed to Miss Marple, played by Margaret Rutherford. She was first encountered fundraising outside the King’s Arms.

 The film was a sequel to Murder, She Said and was followed by Murder Most Foul (filmed in Sarratt and Aylesbury) and Murder Ahoy! (filmed in Denham and Cornwall). All featured Rutherford as Miss Jane Marple.


The Password is Courage 
Another MGM film in 1962 emerged from a true story published in 1954 called The Password is Courage by John Castle. This was the biography of Sergeant-Major Charles Coward, who was a serial escapee from prisoner of war camps during WWII.

He was found wounded in a French barn and mistaken by German officers for one of their own and awarded the Iron Cross!

The film of the same name starred Dirk Bogarde and some of the chase scenes were filmed in Whielden Street. Filming also took place in Chesham. 


Midsomer Murders 
The Killings at Badger’s Drift written by Caroline Graham and published in 1987, spawned the highly successful Midsomer Murders series which started in 1997 and is still going strong.

Anthony Horowitz was commissioned to write the screenplay of a pilot episode.


While casting around for the name of a fictional county he spotted on a map the Somerset village of Midsomer Norton. So, the name of the most dangerous county in England – nearly 400 gruesome murders and counting – came into being. The quintessentially English landscape of Chiltern countryside and villages has been a major draw for audiences around the world, some of whom travel thousands of miles to find the filming locations. 


It all started in Amersham! Amersham High Street forms the backdrop as Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby and his sidekick Sergeant Troy follow up leads. The building in Church Street which currently houses Amersham Town Council, was the base of the creepy funeral director who with his mother has been spying on villagers; they both come to a bloody end.

Caroline Graham wrote seven Inspector Barnaby books but that hasn’t stopped the producers who have so far reached 140 episodes! 


The 100th episode, The Killings of Copenhagen was filmed in The Maltings – as well as in Denmark. A recent episode, Last Man Out, was filmed in Modernist High & Over.

High & Over has also featured in several episodes of Poirot, including King of Clubs, and in 2017 featured in the film The Time of their Lives, starring Joan Collins and Pauline Collins. 


The Midwich Cuckoos 

In 1957 John Wyndham published his science fiction novel, The Midwich Cuckoos. It tells of people living in an “unremarkable community where nothing happens” taken over by a powerful force which makes every living creature collapse. When the force is removed, all women of child-bearing age discover they are pregnant. 


The book was first filmed by MGM in 1960 under the title of Village of the Damned. The location then used was Letchmore Heath near Watford – only four miles from MGM studios in Boreham Wood. The remake in 1995 moved the action to California.

In 2022 Sky chose Amersham as the location of an ideal place to live and bring up a family. 


The first episode starts, like Murder at the Gallop with a view of the town from the hill. A young couple, who desperately want a baby, move out of London and collect the keys to their new house from their estate agent in the High Street, where Gershon & Sons is now. 


To begin with all is well. But one day the traffic lights at the bottom of Rectory Hill go haywire and nearly cause a taxi to run down a couple with their baby.

Horses in a nearby stable are unsettled and kicking down their stable door end up galloping down the High Street and falling next to the Market Hall.

Everyone collapses at the same time. The town is cut off by the forcefield. Police and then the Home Office are alerted. 


There is a body on the mound in Church Mead. Officers in white hazmat suits are gathered nearby. One of them, with a rope around his waist approaches the body but soon collapses and is dragged back by his colleagues. Psychologist Dr Zellaby (played by Keeley Hawes) returns from an unsatisfactory date in London and her car is blocked by police.


Worried about her special-needs daughter, she runs through the woods in the dark and emerges on the footpath with the same view of Amersham laid out below her.

Running down the hill and nearing the church, she hits the force field and collapses.

Sometime the next day, the force disappears and everyone, including the horses, recover and go back to their very ordinary lives…


With thanks to Martin Pounce for this article. Martin will be telling these stories and more on the Midsomer Murders & More film locations walk for Amersham Museum, Saturday 19 October, 10am – 1.30pm. More details on www.amershammuseum.org/events