This replica model of the Metropolitan 1 steam locomotive is half the size of the original. Complete with Jubilee carriages, the model was designed and built by the leaders of the 1st Chesham Bois Scout Group in partnership with Amersham Town Council (as part of Amersham in Bloom) to highlight the importance of the railway in the development of ‘Metroland’ and Amersham-on-the-Hill. The Metropolitan 1 steam locomotive was a mainstay of the Metropolitan Railway services to Aylesbury for twenty years. It was called an E class locomotive and was designed by the Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Metropolitan Railway, Mr T. F. Clark. Built in 1898, it was the last engine to be built at the Neasden works. Originally numbered 79, it was numbered No.1 as a replacement for the original A class locomotive No.1 that was scrapped after an accident.

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In 1912 a new development of shops was built at Oakfield Corner and designed to be a landmark building right at the heart of the new town which was beginning to develop to the north of Amersham Station. It was built in a U shape to accommodate the corner plot where Sycamore Road joined the Chesham Road. This was where George Weller’s Woodside Farm land met the Tyrwitt Drake owned Shardeloes Estate land. The property, with three storeys and steep pitched roofs would have dominated the surrounding buildings before the adjacent parades, also by the same architect, were built.

This road junction was known as Oakfield Corner because of the mature trees already on the site and the building soon became known as this. The architect was John Harold Kennard (known as Harold professionally) who had recently moved to the town and designed many houses and shops in Amersham-on-the-Hill in the Arts and Crafts style. The builder was Abel Mead who was also built Bois Avenue with Kennard. The centre of Oakfield Corner shares many design details with these houses, particularly the use of roughcast white render and decorative, black-painted timbers and the distinctive curved diamond design.

Chiltern Parade was completed in 1936 by J Sainsbury who occupied the central store, with the others let to quality retailers to form a “complete ‘market’ of complementary businesses”. It is a typical Sainsbury development of the period and was a substantial investment in Amersham. The design provided nine large retail shops with living accommodation above and included a hostel for Sainsbury’s trainees.

The J Sainsbury store was modelled on the 1882 Victorian style of the flagship company store in Croydon. The store was long and narrow to provide maximum counter space on either side with floor to ceiling windows on either side of the central door. The store had six departments: dairy, bacon and hams, poultry and game, cooked meats, fresh meats, and groceries. Sainsbury’s stayed in the town until 1971 when they opened a self-service supermarket in Chesham. The store closed and the staff moved down the hill or retired.

Harold Kennard designed these distinctive Arts and Crafts style houses in 1910. The unusual gable design of the central houses was probably inspired by the William and Mary style façade of Gable House on High Street, Old Amersham. The A frame design of the other two was a design repeated by Kennard in Chesham and Chesham Bois. All four are examples of Kennard’s belief that everyone deserved an ‘artistic’ house however small the budget. 

St Michael and All Angels Church was completed in 1966 to replace a smaller church on neighbouring land built in 1919. The new church was designed by the architect A. Hodson Archard who also designed the Roman Catholic churches of The Sacred Heart of Jesus and St. John the Evangelist at Bushey and St. Aidan at Little Chalfont. It was built by local builders H. J. and A. Wright. The church is cruciform in shape with a Lady Chapel at the east end. The statue of St. Michael over the West door is by Joseph Cribb who was Eric Gill’s first apprentice from 1906 to 1913, and continued as his lifelong associate.

Harold Kennard designed these two Arts and Crafts style shops on the corner of Sycamore Road and Woodside Close. Originally Napiers dress shop occupied the corner shop and this became Woodcocks, an Amersham institution. The shop was run by Ruby Woodcock as a haberdashery and drapers which also sold stockings and gloves. When you paid for your purchases, there was a lady in a glass cubicle who would send your money along a tube using a pulley system to the cashier and then any change would be sent back the same way. This way the staff did not touch the cash. Plumber’s greengrocer store was next door having moved from Station Parade. Harry Plumber and his wife were originally from London. The produce was seasonal, so you did not have the variety of fruit we have today. The apple varieties would change throughout the year, as did potatoes. Some fruit did come from abroad, such as bananas, but these were unavailable when the war came. They also had tangerines, but only at Christmas and wrapped in silver paper and very expensive. Mr Plumber was also the Chief Fireman, and he had a car, in case he needed to go to the Old Town to get the Fire Engine, as this was where it was kept.

A Metroland house is the name given to the houses built by Metropolitan Railway Country Estates, part of the Metropolitan Railway company, to attract customers to use the railway. The company purchased a 78 acre site (originally Woodside Farm) from George Weller’s estate for £18,000 and initially planned to build 535 houses although this was never completed. Initially there wasn’t the anticipated demand, and then the development was interrupted by WWII.

The houses started with a two-bedroom semi-detached at £850 freehold ‘ideal for a small family’ constructed in brick with brown shingle elevation and oak half timbering and a red tile roof. With two reception rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, two bedrooms, a dressing room, tiled bathroom, and separate toilet on the first floor. The houses had leaded glass windows in Crittall frames, several power points, and an integral garage. The three-bedroom semi was very similar, with the same leaded windows, half-timbering and a third bedroom instead of a dressing room. For the four-bedroom houses in Woodside Close, the Rise and Highfield Close the positioning of the garage allowed for a more spacious first floor and room for a fourth bedroom; at £985, these were considered exceptional value although this was still a high price for the area at the time. R Brazil & Co houses on Stanley Hill and First Avenue were marketed in October 1933 for £555.

A Metroland house is the name given to the houses built by Metropolitan Railway Country Estates, part of the Metropolitan Railway company, to attract customers to use the railway. The company purchased a 78 acre site (originally Woodside Farm) from George Weller’s estate for £18,000 and initially planned to build 535 houses although this was never completed. Initially there wasn’t the anticipated demand, and then the development was interrupted by WWII.

The houses started with a two-bedroom semi-detached at £850 freehold ‘ideal for a small family’ constructed in brick with brown shingle elevation and oak half timbering and a red tile roof. With two reception rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, two bedrooms, a dressing room, tiled bathroom, and separate toilet on the first floor. The houses had leaded glass windows in Crittall frames, several power points, and an integral garage. The three-bedroom semi was very similar, with the same leaded windows, half-timbering and a third bedroom instead of a dressing room. For the four-bedroom houses in Woodside Close, the Rise and Highfield Close the positioning of the garage allowed for a more spacious first floor and room for a fourth bedroom; at £985, these were considered exceptional value although this was still a high price for the area at the time. R Brazil & Co houses on Stanley Hill and First Avenue were marketed in October 1933 for £555.

The barns, which have been used as community facilities for more than 60 years, are the only survivors of Amersham Common’s rural past that are freely accessible to the public.  The barns, dating back to the early 17th century, were once part of an ancient farmstead, most recently known as Woodside Farm, and serve as a reminder of the area’s long history as a rural community.

Woodside Farm is earlier recorded as Pratts Farm after the prosperous, yeoman farmer, Timothy Pratt, who lived here with his family at the end of the 17th century. When the brothers, Edward and William Weller bought the 100 acre farm in 1838, John Thomas Stratton and his wife Jane were the tenants.  At that time Weller’s Brewery was the largest employer and most important business in Amersham. In 1887 George Weller sold 44 acres of Woodside Farm land to the Metropolitan Railway to enable the line to be extended from Chalfont Road to Aylesbury via a new station at Amersham which opened in 1892.

In 1948, Amersham Rural and District Council acquired the buildings in a very dilapidated state (the small barn had been used for mushroom growing!) together with 18 acres of land, for development as a Civic Centre site. In 1951 the Amersham and District Community Association was founded with the aim of establishing a Community Centre and a survey of the farm was undertaken to assess the suitability of the farm buildings. Luckily it was decided that as the main timbers were sound, the buildings were worthy of restoration and Messrs. F Taylor and Sons of Woodside Road were engaged as the building contractors.

Opening in 2021, Chilterns Lifestyle Centre has replaced The Chilterns Pools & Gym, and the 1960s Amersham Community Centre. The new centre boasts a fantastic range of facilities to serve the entire community, including a new library and a café. There are two pools – a 25m main pool and a diving pool with a movable floor, which doubles as a kids’ teaching pool, alongside a kids’ splash pad area. To complement the diving pool, the centre also features a dry diving training facility. There’s also a state-of-the-art, 130-station gym, dedicated group cycling studio and three group fitness studios. The centre also features sports halls, two squash courts, a climbing wall, a children’s soft play area, a dedicated mind and body studio, and a luxury spa with treatment facilities.

The first official railway service to Amersham departed Baker Street at 10.47am on 1st September 1892. It arrived in Amersham less than an hour later at 11.36am. Amersham Station opened as part of a 16 mile stretch from Chalfont Road (now Chalfont & Latimer) to Aylesbury. The Station was built on the hill above the existing town because the landowner, Thomas Tywhitt Drake did not want to see the railway from his ancestral home, Shardeloes. This meant the townsfolk had to walk up a steep hill, Rectory Hill to reach the station until a new road, Station Road was built with a gentler incline. There were only a handful of farms and labourers’ cottages on Amersham Common at the top of the hill. George Weller’s Station Hotel was the first new business, closely followed by the Temperance Hotel! The Tyrwhitt Drakes started to mark out the land for new roads and plots for housing. Similarly, the Wellers marked out plots on Station Road where it passed through their Woodside farmland.

The first new houses were close to the station with new shops in Kennard’s Station Parade under the railway bridge, but development was slow until after WWI. The lack of mains water was the key factor in slowing down development. The construction of Coleshill Water Tower in 1915 eventually solved this problem and the pace of development really picked up after the war.

Turret House was designed by Harold Kennard in 1906 as part of the Sumner and Kennard development of land immediately south of the station. Like The Avenue, Fulbeck and Station Parade it has Kennard’s early Five Diamond Motif and Arts & Crafts style. Turret house has a distinctive square turret on the second floor which, of course, gives the building its name. It was originally conceived as commercial premises on the ground floor with accommodation above. From 1908 until 1923 William Sumner ran his own household and furniture business here which he called Domestic Stores, providing ‘A store at your door with everything for the home at London prices’. London prices were obviously considered a good thing then!

In 1924 Miss Kathleen Leighton opened a school in Turret House. This was a prep school for boys 5 -13 and offered special attention for ‘delicate boys’. There was a playing field and a master to supervise games. The prep-school closed in 1947 and became the Fabien School of Dance. The Fabien Rendezvous Restaurant served fish on a Friday and afternoon tea on a Sunday. There were ballet and tap classes for children, ballroom and ‘Old Time’ dancing for adults. Miss Fabien was the first to teach Latin American dancing in Amersham and organised the first Latin American formation dance team in the area. The principals retired to Worthing in 1971 when Turret House was sold for office development. It was recently converted into six flats.

This distinctive small modernist office was built on Hill Avenue as a new estate agents’ office for the Rickmansworth company, Swannell and Sly. It is in the style of Charles Holden’s stations for London Underground and may have even been designed by him.

Originally built for the National and Provincial Bank, the building is a good example of progressive 1930’s commercial architecture and is still used as a bank today. It has a curved footprint, being flanked by Chesham Road on one side & Hill Avenue on the other. The entrance is located at the end, facing outwards to Oakfield Corner Parade which initially had the main door in a comparable position. Originally, there was a flat-roof behind the parapet wall - illustrating the Art Deco influence. In the post-war years, this was extended to provide an additional floor under a copper roof. The interior of the banking hall is ‘double-height’, with large windows. Classical plaques, symbolic of banking and local trades decorate the exterior.

The War Memorial, on the “Triangle” between North Road and Bois Lane, was dedicated in 1920 and was listed Grade II in 2014.  The proposal for the memorial was made by Henrietta Busk , the first female councillor on Amersham Rural District Council and the Treasurer of the Chesham Bois Parish Council. It was designed by Harold Kennard. On Remembrance Sunday 1949 the memorial was re-commemorated by the Rector Rev A Birkett to include the names of the 17 men and one woman, from the parish who had fallen during WWII.

A Metroland house is the name given to the houses built by Metropolitan Railway Country Estates, part of the Metropolitan Railway company, to attract customers to use the railway. The company purchased a 78 acre site (originally Woodside Farm) from George Weller’s estate for £18,000 and initially planned to build 535 houses although this was never completed. Initially there wasn’t the anticipated demand, and then the development was interrupted by WWII.

The houses started with a two-bedroom semi-detached at £850 freehold ‘ideal for a small family’ constructed in brick with brown shingle elevation and oak half timbering and a red tile roof. With two reception rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, two bedrooms, a dressing room, tiled bathroom, and separate toilet on the first floor. The houses had leaded glass windows in Crittall frames, several power points, and an integral garage. The three-bedroom semi was very similar, with the same leaded windows, half-timbering and a third bedroom instead of a dressing room. For the four-bedroom houses in Woodside Close, the Rise and Highfield Close the positioning of the garage allowed for a more spacious first floor and room for a fourth bedroom; at £985, these were considered exceptional value although this was still a high price for the area at the time. R Brazil & Co houses on Stanley Hill and First Avenue were marketed in October 1933 for £555.