Chesham Bois: a microcosm of feudal society
October 25, 2024
The area around Chesham and Chesham Bois shows various finds from the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Ages, suggesting that the valley of the river Chess and the hills around it were favoured spots for settlement. There are fewer finds here from the Iron Age[1], suggesting settlement focus may have shifted to the hill fort at Cholesbury. Hollow Way Lane may have been part of a prehistoric trade route over Ley Hill, down to the Chess, up through Chesham Bois to Amersham and on to the south coast.[2] Certainly, the name of the road is significant – a hollow way is a track so worn by the feet of generations that the road level is significantly lower than banking up the sides.
There is archaeological evidence of a Roman villa at Latimer, occupied between the 1st and 4th centuries that was built, expanded, improved and then gradually fell into ruin before being abandoned around the year 400. Excavations conducted in the 1960s suggested farming and formal gardens were part of the complex,[3] as well as a Roman bath system, and that Latimer villa was one of up to 5 villas along the river Chess[4].
During the Saxon period (AD410-1066), Chesham and the area around it appears to have been a Royal manor, held by King Eadwig of England (ruled 955-959) . It was likely passed to his wife, Ælfgifu, from whom he was forcibly divorced in about 958 on grounds of consanguinity[5]. Ælfgifu, whose Latinised name is Elgiva, lived until 970, when she left the whole estate at Chesham to Abingdon Abbey under the terms of her will[6]. The next appearance of land in the Chesham area is in the Domesday Book of 1086, when the estate appears to have returned to the Royal family.
The Domesday Book makes five references to Chesham as a whole, the first of which is thought to relate to what we would now consider Chesham Bois[7]. Prior to the Norman Conquest, two sokemen[8] held the land from Earl Leofwine and Earl Harold – both Godwinsons and therefore part of the ruling family from 1066, when Harold was crowned Harold II. The area was about 180 acres, which could support 3 ploughs, with three-plough lands of meadow alongside. Seven people scratched out a living on the clay soil – two villans[9], three bordars[10] and two slaves – and there were two mills. The north-eastern boundaries of this parish most likely pre-date the Norman Conquest because they follow a small offshoot of the river Chess from Bois Mill in the east to Amy Mill in the north, splitting the moor land near Lord’s Mill, which falls into Chesham parish.
The change of regime in 1066 saw Chesham Bois taken from the Godwinsons and handed over to Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux and William the Conqueror’s maternal half-brother. From him, it passed to the Earls of Leicester and then the Duchy of Lancaster, who held it when the overlordship was mentioned for the final time in 1645[11].
In the early thirteenth century the day-to-day owners of the manor were the du Bois family who left their name on the settlement. This is not unusual in the area – Chesham itself was made up of as many as 11 manors within the township[12], some of which also took the names of their owners.
To use the legal term, the du Bois family were the owners in fee. Under feudal law, this meant they owed service or rents to the overlord of the manor for the right to use the land, give or sell it and pass it to heirs. In 1213, William du Bois formalised the right to nominate a chaplain to his chapel, which is now the chancel of St Leonard’s Church[13].
The du Bois family relinquished the manor to the Brainzon family, who passed it on to the de Braose family, until it was acquired in the early fifteenth century by the Cheyne family, who also collected a number of other local manors (Grove Manor, Blackwell Hall, Mordaunts, Chenies, Shardeloes and Raans).
The Cheyne family made Chesham Bois manor their home until the 1640s, building themselves a new manor house, creating a small park for hunting and a warren for small game and rabbits. Eventually they added two fine carriage entrances which showed their property to its best advantage when approaching up the hill through the woods from Latimer, or along from Amersham Common.
When the head of the family , Charles Cheyne, married into the nobility in 1654[14], his wife’s fortune gave him the wealth to buy property in Chelsea. The Mansion House in Chesham Bois was lived in less often and the Rector of the parish became the de facto social leader of the manor.
Lord Cheyne’s news wealth and connections enabled his son, William, 2nd Viscount Newhaven, to launch a political career – he was an MP seven times in all – and in 1716 William had a plan drawn up of his land in the parishes of Chesham and Amersham. His estate was broadly triangular, from Beechmore Lane (now Fullers Hill) and the houses at Germains in Chesham at its most westerly point, to Bois Mill in the east and down to Mantles Green (now Mill Lane in Old Amersham, near Little Shardeloes) on the southern point, but excluded Amersham Common in the south east.
Other land on the boundaries is noted as belonging to Mr Thomas Weedon (whose name survives in Weedon Hill and Weedon Lane), Widow Morton (the Morton family intermarried with the Weedons, the Grimsdales, the Garretts, the Honnors and the Haileys locally) and Amersham Glebe (the church lands).
William Cheyne used the manor house as a centre of political entertaining in the early 18th century. The manor of Chesham Bois passed first to William’s widow in 1728, then to her niece. The niece sold the manor to John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford in 1735. This reunited Chesham Bois Manor with Chenies Manor which had already passed from the Cheyne family to the Earls of Bedford in the 1520s.
The first thing the Duke of Bedford did was to have map drawn up of his Chesham Bois estate which shows, amongst other things, the original thirteenth century manor house and its private road to the chapel.[15] Part of the reason for the map was to enable the duke to maximise his income from his farming estates around the country. The duke declined to live at Chesham Bois, his surveyor declaring it “not likely to be lett and will be of no more service than to be pulled down to Repair the Rest of the Estate”[16]. It was successfully let, twice, but when the last lease ended in 1759 the manor was no longer maintained. Local memory in the 1880s suggests it was pulled down[17], and the tithe map of 1795 corroborates this, showing Manor House Farm, but no actual manor house.
The map shows the parish in about 1725, with information taken from a number of roughly contemporaneous maps and plans. It is interesting to note that Lee Lane and Watkins Lane, up near Mayhall Farm, no longer exist, although there are residual footpaths in that area. Woods, parkland, common land or moorland aside, the area was entirely agricultural.
[1] Beckley, Ruth and Green, David, “Chesham: Buckinghamshire Historic Towns Assessment Report”, Buckinghamshire County Council (2011), pp. 23-4
[2] Pike, L. Elgar, A History Of Chesham Bois, (1976)
[3] Branigan, K, Latimer Belgic, Roman, Dark Age and Early Modern Farm, Bristol (1971), pp. 85-6, 184, figs. 14, 20.
[4] Roman-britain.co.uk/places/latimer-roman-villa/ accessed 3 February 2023
[5] The church did not allow marriage within seven degrees of consanguinity – shared great-great-great-great-grandparents (of which everyone has 64!). Although these were strict church teachings, they usually did not come into play until a political divorce became expedient, at least partly because the consanguinity rules made the marriage invalid from the beginning and so represented an annulment not a divorce, which was very important within the tenth century Church – see Bouchard, Constance B., “Consaguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries” in Speculum, Vol 56, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), , University of Chicago Press, pp. 268-287. There is evidence that Ælfgifu was only Eadwig’s third cousin once removed, which makes them related to four degrees.
[6] Esawyer.lib.cam.ac.uk/charter/1484.html accessed 3 February 2023 –
[7] Amersham Museum has traced the land in question to definitive identification in the fourteenth century.
[8] Freemen who owned and paid taxes on their land, but owed service to their lord’s court or jurisdiction.
[9] Feudal tenants, subject to the Lord of the Manor , paying dues and services in return for their land.
[10] A menial feudal tenant, holding a cottage and a little land in return for dues and services; one step socially and economically below a villan.
[11] ‘Parishes: Chesham Bois’, in A History of the County of Buckingham: Volume 3, ed. William Page (London, 1925), pp. 218-221. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/bucks/vol3/pp218-221 [accessed 7 March 2023].
[12] Chesham Higham, or Chesham Magna (Chesham Woburn after 1194); Chesham Bury (Chesham Leicester after 1199); Isenhampstead Cheynduit / Isenhampstead Latimer (Chenies and Latimer); Grove Manor; Hundridge Manor; Blackwell Hall Manor; Mordaunts Fee (likely a name relic from a Lord Mordaunt, one of whose daughter’s married a 16th century Cheyne); Thorne Manor.
[13] Edwards, Y., Paton, A., Wells, Grover, G., and Birbeck, V., Chesham Bois Manor, Home to the Cheyne Family for 350 Years. Historical and Archaeological Investigation, Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society
[14] Charles Cheyne made a love-match with Lady Jane Cavendish, the daughter of William Cavendish, the 1st Duke of Newcastle. Reportedly, her father thought Cheyne not good enough for her, but she would have no other husband. Her significant wealth enabled Cheyne to buy the former Royal palace and manor of Chelsea, following the English Civil War.
[15] This chapel is now incorporated into St Leonard’s Church as the chancel.
[16] Edwards, Y., Paton, A., Wells, Grover, G., and Birbeck, V., Chesham Bois Manor, Home to the Cheyne Family for 350 Years. Historical and Archaeological Investigation, Buckinghamshire Archaeological Society
[17] George Weller, of the Weller brewing family in Amersham, recalled his grandfather, William, buying some of the materials from the demolished manor in about 1800, to build a new house on Amersham Common – possibly The Plantation, which gave its name to Plantation Road and was sited roughly where Park Place is now – White, Rev. C. H. E, “The Church and Parish of Chesham Bois” Recs Buckinghamshire 6, (1889) pp. 179-211, reprinted 1890 as a pamphlet, held in Buckinghamshire Archive.