Organised by the Chesham Society and Chesham Town Council, this year has strong themes of faith and recreation. You can visit the belfry of St. Mary’s Church and discover the graffiti hiding in plain sight within the church! The United Reformed Church in The Broadway is celebrating 300 years of worship on site with a cream tea and history display.
The late-Georgian Friends Meeting House, the Mosque and Hearse House in the cemetery, all on Bellingdon Road, will also be welcoming visitors. In terms of leisure and recreation, England’s oldest tennis club, Chesham 1879, will have a display of historic artefacts, and visitors can have a go at tennis, squash and padel. The George Piggin allotments in the Old Town were the site of the original workhouse gardens, and they will be open along with the Cameron Road allotments, founded in 1910, where delicious homemade refreshments will be on offer.
We are celebrating a new chapter in the history of the Temperance Hall, founded in 1852, as it is welcomed into The Elgiva family, with music, free activities for children and a historic display. Chesham Museum are running a free walk covering 4,000 years of Chesham heritage and many other aspects of Chesham life will be represented at individual sites, with industrial heritage at Kevin Meayers Organ Builders and Workaid; civic life in a celebration of 50 years of Chesham Town Council at the Town Hall; and how the poor were cared for through history, with the opening of Weedons Alms House.