Latest News

Support the Museum as you Surf

Use every time you search the web and they give 50% of the fees paid by their advertising sponsors to Chesham Museum. Just type 'Chesham Museum' into the box provided on the easysearch web page and start searching.

Donate On-line

Chesham Museum is an entirely volunteer-run and independent museum. We rely on your donations to continue to record and share our town's fascinating and diverse history. Go to the Chesham Museum page of the MyCharity website and donate today.

Fund raising

Help us by becoming a Friend of the Museum

Chesham Town Council Events

A calendar of events in Chesham

Chesham objects in other collections

Have you spotted an object associated with Chesham in another museum? If so, we would love to know about it. Chiltern Toys had a factory making wooden and other toys in Waterside, Chesham until the outbreak of WWII. This Chiltern Toys bear is in the collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Please Note: To read .pdf files you need a PDF reader like Adobe Acrobat or Foxit Reader installed on your computer.

Chesham Stories

Alice Culverhouse
Childhood homes in Bellingdon Road

I was born in 1908 at Mafeking House, 153 Bellingdon Road, which my father, Edward Culverhouse, had built during the Boer War, together with Ladysmith House. They were so-named because they were finished at the time of the relief of Mafeking and Ladysmith in 1900. They were semi-detached with three bedrooms, a front room, a living room and a kitchen. There was no bathroom until 1915. They were surrounded by gardens and orchards and there was a grass tennis court. My father worked hard in the garden and bred hens, ducks, geese and rabbits. He picked and sold fruit from the extensive orchards. We had our chores to do as children - my brothers Edward John (Eddie) and Henry Robert (Bob) had to tidy up the orchard and feed the poultry. I had to clean the silver, the knives and polish the furniture. My father had garages built (by the cemetery walls) and let these for 2s 6d (a little over 10p) per week.

My father was a self-made man. Born to parents who kept a shop in Blucher Street who did not encourage his desire for education, he tutored himself and in summer took his books up into the park to study there. At age sixteen he passed an exam qualifying him to become a student teacher in High Wycombe. He took his teaching certificate and then started his teaching life at Whitehill Boys' School. He remained there for forty years.

He taught himself to play the piano on an old one with many of the keys not working. He later gave piano lessons, played the organ at various churches and attended choir practice every Friday night. He was asked to play the organ at many weddings and funerals and so was out practically every evening. We went to St Mary's Church every Sunday morning and evening and my brothers and I to Sunday school morning and afternoon. My father also gave private lessons in book-keeping. He was a Councillor for over twenty years, Mayor of Chesham, Treasurer of the Ratepayers' Association, Director of Chesham Building Society, Secretary of the Property Owners' Association and he organised the Hospital Fete at the Bury.

At the age of twenty-one he had bought two old cottages in Duck Alley, a slum area, and he did them up, decorating and repairing them himself. He sold them at a profit and bought a row of houses. His ambition was to be a property owner and he continued to attend property sales right up until his death, leaving about a hundred houses in Chesham and the same in Watford.

When we were still living at Mafeking, a house called Glenthorne (pictured left, see note below) came up for sale. My mother had always admired it and my father bought it. It had seven bedrooms, the staircase was of pitch pine, the large reception room and breakfast room had fireplaces of Italian marble and the hall had Italian tiles on the floor. The windows on the landing, in the hall and in one bedroom had stained glass. The walls were 18 inches thick and there was a verandah outside the scullery door and a conservatory leading off the breakfast room. The kitchen had an old-fashioned range too heat the water and there was some central heating. The house stood in its own grounds, landscaped, with a big lawn and beautiful trees, a copper beech, a weeping hornbeam and a terrace under the dining-room window with large flower beds. My parents loved their home, it was reputed to be the best-built house in Chesham.

Alice/Alison Rose (Rosie) Horsnell (nee Culverhouse)

(The photograph shows Glenthorne as seen from the rear of the property. The house was sold to property developers in the 1950s, after the parents of Alice Culverhouse died. The house was razed to the ground and Albany Court now stands on the site. Glenthorne had been built around the turn of the century for George Webb, J.P. who, according to the Kellys Directories, lived there between about 1907 and 1928. Photograph courtesy of Keith Fletcher.)

Copyright
Chesham Museum website and its contents are protected by copyright. You are welcome to access, download and print pages from the site for non-commercial personal or educational uses. If you wish to discuss commercial use of the material on this site please contact Chesham Museum using the Contact page for advice.