The countryside around Chesham starts where the streets stop. The average front door is a couple of minutes from green space. The river is a short walk away. There are two hillforts within an afternoon's stroll. You can walk out of the town in any direction, and most towns this close to London can't say that.
The average Chesham home is about 160 metres from public green space, with 16 green spaces within a kilometre. The town fills the bottom of the Chess Valley and climbs its sides, so most residents reach a field or a park by going uphill for a few minutes. Lowndes Park is the big one in the middle of town. Nobody here has to put the dog in the car to give it a walk, and the dog ends up doing more hill work than its owner does.
Water is about 660 metres from the average home, with 22 bodies of water within a kilometre. Most of that is the River Chess and the springs that feed it, a chalk stream that runs out past Waterside towards Latimer Park. In Victorian times that stretch of river was lined with watercress beds that supplied London.
The National Cycle Network is about 900 metres from the average home, and about 25% of postcodes are close to it. None of the area is ancient woodland. The council has laid out two cycling heritage trails in the countryside around the town, which is the official version of what the hills were going to ask of a cyclist anyway.
The rated-premises records count 185 shops, 18 pubs and a single restaurant in Chesham. The town has kept its pedestrianised High Street, and the clock tower in Market Square is a 1992 rebuild of the turret from the town hall that was demolished in 1965. Chesham knocked down its town hall and then, a generation later, brought back the part with the clock.
Fine-particle air pollution across Buckinghamshire averaged about 7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2024.
The Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty covers only about 1% of the area, around its edges. There is no site of special scientific interest and no ancient woodland. The protected hills are all around the town, but the town itself has been left out of them.
The character comes from the valley and the villages above it. Bellingdon runs along its ridge, Chartridge, Ashley Green and Ley Hill sit out among the fields, and Hawridge is up near Cholesbury Camp, a large hillfort with several ramparts. Another hillfort stands on Whelpley Hill. People lived up on these hills long before the valley ever filled with houses.
Chesham's homes have plenty of their own outdoor space as well, about 158,000 square metres of private garden for every 1,000 residents. Many of the post-war estates on the valley sides were built with gardens big enough to be worth having.
The business rates list has 651 premises in the town. Shops are the biggest group with 179, then offices with 154, factories and workshops with 70 and warehouses with 55. Those are premises on the rating list, which counts buildings, so some of them may be empty. Even so, it shows a town that still makes and stores things as well as selling them, a habit that goes back to the brush factories.
Of 114 food businesses with a hygiene rating, about 68% have the top score and about 5% are at the bottom of the scale.
The surrounding area is one of Chesham's real strengths. Fields, river and hilltops are all a few minutes' walk from most homes, and a high street that still has its own market is close by too.