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General
Like its colleague Chesham, the first part of the village name derives from the Old English ceasteles-hamm meaning ‘hemmed-in land by a heap of stones’. The additional name Bois is a thirteenth century family name (de Bois) who owned the manor and lived where Chesham Bois House now stands. In 1281 the manor passed from the de Bois and for the next one hundred and fifty years it saw numerous owners before passing to the Cheyne family who owned it for three hundred years. In the last two hundred years the population has grown from 135 in 1806 to about 3,500 in 2004.
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The Beacon School
At one time David James, his sister and his friend Tommy Ramage lived in what was referred to as the ‘Top Camp’. This was one of the two Beech Barn ex-army camps that were located along the Chesham Road just after the junction with Mayhall Lane (an area now occupied by The Leys housing estate). At that time they were squatters who were people who had lost their home and families during the bombings of the Second World War or who had simply been ‘left behind’ in the confusion and aftermath of the war. They had no where to live and had moved into the huts of the camps as they were vacated by demobilised Polish soldiers.
One day the three of them went down to the ‘Bottom Camp’ which stood on an area formerly occupied by Bois Farm and is now the Beacon Boys School. They began exploring the buildings including one which people had named ‘The Stables’. They climbed in through a hole in the wall then, using a ladder they had found, they climbed up to a trapdoor in the ceiling. As they pushed up the trapdoor they heard the sound of very heavy footsteps. They looked into the loft which was well lit by sunlight coming in through gaps in the roof where the tiles were missing. As they looked they could see little clouds of dust rising off the floor as if someone was walking across the loft but there was no one visible. To make matters worse the puffs of dust were coming their way. That was more than then could stand and they were out of the building in record time, never to return.
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