200 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I

Market HallGrade II* listedElmodesham HouseGrade II* listedThe Old ForgeGrade II listedThe Eagle Public HouseGrade II listedBuckingham GateGrade II listed+8See all photos

Photos from Wikimedia Commons and Geograph, copied to our own server, each credited to its photographer with its licence; names open the building’s page or its official list entry.

1903

Public domain, from Wikimedia Commons, copied to our own server. Each credit opens the image’s page with its full description and history.

Historic England lists buildings in three grades: Grade I for buildings of exceptional interest (about 2.5% of all listed buildings), Grade II* for particularly important buildings of more than special interest (about 5.8%), and Grade II for buildings of special interest (about 91.7%). Listing protects the whole building, inside and out.

Every entry on the National Heritage List for England whose point lies inside the ONS 2022 built-up-area boundary. One list entry can cover a terrace or a group of buildings. Neighbourhood dots: the population-weighted centre of each Census 2021 output area, coloured by its neighbourhood’s (LSOA’s) share of homes built before 1919 (Valuation Office Agency, March 2025).

High Street38 listed · 1 II*

Whielden Street24 listed

Broadway13 listed

Norwoods Court4 listed

Of the 200 entries, 82 are named by a street address; the rest are named buildings such as churches, halls and bridges.

Search the rest on Historic England’s list →

Historic England’s conservation areas layer, supplied by councils (incomplete in places, so a page fact, never graded). Hectares are the part of each area inside the built-up area.

The first 117 entries were listed in 1958, 1 of the 1 Grade I buildings among them. Only 3 have been added in the last 15 years.

Two measures, each ranked against every UK town of 1,000 or more, with protected heritage counting twice as much as the age of homes. Protected heritage counts each listed building by its grade (Grade I three points, II* two, II one), each scheduled monument and battlefield two, and each registered park or garden by its grade; it is ranked both per 10,000 residents and as a total, so a village with one fine church doesn’t outrank a historic city. The second measure is the share of homes built before 1919, from the Valuation Office Agency’s council tax records. History is a character grade: it describes the town and isn’t part of the overall grade.

Measured per resident, Amersham has more listed heritage than 85% of UK towns. In all there are 200 listed buildings, 1 of them Grade I, including St Mary's Church. Only 96 of the 512 towns nearest its size have more Grade I buildings. High Street alone has 38 listed buildings.

Its older streets lie in 4 conservation areas, the first designated in 1969. Most entries on the list, 77%, are houses, terraces and villas. The big year was 1958, when 117 of the 200 went on the list. Beyond that, Percy Hobson Holyoak (1874) was born here before 1900; and 11% of its homes were built before 1919, close to the 15% in the typical UK town.