Initially a hamlet in the parish of Chesham, the manor was assessed at 1½ hides in the reign of King Edward the Confessor.

[2] The estate belonged to a brother of King Harold, who was killed with him at the Battle of Hastings, and William the Conqueror probably gave this "royal" land to his own half-brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.

[2][5] Chesham Bois House, the site of the manor, was the subject of an archaeological excavation by television programme Time Team, which was broadcast in the United Kingdom on Channel 4 in March 2007.

Famous people born in Chesham Bois include the crime writer and composer Edmund Crispin;[8] Lieutenant Commander Peter Scawen Watkinson Roberts, who was awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the face of the enemy during World War II; and Mervyn King, former governor of the Bank of England.

Although "two hundred years ago it was in the depths of the country, a small village with no more than twenty-four houses",[11] today some of Chesham Bois merges into Amersham-on-the-Hill.