Amersham has a long history of places of worship, some of which are marked with geocaches (St Mary's, Amersham & St Michael and All Angels). A recent architectural addition is the King's Church, a modern building that opened a few years ago. The congregation grew out of a Baptist congregation that began to worship in Old Amersham in the late 18th century. The chapel in Old Amersham remains, now as a wedding and party venue associated with a well known local hotel, The King’s Arms.
To find this cache you will need to learn a little about the old chapel and the new church. The published location takes you to the Old Chapel (you may wish to use waypoint 1 for convenient parking). The exterior of the chapel is accessible on foot only through the car park of the aforementioned local hotel. Please be sure to use that access route, and not the path at the west end of the hotel. The interior is not open to the public. Waypoint 2 will take you to the modern King's Church building in Amersham on the Hill, which is a 1.5 mile drive or walk from waypoint 1.
The final cache can be found at 51 AB CDE 00 FG HHJ where:
The Old Chapel was founded by Richard Morris, who opened it in 1784, in Old Amersham. His land was located adjacent to a long established coaching inn, now a hotel, whose sign contains a French phrase consisting of A words. The front of the Old Chapel commemorates its use as a school. Let B be the total combined number of As, Es, & Us in the commemorative plaque, which dates the school to 18C2. Architecturally the exterior is red brick with oddly positioned windows and an attractive octagonal skylight. On the wall overlooking the car park are windows that might remind cachers of a certain age of a well known children's television programme (presented by one time local resident Brian Cant, but that's not relevant to this cache). Let D be the number of shapes of windows on this wall. Returning to the main road, look back to the fine old sign overhanging the road. Let E be the number of animals on that sign plus 1.
To complete the cache you must now leave the beautiful surroundings of Old Amersham and head up the hill to the sadly less beautiful eastern edge of Amersham on the Hill. Waypoint 2 will bring you to the new King's Church. There is some on street parking, and if you arrive outside working hours plenty of space in the commercial area opposite.
This was built as part of a development on land that was once the Raans School, hence local street names like Scholars Way. The church is sometimes open to visitors, but there is no need to go inside to complete the cache.
Let F be the number of spikes on the fence panel to the right of the main gate, divided by 6, and G the number of letters in the word on the gate sign that might make you think of Sunday lunch. Architecturally the church consists of four large blocks, which combine to present a contemporary frontage. H is the number of those blocks visible from the road with a brick finish.
About 20 yards south of the main gate to the church is a lamp post. This has a number painted on it in white. Let this number be J.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com, and the final cache is a very short walk from the modern church.
Feedback from cachers suggests that care needs to be taken when compiling the numbers here, but I hope the visit to a less well known and charming corner of the town makes up for that. This cache was updated 12/9/2021 because the church had changed the signage at the front, rendering one element of the previous puzzle insoluble.
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