Wenham (/ˈwɛnəm/) is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts. The population was 4,979 at the time of the 2020 census.

The town of Wenham was settled in 1635 and incorporated in 1643, and is closely tied to its neighboring town of Hamilton, sharing a school system, library, recreation department and commuter rail station.

Noted for its historic character and rural scenery, Wenham has farm lands, lakes, woodlands, historic homes, and old stone walls that accompany its winding tree-lined roads. It features nearly 300 acres (120 ha) of parks, playgrounds, and recreational lands.

Wenham was settled in 1635 and officially incorporated in 1643.

English settlers came to Wenham in the 1630s, but the area had been home to the Agawam people, an Eastern Algonquian tribe whose numbers were greatly reduced by a massive epidemic around 1617, possibly smallpox.

Three grandchildren of Agawam Chief Masconomet pressed a claim to the lands of Wenham, Beverly, and Manchester in 1700, and Wenham selectmen paid them three pounds and ten shillings for the quitclaim. Indian artifacts were found frequently throughout Wenham, and a representative collection is in the possession of the Wenham Museum.

Wenham was originally a part of Salem. Salem's minister Hugh Peters preached to a group on a hill by the Great Pond around 1638, probably to encourage settlement. The earliest land grants in the Wenham area roughly coincide with Peters' sermon. The hill was leveled in later years to make room for the Wenham Lake Ice Company at the Great Pond.

In September 1643, the General Court of Massachusetts granted that Wenham should be a town in its own right and send a representative to the General Court. It was the first town to be set off from Salem. Wenham provided volunteers in King Philip's War in the 1670s, and the French and Indian War in the mid 1700s. In 1774, the town voted to select 15 men as minutemen, and from that time on Loyalists were not welcome in Wenham.