The Story of Bracknell E-Book

Andrew Radgick

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 470

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Bracknell is well known for being one of the 'new towns' built after the Second World War to relieve the pressure of housing and industry in London – but the history of Bracknell goes back much further than that. Early hunter gatherers, Iron Age people and Romans have all called Bracknell their home. Hidden in the royal hunting ground of Windsor Forest for many centuries, the village began to develop with the arrival of the railway. Local brickyards expanded, their output being used in many important buildings, both in Britain and abroad. In The Story of Bracknell, local historian Andrew Radgick sets about uncovering this near-forgotten history, producing a treasure trove of original research from newspaper archives and photographic collections, to personal accounts from residents and examinations of traditional tales associated with the area. Bracknell has a unique history, and this is its story.

Leseprobe

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Andrew Radgick, 2024

The right of Andrew Radgick to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 588 5

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

1   Before Bracknell was on the Map

2   Bracknell up to 1800

3   Before the Railway

4   Victorian Times

5   Brickworks in Bracknell

6   Before the War

7   The Effect of the First World War and its Aftermath

8   Life Goes On

9   Second World War and the Coming of the New Town

Postscript

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Endnotes

Preface

‘Bracknell is a New Town – why do we need a History Officer?’ This was the question I was asked when I took over the role for the Bracknell Forest Society.

I was born in Devon, but moved to Bracknell in 1974 when I started work. The New Town was still being built, with the estates of Hanworth and Birch Hill under construction. The town centre ended at Stanley Walk (it would be another ten years before Princess Square opened) and you picked your way across rough ground to reach the train station. That was the original one, built in 1856, but demolished just after I arrived (to stop me leaving?). There were other changes – a Health Centre at Skimped Hill, social housing at Boyd Court, the Wilde Theatre at South Hill Park. While I had a passing interest in history, I was more concerned about earning a living and enjoying myself.

I was forced to give up work in 1996 due to ill health, giving me more time to pursue my hobbies. Family history already interested me, and when I joined the local branch of the U3A, I enrolled in the local history group as well. It was a close friend who asked if I would be prepared to take over the role of History Officer for the Civic Society due to the current incumbent having been diagnosed with a serious illness, and I attended my first committee meeting in that role in May 2011.

One of the tasks I took on was answering historical queries, submitted via the society’s website. These were very varied and led me to research Heathfield School, the old Primitive Methodist chapel burial ground, Bracknell brewery, the ‘chalk factory’, Priestwood House, Bullbrook School, VE Day celebrations in 1945, Lily Hill Poultry Farm, the formation of the original Bracknell Social Club, and a local army camp for Dutch soldiers during the Second World War, as well as many other topics. Each new query widened my local knowledge.

When the centenary of the First World War approached, I took on the task of researching the local men named in both Bracknell and the other parishes in the borough, publishing the results in three volumes in 2014. This gave me a wider understanding of life and the social history of the period.

Far from having no history, Bracknell has a wealthy back story, all the way back to the earliest inhabitants in the Iron Age and the Romans. It was part of the royal hunting grounds of Windsor Forest for centuries. There were changes brought about by the turnpike road and later the railway, the brick industry that thrived until the Second World War but which has now disappeared completely, and of course the arrival of the New Town.

I have been aware for some time that no one had written a history of Bracknell. Eileen Briggs wrote about growing up in the town, and Colin Hickson published a book of old photos, but there was no fully documented version. When the country went into lockdown in 2020 due to the Covid pandemic, there were no external distractions or temptations to prevent me from starting one. From online resources, conversations with older residents, local newspapers, miscellaneous books and other publications, and others with specific interests who were able to add their knowledge and expertise, I have been able to write this story: the story of Bracknell.

Introduction

Ask most people what they know about Bracknell, and they will tell you it’s a New Town. They might even remember the Met Office used to be here. But what was here before the New Town? How long has Bracknell been a place, and how long have people lived in the area? How did we get from being a clearing in Windsor Forest to a bustling commuter town?

Bracknell was located in Swinley Forest, a name dating back over 1,000 years, an adaption of swine-ly, indicating the presence of wild pigs in the area. The land was used as a hunting ground for royalty for several centuries, with deer present in large numbers. The shallowness of the topsoil meant the land was sparsely vegetated, mainly covered by heather, with occasional gorse bushes and clumps of trees. Samuel Pepys thought the area ‘gloomy’ while Daniel Defoe called it ‘a black forest’. William Cobbett, writing in the 1820s, described Windsor Forest as ‘bleak … barren, and as villainous a heath as ever man set his eyes on’. A similar landscape can still be seen today at Chobham Common. It was only in the twentieth century that the area was deliberately planted with trees, completely changing its appearance.

While Easthampstead, Warfield and Winkfield appear in the Domesday Book, Bracknell does not appear on a map until the beginning of the seventeenth century (although Braccan Heal is mentioned in documents nearly 700 years earlier, a copy of which is held at the British Library). The area had been created from the clearance of woodland during the Saxon period, around AD 600 to 700, and the manor of Winkfield, covering about 150 acres, granted to holy woman Saethryth, and then to Abingdon Abbey.

The name of the town, meaning a hidden place where bracken grows (an earlier suggestion that it meant land belonging to a person named Bracca has now been discounted) has evolved over time. Early records mention Brackenhale (1185), Brakehal (1224), and Brackenhal (1241). In 1285, there is the first record of a highway from ‘Brackenhale to Reddinge’, while a Goring charter of 1463 refers to Brackenale. The names Old Brecknoll and New Brecknoll first appear on a map in the early seventeenth century, the former straddled a road down to the Downmill River (now culverted under the Southern Industrial Area), while the latter lined the current High Street. Brecknoll had become New Brackenwol in 1758, and Bracknel Street by 1787, Bracknel in 1805, and Bracknall in 1832. But perhaps journalists were more literate than cartographers, as the name Bracknell appeared in the Reading Mercury newspaper as early as 1770.

The Wokingham, Bracknell and Ascot Times described the town’s origins:

Bracknell was first known as a small settlement at a crossroads in the forests which were a favourite hunting ground for many English monarchs. To the north was farmland, and it was due to the local farmers rather than the patronage of visiting royalty that Bracknell first developed … A quiet market town whose trade revolved around the individual shops in the High Street, it catered simply for the needs of the small community living here and for the farmers nearby … The traders almost invariably lived on the premises. They were all known by name to the residents, and equally, they knew all their customers by name. Shops were local meeting places for swapping gossip and matters of community interest. C. Smith’s New Map of Great Britain and Ireland, of 1802, and the First Series Ordnance Survey Map in 1805, both depict Bracknell as a small aggregation of houses along the High Street.

While Bracknell was connected to Reading with a road by the late thirteenth century, both Ascot Heath to the east, and Bagshot Heath to the south, were frequented by highwaymen during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. With mostly ineffective parish constables and the absence of a police force, detection and arrest were ‘very difficult’. Bracknell’s location at the south-east extremity of a ‘safe’ travel area limited its development.

The building of a turnpike road in 1759 started the village’s development, a process accelerated when the railway arrived in 1856. Now goods and people could be transported anywhere on the country, and utilising Bracknell’s natural resource of clay, brickmaking became the major employment in the area. Despite two world wars, Bracknell plodded on as a sleepy country town, but change was in the air. The creation of New Towns, and specifically one in Berkshire, led to unprecedented upheaval and change.

Much of the information for this book has been garnered from the newspapers of the time. Initially much of Berkshire, including Bracknell, was covered by the Reading newspapers. The Wokingham and Bracknell Gazette and County Review started in Wokingham in 1903. Newspaper reports used language that would not be considered acceptable in today’s times, but the original entries have been used to illustrate the attitudes of the day.

Bracknell residents have been caught up in external events over the years. There were two world wars and other conflicts, some still remembered but others forgotten, such as the employee at Bracknell railway station who died when an Isle of Wight steamer hit rocks in 1899.

Bracknell has a unique history, and this is its story.

Note: To avoid lengthy repetition, the following abbreviations have been used for the names of councils:

BCC – Berkshire County Council

ERDC – Easthampstead Rural District Council

1

Before Bracknell was on the Map

The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is at Amen Corner. Numerous flints have been found between Moor Lane and the A329 (as well as on the Wokingham side of the road). The earliest dates from between 12,000 and 10,000 BC, soon after the end of the last Ice Age. It consists of a flint blade, part of a reusable knife, which would have come with a wooden handle and a scabbard. Prior to this, flint tools were used once and then discarded, so this find is not only important in illustrating human development, but is also extremely rare. At this time, Britain had a scattered highly mobile population living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, following herds of animals. Aurochs (wild cows), elk, wild boar, hares and rabbits, and red deer were hunted in a landscape of birch, pine and alder trees, shrubs, and grasses. The other flints found are mainly blades and scrapers, and date between 10,000 and 4000 BC. Finds from the Neolithic Era, 4300 to 2000 BC, were also found when the A329 flyover was constructed. After this period, farming using more fertile land became more common as the population increased.

An Iron Age enclosure (1200 to 600 BC) existed to the north. There is also evidence of Roman activity, possibly iron smelting and pottery production. The land at Amen Corner later belonged to Buckhurst Manor (now St Ann’s Manor in Wokingham), and medieval ridge and furrow field systems can be seen. A medieval frying pan has also been found, along with a silver shilling minted during the reign of George III.

Probably the best-known evidence of early settlement in the area is Caesar’s Camp, a Scheduled Monument just to the south of Nine Mile Ride, thought to have been established between 3000 and 500 BC. It is said to be the best example of a true Iron Age contour fort in the country. The hill fort itself covers an area of more than 17 acres (7 hectares). The defensive banks and ditches closely follow the contours of the hill, resulting in a plan that resembles an oak leaf, but ‘this is probably more due to the geography of the site than a conscious design with special significance as suggested in some sources’.1 The site’s name was given by eighteenth-century antiquarians in the mistaken belief that it was a Roman camp left by Julius Caesar after his campaign of 55–54 BC. Although a little way off the Devil’s Highway, it is probable the Romans used Caesar’s Camp as a vantage point. Mr Narrien from the Royal Military College in Sandhurst reported in 1818: ‘On the north side there appears to have been once a considerable pond which is now dried up,’2 while George Martin Hughes wrote in 1890: ‘It was also well supplied with water, a large pond existing to the northeast side of it, which is now nearly dried up.’ He also referred to it being ‘encroached on by recent planting of trees’.3

A selection of flints found at Amen Corner. The oldest is from the Late Upper Palaeolithic period, 10,000 to 12,000 BC.

Caesar’s Camp is an Iron Age fort constructed between 3000 and 500 BC. The photo dates to the early part of the twentieth century.

Although there was a well outside the enclosure, the soil here is not suitable for farming. Its huge outer walls and rampart, 1 mile (1.6km) in length, suggest that it was used as a safe haven in case of attack. Despite the later plantings of trees, central Bracknell and Crowthorne are still visible from its highest points on clear days.

From a coin discovered in the interior, the site appears to have fallen under the rule of Cunobelin, king of the Catuvellauni tribe in the first century AD.4 No archaeological excavations have been made at Caesar’s Camp, but Iron Age pottery, Roman coins, various ornaments, household utensils, and earthenware jars have been found in the area, along with evidence of both wooden and brick buildings.

To the north is a gully, supposedly cut at the beginning of the eighteenth century for Queen Anne, enabling her to follow hunts in a coach when she became too infirm to ride. Many new rides were also being cut through the forest in the 1780s for George III for similar reasons. The remains of a redoubt, roughly 40m across, have also been found within the hill fort.

A now demolished woodsman’s cottage was built inside Caesar’s Camp in the second half of the nineteenth century, possibly with a cistern to hold water as a lined excavation has been found inside the hill fort. The cottage was demolished in the 1960s. A gravel pit at the northern end is also marked on maps in 1898 and 1913. The area was used by Canadian and American troops during the Second World War, while a bomb from the conflict was discovered here in 1958.

In 1949, a resident of Crowthorne ‘discovered a line of thirty-four small mounds, ranging between twelve and twenty-four feet in diameter, and running for almost two-thirds of a mile … roughly parallel with the Upper Star Post Ride’. One of the mounds was excavated and nine small pits found on the inner edge of the ditch surrounding it, each containing charcoal from oak or beech trees. The Wellington College Archaeological Society excavated one of the surviving mounds three years later and found the same layout of pits, ‘filled with a mixture of ash, sand and charcoal’. One of the pits also contained ‘fragments of early nineteenth century, cream coloured, glazed pottery’.5 More than half the mounds were lost when the area was cleared and bulldozed for replanting in 1960. The origins and use of the ditch, pits and mounds remains a mystery.

The Caesar’s Camp site has suffered significant erosion and some restoration has been carried out since the late 1970s. It is now part of the Thames Basin Heaths Special Protection Area, and is home to ground-nesting nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford Warblers.

‘Bowl barrows are funerary monuments dating from the Late Neolithic period to the Late Bronze Age, with most examples belonging to the period 2400–1500 BC. They were constructed as earthen or rubble mounds, sometimes ditched, which covered single or multiple burials.’6 Bill Hill, near the Horse and Groom roundabout (also known as Beedles Hill and Borough or Burrow Hill in the past), is a Bronze Age bowl barrow on top of a steep-sided hill, with a ditch on the south side. Originally, the ditch would have surrounded it, providing the material for its construction. It is a particularly good example, and was designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument in the 1950s. Many tumuli were disturbed by the early barrow diggers of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the hollow in the top of Bill Hill barrow may well have been the result of an early unrecorded excavation of this sort. Several linear banks are visible on the hill; these are probably old field boundaries as identified on an estate map of the area dated 1757, although they may be even older. These boundaries had disappeared by 1841, by which time the area had been forested.

Another well-preserved bowl barrow, probably from the Bronze Age, is situated on the edge of a north-facing ridge of high ground in Swinley Park. The barrow mound is flat-topped, has a diameter of 24m and stands to a height of 1.6m, the top of the mound being slightly hollowed. Surrounding the mound are traces of a ditch. There is no evidence for disturbance of this barrow, ‘and [it] has potential for the recovery of archaeological remains and environmental evidence relating to the landscape in which the monument was constructed’.7

Near the foot of Woodenhill in Great Hollands are the remains of another mound. The perimeter ‘has been reduced by cultivation around its northern quarter so that today it is ovoid in shape … the surrounding ditch has also become partially infilled over the years’.8 In 1969, a brief assessment of the feature suggested it might be a motte or a mound associated with hunting or game-watching rather than a burial mound as previously thought.9

Several archaeological investigations have been made at Fairclough Farm (near the Plough and Harrow pub in Warfield). An Iron Age pit was discovered, and a Middle Iron Age occupation site, dated to the third to second century BC:

consisting of two roundhouse gullies and ancillary structures, and pottery fragments. Early Roman features, ditches along with a single beehive-shaped pit, indicating a series of minor enclosures or fields with nearby settlement. The large, unabraded nature of the pottery sherds recovered make it highly likely that there were people living in the very close vicinity. Medieval pottery was also found here, and two contemporary enclosures, ditches, a gully, a posthole and large amounts of pottery were also found during archaeological investigations at nearby West End.10

Further investigations at West End in 2020 revealed ‘archaeological features belonging to the Early Roman and medieval periods’, the latter ‘predominantly in the form of an enclosure and paddocks’.11 At the nearby Warfield Primary School site, ‘two adjoining medieval enclosure ditches and a modest amount of pottery … enough to date the ditches was uncovered but the paucity of other finds and absence of other features suggest they may belong on the edge of an occupied area, and may be stock pens’.12 Archaeological explorations at Watersplash Lane in 2017 and 2018 uncovered both Roman and post-Medieval evidence in the form of a few ditches, sherds, and metalwork.13, 14

The Quelm Stone at Lark’s Hill was deposited by a glacier in the Devensian Ice Age, about 14,000 years ago, and marks the old Warfield/Binfield Parish boundary. It lines up with the entrance to the communal living hut of the Fairclough Farm settlement with the setting sun on 21 June. Other stones of the same composition were used in the Middle Ages to build parts of nearby churches at Warfield, Binfield and Winkfield.

Another local community was a comparatively large settlement at the former Park Farm in Wood Lane, Binfield. Here, the inhabitants appear to have earned a small fortune from the sale of pottery, and were lately known for processing charcoal, laundering textiles and farming wheat.

On a map dated 1790, the area of Park Farm is indicated as Binfield Common, a more open area than the surrounding woodland. An Oxford Archaeology report from 1990 states:

Occupation of the site probably started no earlier than the second century BC, and seems to have been continuous up to about the middle of the second century AD. The pottery shards discovered, most of which date from the later part of the first century, point to a settlement of fairly low status. Nearly fifty loom weight fragments were found, indicating that weaving went on throughout the occupation of the site. Evidence of burning was also found, with more than half the samples contained significant quantities of charcoal, the amount of Quercus (oak) charcoal being particularly high, suggesting a non-domestic activity taking place which involved burning. The concentration of artefacts, building material, charred cereals, burnt flint, and charcoal, coincided with three of the four probable houses and indicate a single domestic focus throughout the life of the site. Gullies, post-holes and pits may point to further, unidentified structures.

The most salient feature of the site is its division into north-eastern and south-western sections. To the north-east of a boundary ditch, rectangular enclosures contained very few finds and no burnt flint, while to the south-west, circular enclosures contained rather more finds, suggesting a domestic focus. The protection of at least some of the houses by surrounding ditches suggests that animals were kept on the site. The two groups of enclosures may have served for different aspects of animal management, although the larger, rectangular enclosures may alternatively have surrounded arable plots.

While the Iron Age and Roman remains are small in scale and not widespread, they add to a growing picture of settlement and land use in the centuries either side of the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD. It demonstrates that this landscape was far from densely wooded, marginal land. Particularly interesting at West End, was the recognition of a number of late 11th to 14th century medieval enclosures. The enclosure ditches contained domestic pottery, showing that settlement was nearby and that the origins of the hamlet of West End certainly belong to the medieval period.15

The closest community to Caesar’s Camp, and modern-day Bracknell, was at Jennett’s Park. Oxford Archaeology examined the site in 2006 and 2007, prior to work starting on the development there:

The earliest occupation comprised the small, temporary camp of a band of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers at the top of the southern slope of Jennett’s Hill, most likely taking advantage of the elevated position of this knoll overlooking an area of wetland to the south-west. The remains of the camp consisted of a concentration of worked flint recovered from a buried topsoil, and the range of tools present indicated that a variety of activities were carried out here including the processing of hides … After a hiatus of activity during the Neolithic period, when the site appears to have been little visited, activity recommenced in the middle Bronze Age. Features of this date comprised three burnt mounds, two waterholes, two trough-like pits and a possible cremation burial or deliberately-placed pot, as well as a number of small pits or postholes buried beneath two of the burnt mounds … Jennett’s Park was first used for permanent settlement during the middle Iron Age, when a small farmstead was established. Late Iron Age and early Roman activity was observed to the south-west of Jennett’s Hill, consisting of a series of large ditches, probably acting as an enclosure around an area of more extensive settlement, and pottery fragments in this area suggest continual occupation. Finds recovered include pottery sherds, fired clay, and fragments of tegulae (overlapping roof tiles) and brick (although it was suggested these may have been introduced during subsequent cultivation of the fields). There was also evidence for smelting and smithing which continued through into the Romano-British period. The site was apparently abandoned during the early 2nd century. Some flint-tempered sherds of Late Bronze Age pottery were also recovered at Lovelace Road on the Southern Industrial estate. Two undated parallel ditches may possibly be related, but are probably of a later date.

Further evidence was found at the northern end of the investigations for two definite and one possible curvilinear stock enclosures dating from the late 11th to late 12th centuries, which were superseded by a system of fields and enclosures that were in use until the mid-14th century … their abandonment may have been associated with the enclosure of part of the area during the creation of Easthampstead Park. A post-medieval kiln, probably for lime burning, was excavated. This may have supplied lime for the construction during the 17th century of the first Easthampstead Park House.

Medieval finds included a series of field or enclosure boundary ditches, enclosures, and postholes for a fence line, all of which form part of a medieval field system complex. These date from around 1100 to the mid-13th century. A possible trackway was also discovered, designed to control and direct the movement of animals while keeping them out of adjacent enclosures, which may have enclosed areas of pasture, arable or horticulture. More than five hundred shards of pottery were found, dating from the late 13th to early 14th centuries and all in good condition, comprising of gritty material found locally as well as Surrey white wares. Aerial photographs taken in 1961 showed cropmarks likely to be from the same period.

Two gold half-nobles of King Henry VI (1399–1413) have been found near Peacock Lane. Although in good condition when deposited, they had suffered considerably in the ground, being almost doubled over and seriously buckled; this was probably caused by ploughing. A post-medieval gunflint was found near Ringmead during a fieldwalking survey by the East Berkshire Archaeological Survey.

A post-medieval kiln, built of bricks, was also excavated. This may have supplied materials for the construction first house at Easthampstead Park during the 17th century, either bricks or lime for mortar.16

In 2006, prior to the building of The Parks estate on the site of the former RAF College site off Broad Lane, an investigation was also carried out, this time by Thames Valley Archaeological Services. Middle Iron Age (299 to 100 BC) features comprised of pits, ring gullies, ditches and a posthole were discovered:

The ring gullies suggest a large roundhouse and a smaller structure while 65 sherds of pottery found in the pit, along with fragments of burnt flint, pieces of slag and a fragment of burnt clay, suggesting that some ironworking was taking place nearby. More pottery and burnt clay was found in one of the gullies; the pottery, along with charcoal found nearby, was carbon dated to around 200 BC. Environmental samples contained fragments of oak, blackthorn and weed seeds of goosegrass and chickweed. It was concluded that the site comprised an unenclosed settlement with just one, or possibly two, house sites.

A few sherds of medieval pottery were also found, but not enough to point to the site being occupied.

Much more activity was recorded for early post-medieval times, with various ditched boundaries and pits, and an area of industrial activity dating from the mid-sixteenth to seventeenth century which comprised two lime kilns and a well; these may relate to the production of mortar for the construction of a house on the site, the forerunner of Ramslade House which formed the original Staff College.

The dig revealed brick-built structures from about 1600, interpreted as lime kilns, a few shards of pottery, lumps of chalk, fragments of post-medieval bottle-glass, burnt and struck flint, iron nails, a knife blade, and post medieval bricks and pantiles, and a clay pipe stem … were unearthed. Animal bones may also indicate the slaughtering of old animals on the site.17

Devil’s Highway is part of the main Roman road running from London (Londinium) to Silchester (Calleva Atrebatum), the principal route to the south coast and the south-west of England during this period. Romans had invaded in AD 43, and road construction would have been rapid to facilitate the movement of the military, provisions, and goods. It is likely this road would have been in place by around AD 50.

The road passes through Swinley Woods, entering near Rapley Farm on the Bagshot Road (it was still visible here until about 1930), and runs east–west, exiting just north of Crowthorne. In 1783, in a field on the farm called Roman Down, ‘the plough came across some crockery, and the poor ignorant farmer merely altered his ploughshare to go a foot deeper and drove through a rich mine of treasures … Fifty or sixty urns and other pottery were crushed to pieces. Very few fragments were preserved.’18 The line of the road changes direction just before this point, and both Codrington (1903) and Margary (1955) in their books on Roman roads mention the idea of another road from here, running to Winchester via Farnborough and Farnham, although no trace of the northern end of it has ever been found.19

Roman roads were generally constructed in straight lines due to ‘the primitive surveying tools available to the engineers’.20 Routes were planned to avoid bends as far as possible, but they also tried to avoid roads going up and down hills where feasible. Hollows were difficult for carts to traverse and there was always the risk of flooded sections impeding the movement of troops. Bishop Bennet, ‘a very early driving force behind the investigation and publication of some of England’s Roman roads’,21 recorded its details at the end of the eighteenth century when the surface was still raised, but it was levelled around 1800 when rides were being constructed through the forest. Ivan Margary, the leading authority on Roman roads in Great Britain during the first half of the twentieth century, records the distance between the small ditches as being 83ft (25m); earlier sources give the width at 90ft (27.5m). Cuttings were made at several points during its construction where the gradient steepens so as to preserve its linear route. As late as 1936, the road was ‘still obvious over the greater part of its length’ and a walker was able to follow it from Finchampstead to Virginia Water.

The Devil’s Highway was the principal route to the west of Britain during the Roman period. It enters Swinley Woods at Rapley Farm, and exits on the north edge of Crowthorne.

In the May 1836 edition of the United Services Journal, an account was published of an expedition by officers of the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy to map the route of the Devil’s Highway from Silchester to Staines, surveying having started some fifteen years earlier:

Several portions of the road still exist on the ground northward of Finchampstead church, occasionally deviating in a slight degree from the precise rectilinear direction, in order to avoid inequalities of the ground; but, on descending the eastern side of the ridge of heights, the course of the road is discovered pursuing an unbroken line from thence along a level country to Easthampstead Plain, and bearing the fanciful name of the Devil’s Highway. The ascent of the road obliquely along the sloping ground to this commanding plateau may be distinctly observed, with a deep fosse (long narrow trench) on one side, and the general eastern direction is preserved quite across the plain. But from this spot, where the road rises to the summit of the plain, on the western side, a lateral branch, which has been carried out in a curvilinear direction, passes by the head of a deep ravine; and then, proceeding across the plain, rejoins the road on the eastern side. At the head of the ravine is an assemblage of aged thorns, which have the name of Wickham Bushes. The spot on which they grow has long been remarkable for the quantities of bricks, tiles, and coarse pottery which have been discovered under its surface.22

But later publications clouded the issue, and the straight line of the road we see today was accepted.

Margary carried out investigations in 1955 and reported the raised portion of the road and roadside ditches were visible. Surveys in 1979 and 1989 (the latter when the Crowthorne bypass was being constructed) suggested the road did deviate to the north, although no evidence of road surface was found. Thames Valley Archaeological Services made a more recent evaluation here in 2006, and but only found evidence of the survival of remains of the Roman road in just one trench, where the foundations for a metalled surface were identified.23 Local historian Richard Brignall has recently traced the eastern section of the road from Rapley Lake for several hundred yards; this has now been cleared of large overgrowth. This follows the line of the road on the Ordnance Survey map from 1872, with tree planting at the beginning of the twentieth century and later having covered parts of it.

The Devil’s Highway had become a major trunk road in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and there are many tales of highwaymen along it from that period. And as Richard Brignall notes: ‘For those who enjoy such things, there are reports of people hearing the ghostly footsteps of the Roman legions marching along the road at dusk, and the cries of the highwaymen as they went about their business.’

The Wickham Bushes settlement, laid out on a typical grid pattern, is also a Scheduled Ancient Monument. It is about 6 hectares in extent, although other discoveries suggest it covered a much larger area. Wickham Bushes is about 20 miles from both Staines and Silchester, the distance Roman soldiers would march in one day. Evidence of these settlements is very rare (they are usually found either in the north of England, or on the chalk downlands of Wessex and Sussex). It is only in areas with limited, if any, subsequent land disturbance that they can they be found. The town is believed to have remained in existence for a couple of hundred years after the Romans left Britain, having been taken over by the Saxons. However, it had disappeared by the time of the Norman Conquest and is not mentioned in the Domesday Book. The name ‘Wickham’ is of Saxon origin, indicative of an earlier Roman settlement. There is also a mention of ‘The Town’ by a local antiquary in 1783,24 as well as on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the area, surveyed in the 1820s. A report in 1818 mentions ‘a few very old thorn trees which are called Wickham Bushes … and wheel tracks which cross the place’.

The official description describes it as:

A series of archaeological excavations and survey work has demonstrated that the settlement was occupied throughout the Roman period and included a mixture of dwellings, agricultural structures, and small semi-industrial workshops. The buried remains of a number of large, multi-roomed buildings with tiled roofs have been identified. These were first built in the years immediately following the Roman invasion … it is likely that the settlement expanded because of its association with trade along the road, and it may have had an official mansio building where messengers and imperial officials could stop to rest or change horses. Large quantities of pottery, a brooch and other artefacts suggest a series of successive phases of occupation well into the 4th century AD.25

The site has a long history of investigation. In 1783, work had been undertaken by antiquary Rev. Talbot Blakeney Handasyd, assisted by ‘a labourer’:

At least twenty holes were dug and … several ‘wheelbarrow loads’ of material recovered, though the location of the trenches is unknown … An almost incredible quantity as well as variety, of different kinds of pottery, shards of brick and tile … with masses of cinders not dissimilar to those of a forge … and a regular but coarse brick floor, at a depth of eighteen inches below the surface.26

Further limited excavations prior to 1800 ‘resulted in the discovery of some Roman coins and pieces of metal, but not in any quantity’, while a dig by:

one of the Masters of Wellington College, who had been aided in the work of digging by some of the Sixth Form in 1878, found very numerous fragments of pottery, and many specimens of roofing tiles, both of undoubted Roman origin … and a coin of Probus (the Roman emperor from 276 to 282 AD).27

Another source claims ‘at least one paved floor of small squares of red brick’28 was also uncovered. Building materials and personal items have also been discovered.

Other discoveries included:

A great number of nails, iron binding, bolts, hinges, and fragments of burnt wood, showing a settlement living in wooden houses. Personal ornaments such as bangles, brooches, a snake-shaped ring, and a small cameo representing Hermes with a cornucopia in one hand and sheaves of corn in the other … along with household utensils of back Upchurch ware, Samian ware (from central Gaul), and fragments of pale green-blue glass.29

A newspaper report from 1913 records that ‘one of the stones from a handmill for grinding corn’ was displayed in the museum at Wellington College, along with fragments of mortaria (saucer-like vessels in which meat and vegetables could be ground up). As late as 1800, ‘some of the old hut-pits … [were] still visible’. At a meeting of the Berks Archaeological and Architectural Society in 1886, it was noted that ‘one coin is particularly interesting because it was almost certainly struck in England, by an emperor who ruled this island alone … It is a coin of Alectus … and such coins are not at all common.’

More diggings in 1917 to 1918 ‘recovered many finds, now lost or dispersed (but catalogued) with no record of where the fieldwork took place’.30 A report in the Berks Archaeological Journal for 1933–34 ‘noted regretfully that everything that had been given to the College Museum had been lost or disposed of ’.31 When Wellington College received bomb damage in 1940, the display cases in the establishment’s museum were emptied and the contents disappeared. Camberley Museum received ‘a quantity of Romano-British pottery and tiles found during digging … near Wickham Bushes’ in 1939.32 More recently, the site has been the venue for trenches in 1973 (but no report on the dig was subsequently written) and topographic observations in 1980, along with assorted metal detectorists.

Bracknell District Archaeology Group conducted an excavation in the mid-1970s that revealed a first-century Roman timber building with sarsen footings and successive gravel floors. Two phases of scientific excavation were carried out in 1983 and 1985 under the auspices of the Berkshire Field Research Group and Reading University. Nearly forty trenches were dug in total within the then extant pine woodland:

A dense complex of archaeological deposits were recorded with occupation spanning from the earliest Roman period through into the later 4th century, though deposits and finds from the 2nd century were poorly represented. The deposits included buildings represented by robbed out walls and floors, probable buildings represented by beamslots and postholes and various ditches and pits. Quantities of iron slag indicate iron working or production on the site.33

After the area had been cleared of trees by felling, Thames Valley Archaeological Services were able to carry out field-walking, geophysical, and topographical surveys in 2005 over much of the area. Some concentrations of brick, tile and stone were found, some of which appear to have been collected into small piles. Small items, such as tesserae and pot sherds, would not have been collected and moved in such a manner and probably reflected something close to their original discarded positions. More than 400 shards of pottery were recovered, almost entirely from the Roman period, but all were in poor condition, ‘suggesting they had been lying on the surface, undisturbed, for some considerable time’. Most of the material was local, although a few pieces were of Samian ware, Dorset black burnished ware, material produced in Oxfordshire, plus one shard possibly from the New Forest. Among the vessels identified were a lid-seated jar, various rimmed jars, storage jars, flat rim bowls, straight-sided dishes, flanged bowls, one flagon and a beaker. Although the dates of the material spanned the first to fourth centuries, most came from the latter end of the period, and no pottery of post-Roman date was recovered:

A large amount of ceramic building material fragments were also found. This mostly included brick or tile fragments, too small to identify positively, but there were also overlapping roof tiles (typical of Roman architecture), some floor tiles and tesserae, along with a small number of pieces of ridge and flue tiles. Four fragments of glass were recovered in various shades of green or blue-green, one of which been partly melted. A single bronze coin, too worn to be identified, and one fragment of an iron blade were also discovered.34

More items came to light in the years following this work, including a complete Roman iron linch pin (used to secure the wheel of a cart to the axle), ‘its survival is notable as iron objects rarely survive in such good condition in the local acidic soil’. Richard Brignall has also identified small pieces of quartz buried in paths through the site. These were used like the cat’s eyes in present roads, with the quartz being brought in from outside the area, and indicate a main road passing through, rather than an offshoot track.

The name Braccan Heal first appears in AD 923. The area had been created from the clearance of woodland during the Saxon period, c.AD 600 to 700, and the manor of Winkfield, covering about 150 acres, granted to Saethryth, a holy woman, by King Edmund in lieu of rent. The land was then granted to Abingdon Abbey by Saethryth, and a copy of the document describing the boundaries is held at the British Library.35 The name is soon used again in a Winkfield boundary charter of AD 942. Old Bracknell is mentioned in a Goring charter of 1463, probably the first indication of a settlement rather than just a feature in the forest.

The Domesday Book, dating from 1086, provides ‘extensive records of landholders, their tenants, the amount of land they owned, how many people occupied the land … the amounts of woodland, meadow, animals fish and ploughs on the land … and any buildings present’.36 Locally, it included entries for Easthampstead (named Lachenstede), Warfield and Winkfield. The land was partially waste, either due to the invading army having moved through the area, or left uncultivated, and the small settlements were typical of the time.

The first reference to a highway connecting Bracknell to Reading was recorded in 1285, when it was referred to as ‘the royal way’37. This also facilitated travel to Wokingham, which had gained the right to hold a market in 1219, and Earley. Reading had also become a place of pilgrimage after the founding of its abbey in the previous century. But the nearest settlements to the east were Egham and Staines, both sizeable settlements, but not so convenient to reach. Indeed, the Thames would need to be crossed to reach Staines, a feat that proved tricky when the railway was eventually built.

Although the kings of Anglo-Saxon England were great huntsmen, they never set aside areas declared to be ‘outside’ the law of the land. All this changed in the eleventh century with the building of Windsor Castle by William the Conqueror. A vast area of Windsor Forest to the south of the castle became reserved by the king for personal hunting, and also to supply the castle with wood, deer, boar and fish, with Forest Laws being introduced. At its greatest extent, the boundary extended to Hungerford in the west, Guildford in the south, and Buckinghamshire in the east. Red deer, boar and wolves were protected, along with fallow deer, foxes, martens, roe deer, hares, coneys, pheasants and partridges. Trout and salmon were also off limits. Commoners were allowed merely to hunt squirrels and hedgehogs, and to fish for dace, grayling and dudgeon. Wild boar, once common (the name ‘Swinley’ means ‘pig meadow’), were hunted to extinction. They were already rare by the eleventh century, but the Forest Law gave them protection from all but the royal hunts. More than fifty were supplied to the royal court in 1530, and James I tried unsuccessfully to introduce them again from the Continent in both 1608 and 1611.

The term ‘forest’ now refers to an area of wooded land; however, the original medieval sense was closer to the modern idea of a ‘preserve’, land legally set aside for specific purposes such as royal hunting, with less emphasis on its composition.

Clearing forest land for agriculture, and felling trees or clearing shrubs, was prohibited. In addition, inhabitants of the forest were forbidden to carry hunting weapons, and dogs were banned (except as watchdogs). Payment for access to certain rights could provide a useful source of income for the Crown. Local nobles could be granted a royal licence, in return for a payment, to take a certain amount of game. Common inhabitants were limited to taking firewood, and to cutting turf (as fuel). Poaching was considered the most serious crime, with suitably heavy punishments for offenders. A series of officials and wardens undertook the upkeep and maintenance of the forest, and the apprehension of offenders in special forest courts. By the time Henry VII came to the throne in 1485, Forest Law had largely become anachronistic, and served primarily to protect timber in the royal forests, although there were still harsh punishments for anyone committing an offence. However, by the mid-seventeenth century, enforcement of this law had died out, although many of England’s woodlands still bore the title ‘Royal Forest’. In 1810, responsibility for woods was moved to a new Commission of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, with much of the land being sold off, including Windsor Forest in 1813.

Despite all the restrictions, ‘commoners enjoyed a number of rights and privileges’.38 Sheep and cattle could be kept on the land, peat and turf could be cut (heather and bracken were later added). Two further rights were open to ‘interpretation’. Browse-wood cut from trees to provide winter provender for the deer could be taken in the spring, and pigs were permitted to root around under trees for acorns and beech mast ‘under certain conditions and at certain times’.

Easthampsted Parke was a royal park in Windsor Forest, conveniently close to Windsor Castle, first mentioned in 1365 as ‘a park surrounded by palings … It was probably a hunting lodge at an earlier date, and the monks of Hurley had a small house here, but now a regular residence was built.’ This was situated south of the current mansion on what is now Downshire golf course, and the park ‘became a favourite royal hunting ground. There were two buildings arranged about a courtyard. The building to the east was converted from two rooms up and down into eight chambers, and the western building, a single room up and down, was converted into five chambers.’39 The hall, chapel and kitchen were reroofed at the same time. In 1392 there were references to a great hall, great chapel, and a spicery.

As well as hunting, the buildings were also used for ‘the entertainment of foreign visitors on their way between Windsor to the west’. There are records of visits by Richard II, Henry VI and Richard III. Local folklore says Catherine of Aragon stayed here on her way to marry Arthur, the elder brother of Henry VIII. Arthur stopped here on his way to the meeting at Dogmersfield near Fleet in Hampshire in 1501, but there is no record of Catherine at Easthampstead. Arthur died less than six months later, and Catherine went on to become Henry’s first wife in 1509. She is also said to have returned to Easthampstead Park in 1531 while waiting for her divorce, although no source has been found to include it. Henry himself often visited Easthampstead Park ‘in search of greater game’, and was there with Thomas Wolsey (who was attempting to arrange the divorce with the Pope) in 1529. A sweating sickness, often fatal, broke out intermittently across the country during Henry’s reign, and it has been suggested that he visited Easthampstead frequently to avoid being infected.

By the end of the sixteenth century, enclosures and the planting of trees had made great changes to the forest. James I came to the throne in 1603 and ordered a survey of the area, carried out by John Norden. Easthampstead is shown on the maps produced by both Saxton in 1574, and Norden in 1607. In the latter’s time it contained a moated lodge and enclosed 265 acres of land described as ‘very mean, well timbered and stoked with two to three hundred fallow deer’.40 There were also red deer kept at Swinley. James I enjoyed Easthampstead, and held his court there in both 1622 and 1623. He also enlarged the park, but it had begun to decline by 1629 when his son, Charles I, granted out the property to William Turnbull. Charles was executed in 1649, but not before law and order in the area had started to break down. ‘Every village in the forest had some daring spirits to stir up their fellows to revolt’, with George Godfrey and the wonderfully named Aminadab Harrison among the ‘leaders’ at Easthampstead.41 Despite the best effort of the authorities, things deteriorated with our two local men ‘snaring the King’s deer’, followed by complete chaos during the English Civil War. According to a petition of 1660, all the deer had been destroyed in the conflict and it was impossible to replace them, but Easthampstead survived as an ornamental park. Banks and ditches forming pattern of fields of at least two phases are still visible on aerial photographs. The present house dates from 1864.

The Black Death, a bubonic plague pandemic, reached England in June 1348, and had spread across the entire country by the summer of the following year. There was another outbreak just over twenty years later. Berkshire was badly hit, with an estimated 40 per cent of the population perishing. Warfield and Winkfield churches stand in isolated positions today, but would have previously been at the centre of the villages. Those attempting to avoid the disease moved away from the centre of the outbreak, frequently taking the disease with them. So many people died in Warfield that a plague pit was dug (near the junction of Westhatch Lane and Wellers Lane) to take the dead bodies.

The redoubt within Caesar’s Camp probably formed part of the defence line created for military exercises in the summer of 1792. Five further redoubts still exist in Swinley Woods (there may be more to be discovered as a contemporary report talks of ten redoubts),42 along with a shattered one on the summit of Butter Hill.43 This one was ‘deliberately mined and exploded by engineers as a climax to exercises watched by the Royal party, in order to demonstrate assault and engineering skills’.44 These all include earthen banks and ditches roughly 50m across and approximately square. They are enclosed by open ditches up to 3m wide and a metre deep (although many are now partly infilled with leaf litter). According to Historic England:

the exercises were designed to allow the Army to test its new Handbook of Military Manoeuvres, whilst sending signals of strength to continental Europe in the aftermath of the French Revolution. They boosted morale in an Army still shocked by its defeat at the hands of revolutionaries in the American War of Independence, and demonstrated the Crown’s ability to maintain order in the event of any Republican unrest in Britain … the tactics and manoeuvres perfected in the practices were later used successfully by Wellington, notably at Waterloo … The surviving redoubts are the only documented examples in England of a full battlefield defensive system of the Napoleonic period … They are therefore all considered to be of national importance and worthy of protection.45

A detailed description of the exercises is to be found in the following chapter.

Elsewhere in Swinley Woods, there are concrete constructions associated with the Second World War. Due to its proximity to the military training college at Sandhurst, the area was used as a training ground in preparation for the D-Day landings in June 1944. The innermost of the GHQ stop lines ran through the forest and a number of defensive features such as pillboxes, ditches and other anti-tank features have survived to the present. An arrangement of five octagonal concrete blocks, each measuring 1.6m high and 1.8m wide, and with evidence for timber shuttering, is located adjacent to Lower Star Post, ‘although it is probable that they have been removed from their original defensive context’.46 Archaeological Observations by Border Archaeology, made during water main works in 2015, identified ‘a cluster of five possible tank traps associated with defensive works undertaken during the Second World War. The well-preserved base of a possible … storage tank or similar structure was recorded immediately southeast of the tank traps.’47

The paucity of finds shows intermittent activity in the area, but no long-term habitation. The first real indication of the fledgling settlement of Bracknell occurred at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

2

Bracknell up to 1800

Until now, references to Bracknell had been few and far between, and it was no more than a name. All that was to change with the publication of Norden’s map of 1607. John Norden was an English cartographer and antiquary. In 1600, he was appointed surveyor of the Crown woods and forests in Berkshire (as well as Devon and Surrey), and seven years later produced a ‘Description of the Honour of Windsor’, with maps and plans in colour. Between Warfelde Walke to the north and Easthampsted Walke to the south are two small settlements – New Brecknoll and Old Brecknoll:

New Brecknoll is situated on a crossroads; the track to the north heads towards Winkfeylde, to the east towards Englemeare Ponde, westwards to join another track running roughly north/south towards Easthamsted Parke, and southwards to the west of Old Brecknoll. The latter settlement is represented by a smaller scattering of buildings, but also where four tracks meet; north (by a different route) to Winkfeylde, southeast to Bagshot Parke, in a southerly direction towards Easthamsted Walke, and westwards to again meet up with the track to Easthamsted Parke.

Some of these tracks approximate to modern roads, while the route of others is less obvious.

New Brecknoll follows the line of the current High Street; the settlement is named Bracknell Street on a map of 1787, a name still used by some residents into the early twentieth century. The name Old Bracknell continued to be marked on Ordnance Survey maps until at least 1909 but is absent by 1932, although a road called Old Bracknell Lane still exists. At the start of the eighteenth century, Bracknell was still just a row of houses and shops along ‘a narrow cart track’. To the east and south were the wilds of Ascot and Bagshot Heaths, while Priestwood Common to the west had no road across it and no bridge over the Downmill River (now celebrated by The Bridge pub).

According to the catalogue of Listed Buildings maintained by Historic England, The Bull is the oldest building in Bracknell, originally a hall house from about 1400.1