HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY - of OLD STRATFORD

The village lies in the flat lands formed by the river Nene and Ouse, with the forests of Whittlewood and Salcey - very reduced now,- on the sides and the river Tove, on the northern part exposing the Upper Lias Clays. In the Doomsday record the large forest of Whittlewood reached to Deanshanger.

This area of low hills, with its alluvial soil and gravel terraces, was an ideal ground for farming settlements and has been inhabited since the Neolithic times.

The Roman occupied territories are still identifiable in the ditches while the remains or their farms and fortresses re-surface now and then in the fields and on the sides of the most impressive roman earthwork, Watling Street. That major connecting road is still very much in use now as it has been since its construction and it is around it that the village started, as a fording point on the river Ouse.

Part of Watling Street during the 1960s (approx)

The same name of Stony Stratford is a reminder of the stone paved road crossing the river; only much later the place was divided, by the same river, into two separate villages, belonging to two different Counties. Before the division, the original settlement, which is now Old Stratford was known as "Stane Streetford" or "Stani Stratford" and Old Stratford, was just the oldest part of Stony Stratford.

During the Anglo-Saxon period the Roman road system was very much in use and often used as boundary between parishes, as it is now the southern boundary of the territory of Old Stratford. The original settlement, on such a strategic point, in the middle of the Country, and on the main road connecting the North to the South of England, with traffic passing the river, witnessed all sort of events, armies moving, commerce and trading activities prospering, royalties travelling.

Now it is up to you folks, to come up with all the pieces of history, and later on, stories to fill in the space to our present time.

oldstratford@hotmail.com