An Outline History of Stanford in the Vale By Teddy Cuff & James Brooks
Browse Chapters: Introduction Prehistory Romano-British Anglo-Saxon Domesday Stanford Medieval Stanford Reformation and Tudor Stanford	Civil War Stanford Early Modern Stanford 19th Century Stanford The Great War The Inter-War Years The Second World War Post-War Stanford
Church and Chapel Schools and Libraries Civic Administration Newsletters Health and Social Services, and Young People	Village Halls Fairs, Festivals and Fetes Clubs and Societies Businesses Acknowledgements & Further Reading

Prehistory

When the last Ice Age retreated from this country in the late Palaeolithic Period, about 10,000 B.C., the area we now know as the Vale of White Horse would have been open, gradually developing into forests as the climate grew warmer.

The Upper Thames and its tributaries which cross the Vale provided a relatively easy route from east to west by primitivite boats for the hunter-fisher people of the Mesolithic Period in search of food from the forest and river. Mesolithic flints have been found at both Stanford and Hatford, and indeed, there is evidence of seasonal occupation related to hunting in this period all along the Corallian ridge. Gradually, in the Neolithic Period, about 4000 B.C., forest clearance and primitive settlements began to form in the Vale with the introduction of farming.

A Bronze Age spearhead has been found in Hatford parish, and other Bronze Age implements have been found elsewhere, at Childrey and Faringdon, but there is little evidence to date of Bronze Age settlements in the Vale apart from that at Rams Hill on the Ridgeway.

As tribal groups began to form in the 1st century B.C., the Upper Thames became a frontier area between the Dobunni to the west and the Belgic Catevellauni to the east. The Vale would have been crossed by pathways connecting settlements to tribal refuges and to the primary trade routes along the Ridgeway to the south along the Berkshire Downs and along the North Berkshire Ridge to the north. There is an important minor ridge of relatively high ground that runs south from the Faringdon area past Stanford and on towards Wantage. This area was controlled by Bodioc, an Iron Age cheiftan of the Dobunni, during the 1st century B.C. The site of Stanford in the Vale is surrounded by important hillforts: Segsbury Castle, Rams Hill, Uffington Castle, Badbury Hill, Onetree Hill (Fernham) and the multivallate camps of Hardwell and Cherbury. This suggest that the area must have been well populated, with tribal settlements engaged in primitive farming and grinding corn with quern stones. An early Iron Age settlement was present in Hatford parish, from which pottery, glass beads, bone needles and weaving combs have been found.