How far back in time can we go? In a universal sense we can go back millions of year to geological and archaeological discoveries that help to tell the story, but in a purely local sense, not very far back at all. Evidence of occupation in our district during the stone ages is extremely scarce, although the picture gets fuller as we move into the Bronze and Iron ages. Documentary evidence, which in theory could have appeared during the Roman occupation, is also non-existent or open to misinterpretation. It was once believed, for example, that the second century Roman itineraries, which recorded camps at Magiovintum and Lactodorum, indicated that Lactodorum was located at Stony Stratford, or perhaps Old Stratford. Earlier historians looked at the river crossing and the existence of a town and assumed that this was an obvious place to build a camp. This theory has long since been abandoned as no evidence of Roman settlement has been found on either side of the river, and the evidence that Lactodorum was the site of Towcester is now fully accepted. It was not until 921 AD that any place in our district appeared in any document, and this was the small village of Passenham. Towcester had been under siege by the Danes from Easter time throughout the Summer of that year, and in the Autumn King Edward, the son of Alfred known as Edward the Elder, moved his army to an encampment at Passenham, while waiting for the walls at Towcester to be strengthened. While he was at Passenham he received submission from the Danes of Northampton.
The most comprehensive documentary evidence for our area appeared in 1086, and that was doubly useful as it provided an assessment of the situation in 1066. For any information prior to that we have to rely on archaeological finds and documents from other parts of the country. Fortunately, the science of archaeology has been responsible for massive developments of our understanding of prehistoric periods. Archaeology began as an amateur endeavour in the 19th century and took a more serious turn in the 20th century, when men with a foundation in university degrees in history began digging. Even so, they were usually attracted to more glamorous sites around the Mediterranean and for the most part concentrated their efforts on ancient civilisations. This situation began to change after the second world war when graduates with university degrees based on archaeological study brought a more professional approach to the subject. There were still many amateurs making useful contributions to our knowledge. The Wolverton Archaeological Society was formed c 1955 and enthusiastically set about investigations at Stantonbury and Cosgrove. Local archaeology was transformed when the development of Milton Keynes led to the foundation of the Milton Keynes Archaeology Unit in 1972, a small group of professional archaeologists who were able to set about examining as many sites as possible before development obliterated any trace. As a consequence, the Milton Keynes area may have the most comprehensive understanding of its prehistoric past than many other parts of the UK.
The overall picture is probably incomplete. Gravel excavation in the Ouse and Ouzel valleys destroyed much evidence of occupation and post war archaeological work has been limited by time and circumstances to scattered excavation sites. However, in the area under this study, a historical picture can be constructed.
Archaeologists classify early eras of human development by the use of tools. Thus
the stone age describes long period where man only had access to tools made from stone. The earliest evidence so far of the use of stone tool is about 3.4 million years ago. This is such a long period that some 20th century archaeologists developed three subdivisions, termed palaeolithic, mesolithic and neolithic, to help to describe developments in culture and social organisation which occurred over this long period. Even so, modern archaeologists have developed further subdivisions to reflect the growing knowledge of the subject, but for our purposes, the Paleolithic period extended to about 10,000 years ago, and the Mesolithic age lasted for about 4,000 years to about 4,000 BC. The Neolithic age witnessed the development of agriculture and pottery and saw the introduction of polished stone tools. This lasted until about 3,500 BC when the use of soft metals became widespread. This has been called the Bronze Age. The third era was called the Iron Age because of the discovery of techniques for producing hard metals such as iron emerged around 1200 BC.
There is very limited evidence for settlement or occupation during palaeolithic times. Only five hand axe heads have been discovered in the entire Milton Keynes area. The Mesolithic and Neolithic periods are better represented. Three sites, at Stacey Bushes, Heelands, and Secklow Hill, have been identified as being occupied during the neolithic period. The discovery of a heavy cutting axe at Pennylands suggests that people at this early stage may have been active in clearing wood for agricultural purposes. The Stacey Bushes excavation, near the site of the later farmhouse, revealed some pits containing debris from human occupation, including pottery fragments. A similar group of pits were found at Heelands on Bradwell Common and another pit was discovered under the Saxon mound of Secklow, on the south east corner of Bradwell common. The general picture is incomplete because the sites which have been identified have only come to light through construction projects; however, what has been revealed suggested a general pattern of land clearance in the area by the late Neolithic period.1
1 Zeepvat. The Milton Keynes Project
Evidence of Bronze Age settlement comes from the identification of ring ditches, of which there are several in the Wolverton area - two at or near the later site of Mead Mill, another near Manor Farm, one near the Bancroft villa, two at Wolverton Turn and another near Wolverton House. Evidence of a roundhouse, 18.5m in diameter, was excavated atoner the Blue Bridge. This is the only one discovered in the area so far.
Settlement at Bancroft also continued into the Iron Age and, as we will come to, the Roman period. This suggests that the land was cleared at a very early date and the south facing slopes Bradwell Brook offered optimum conditions for arable farming.
Life-spans in those times were brief, and are estimated at between 22 and 29 years.2
2 David Miles. Tribes of Britain. p. 76.It was barely enough time to procreate and it would be rare for children to know their grandparents. Indeed, matters had scarcely got much better in England in the middle of the 19th century when the average life expectancy was 43 years. “Life begins at 40!” was a saying floating around when I was young that had some relevance in that the individual was free of the burdens of parenthood at 40, but may
have been a hangover from the days when every year lived after 40 was a bonus. To some degree these average figures were skewed by high infant mortality and there were those who reached and exceeded the biblical “three score and ten”, but many died in their 50s, even those in comfortable middle class circumstances, and no-one was the least surprised.
And it is only chance finds that begin to illuminate our understanding of life expectancy, giving us at best a snapshot. A grave at Boscombe Down contained seven people, all male - three adult men, one teenager and three children. The oldest male was aged 30-45, The other two men were between 25 and 30. The skeletons shared similar characteristics suggesting that this may have been a family grave and the younger men may have been moved from another site to this one.3
3 Miles p 82.
The Bronze age findings around Wolverton tell us that there was settlement, but it does not help with the larger picture. We’re these people part of a tribe or were they local settlements of kinship. Did they trade with each other or over a wider area?
We can lay this information besides that from other sources. In Wessex there are examples of quite a high level of social organisation. Stonehenge is a spectacular example, which involved the transport of huge stones from Pembrokeshire to Salisbury Plain. The Silbury Hill is man made mound of over 40 metres in height. Some have calculated that 500 men working every day for 10 years could have built it. That assumes that this number of people were available at any one time, although surely they would have subsistence level farming activities to attend to, so the reality may be that fewer people were available at any one time for the project., and it took many, many years to complete. However, it did get built over an unknown number of years, and represents remarkable dedication and purpose. The same might be said about the Uffington White Horse, carved into the hillside around 800 BC. Again, it is another project that would take people willingly away from the basic needs of providing food and shelter. These few examples show us that Bronze Age society was much more sophisticated than we might imagine and it seems reasonable to project that onto the inhabitants of the Wolverton area. While they left no stone circles or henges, we may conjecture that they did more with their time than raise livestock and till the soil.
From bone deposits in this area it is evident that the Bronze Age inhabitants reared cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. They must also have hunted from time to time as deer bones were also discovered. Farming was mixed, as the arable land was cultivated for wheat, while the wooded area may have been used for the livestock to graze and forage. The community was entirely self sufficient. Clothing was made from locally produced wool, and every process, from shearing, cleaning, spinning and weaving was undertaken on site. There is even evidence that metal tools were made from smelting the ore and casting the molten metal into clay moulds. Pottery could be hand made from locally sourced clay.
A detailed investigation into a site near Old Wolverton Turn presents us with a picture of occupation from Bronze Age settlement to a period of Saxon settlement.
Wolverton Turn is the name given to the area just south of the bend in the Old
Wolverton Road beside Wolverton Park House and the junction with the road built in 1844. It was partially excavated in 1972 with a more thorough study undertaken in 1994. The various findings, summarised in a paper published in 2007, enable us to construct a picture of a settlement over several centuries up to the middle Saxon period.4
4 Steve Preston et al. Bronze Age Occupation and Saxon Features at the Wolverton Turn Enclosure, near Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes. Records of Buckinghamshire, 2007. pp. 81-117.
Initially two ring ditches were excavated in 1972 which proved to be the remains of burial barrows for the community. There they discovered pottery fragments and evidence of burials and cremations from the period known as the Bronze Age (2100- 750 BC). The last excavation in 1994 revealed evidence of post holes in the form of circular structures together with more fragments of pottery and flint work. The authors of the report are properly cautious about their findings:
Given the paucity of dating evidence, it is dangerous to ascribe too positive an interpretation to these features, but the probability must be that most, or all of them, can be associated as a Bronze Age settlement. Even if some of the features represent no more than tree-clearance, it seems mainly to have been Bronze Age tree-clearance. The consistent patterning of post holes suggesting irregularly circular structures also points towards a Bronze Age date, and the lack of positive dating of such features is (unfortunately) fairly normal. The existence of buried soil could also indicate agriculture.5
5 Ibid. p. 88.
There is evidence of later settlement, which I will come to, but the importance of these discoveries is to offer us an historical continuity with our past and to confirm what we might intuitively expect, that the Wolverton area was populated from the earliest times. This is not to suggest that there was continuity of settlement at Wolverton Turn. There may have been, but the archaeologists are careful not to draw this conclusion from their findings. There are some artefacts to be found from the Roman period, but in comparison with other parts of the country there are relatively few. What Roman period pottery they did find dated to the later Roman occupation rather than the earlier, and Preston is of the view that “the absence of solid evidence has led to the omission of a true Roman phase from the site chronology.”6
6 Ibid. p. 113.
The group living here amounted to a few families of close kinship. It is likely that they found mates outside of the family group. Their way of living, which may appear primitive to us now, was probably quite sophisticated in terms of social organisation and, as dwellers in the Bronze Age, they would have had access to tools which could only be manufactured from the raw materials of mining - in itself a process derived from complex knowledge, decision making and social organisation. As the Preston report says, the evidence from the site is fragmentary and a complete picture cannot be drawn, but it does tell us that some of our forebears were living here 3000 years ago.
This may be a banal conclusion but it serves to note that the Wolverton manor did not spring fully formed into life in the 9th century and that these parts have a
long history of settlement.