15th July, 2024 in Local & Family History

Bracknell: The new town with a unique history

By Andrew Radgick

Bracknell is one of the post war New Towns so you would be forgiven for thinking there is no history to the settlement. Bracknell’s history is unique. Author Andrew Radgick author of The Story of Bracknell discusses the history behind this new town.

Early traces of people in the area date to around 10,000 BC. With fertile land, a ready water supply from streams, and a natural bank offering shelter, hunter gatherers frequented the area over a long period. There is evidence of Stone Age settlers living to the north and west of Bracknell, some farming, some making pottery, while others were using looms and weaving. Two bowl barrows exist, one being just to the south of the present town centre, beside the main route through the town linking the M3 and M4 motorways. Nearby is Caesar’s Camp, said to be the best example of an Iron Age contour fort in the country. Although this has no connection with Caesar, the Romans would have known about it as their main road from London to the southwest passes just south of Bracknell, along with a small town (now lost under plantings of conifer trees).

Three local villages are mentioned in the Domesday Book but not Bracknell, although a reference of Braccan Heal appears in a charter from 923 AD. The formation of the royal hunting grounds of Windsor Forest saw those living in Bracknell subject to the Forest Laws, limiting the usage of land and the hunting of animals, a situation that continued until the early nineteenth century. The settlement appears on a map for the first time in 1607, split into Old Bracknell and New Bracknell. The latter is arranged along a single street which became a turnpike road in 1759. The settlement’s position on the edge of Ascot Heath to the east, and Bagshot Heath to the south, made travelling perilous in the times of highwaymen.

The arrival of the railway in 1856 started Bracknell’s expansion. Clay to the north of the village was suitable for making high quality bricks and several brickyards sprang up in the area as the population increased rapidly. A weekly cattle market began in 1870 and continued for more than a century. Local egg production peaked in the 1930s with more than 130,000 eggs being packed every week and sent all over the country by rail. The Second World War barely impacted the town, apart from an influx of evacuees from London and Kent (including the Margate Sea Bathing Hospital which treated patients with tuberculosis). Bracknell was chosen as the site for a New Town in Berkshire; the alternative was White Waltham but that had better grade agricultural land and no railway line. Negotiations started in 1947 and the decision announced two years later. Bracknell has a unique history, being the only New Town situated in a former royal hunting ground.