Staines-upon-Thames
Staines-upon-Thames, commonly known simply as Staines, is a market town in northwest Surrey, England, around west of central London. It is in the Borough of Spelthorne, at the confluence of the River Thames and Colne. Historically part of Middlesex, the town was transferred to Surrey in 1965. Staines is close to Heathrow Airport and is linked to the national motorway network by the M25 and M3. The town is part of the Greater London Built-up Area.
The earliest evidence of human activity in the area is from the Paleolithic and, during the Neolithic, there was a causewayed enclosure on Staines Moor. The first bridge across the Thames at Staines is thought to have been built by the Romans and there was a settlement in the area around the modern High Street by the end of the 1st century CE. Throughout the Middle Ages, Staines was primarily an agricultural settlement and was held by Westminster Abbey. The first surviving record of a market is from 1218, but one may have taken place near St Mary's Church in the Anglo-Saxon period.
The industrialisation of Staines began in the mid-17th century when Thomas Ashby established a brewery in the town. Improvements to the local transport network in the mid-19th century also stimulated an expansion of the local population. The current Staines Bridge, designed by George Rennie, was opened in 1832 by William IV and the first railway line through Staines opened in 1848. The town became a centre for linoleum manufacture in 1864, when Frederick Walton established a factory on the site of the 13th-century Hale Mill.
At the end of the 20th century, Staines became infamous as the home town of the fictional film and television character, Ali G. Although many local residents felt that the town's reputation was suffering through its association with the character, Sacha Baron Cohen, the creator of Ali G, praised Staines for being a "lovely, leafy, middle-class suburb... where swans swim under the beautiful bridge". Partly in response to the reaction to the character, Spelthorne Borough Council voted in 2011 to add the suffix "upon-Thames" to the official name of the town.
Toponymy
The earliest document to refer to Staines is the Antonine Itinerary, thought to have been written in the early 3rd century AD, in which the location appears as Pontibus, meaning "at the bridges". The first surviving records of Staines from the post-Roman period are from 1066, when the settlement appears in two separate charters as Stana and Stane. In Domesday Book of 1086, the settlement is referred to as Stanes. It later appears as Stanis, Stanys, Steynys and Staynys, before the modern spelling "Staines" is first used in 1578. The name derives from the Old English stān, meaning "stone", and may refer to a Roman milestone on the London to Silchester road that survived into the early Anglo-Saxon period.In order to promote the town's "riverside image" and to distance it from its association with the fictional character, Ali G, Spelthorne Borough Council voted in December 2011 to change its name from "Staines" to "Staines-upon-Thames". The formal renaming ceremony, conducted by the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey, Dame Sarah Goad, took place on 20 May 2012. The Royal Mail adopted the new name in mid-2013.
Geography
Location
Staines-upon-Thames is in northwest Surrey, around from Charing Cross, central London. It is close to the borders of Berkshire and Greater London. The town is linked to junction 13 of the M25 by the A30 and to the M3 by the A308. The area surrounding the borough council offices and the magistrates' courts, to the southeast of the town centre, is known as Knowle Green. Egham Hythe, also in Surrey, is on the south side of the Thames and is linked to Staines by Staines Bridge.Staines town centre is close to the confluence of the rivers Colne and Thames. A former millstream, known as Sweeps Ditch, ran to the east of the High Street, but much of its course was diverted underground in the 20th century. Severe flooding events have taken place in Staines in 1894, 1947, and 2014.
Topography and geology
Much of the town is built on gravel "islands" that rise above the low-lying floodplains of the Thames and Colne. These gravel deposits have a typical maximum elevation of above ordnance datum and are as little as above the surrounding floodplain. Staines High Street, oriented northeast to southwest, runs across one of these islands to the site of the medieval bridge and was the nucleus of the Roman town. St Mary's Church, on "Binbury island" to the northwest of the centre, is thought to have been the focus of settlement activity in the late-Saxon period. Elevations below AOD were liable to flooding until the early 19th century and many areas of gravel are covered by muddy silts and sands. There are brickearth deposits to the east of the town, along the A30, and outcrops of alluvium to the north and south.History
Early history
The earliest evidence of human activity in Staines is from the Paleolithic. Flint blades, along with reindeer and horse bone fragments, have been found during excavations at Church Lammas, to the west of the town centre. During the Mesolithic, the area around Staines is thought to have been covered with a dense pine and birch forest. A Neolithic causewayed enclosure, about west of St Mary's Church, was identified by aerial photography in 1959. The site, on a gravel island in the Colne river delta, AOD, consisted of two concentric, subcircular ditches, with a probable main entrance at the southeastern side. Pottery sherds and worked flints were found on the site, as well as fragments of human bone. Other Neolithic artefacts from the local area include fragments of a jadeite axe, discovered on Staines Moor in the early 1980s, tentatively dated to BCE.Deverel–Rimbury pottery from the Church Lammas lands indicates that the Staines area was settled in the Bronze Age and a roundhouse from the same period has been identified at Laleham. Two round barrow ring ditches, one of which had a cremation burial at the centre, were found at Knowle Green in 2021. A further ring ditch, around in diameter, was found during excavations of the Majestic House site, close to the eastern end of the High Street. A Bronze Age field system at Hengrove Farm was also cultivated during the Iron Age, but fell out of use around the start of the Roman period. There is also evidence of an early Iron Age enclosure on Staines Moor and finds from the site include pottery sherds, flints and animal bones, with evidence of burning having taken place there. Since Staines is located on the low-lying floodplain of the Thames, it is likely that historical flooding events have destroyed much of the archaeological evidence of pre-Roman human activity in the town centre.
Roman and Saxon
The Roman road from London to Silchester crossed the Thames in the Staines area. Both the Thames and Colne are thought to have had multiple channels during this period, which may have necessitated the building of more than one bridge. There was a settlement in the area surrounding the modern High Street and, although the date of its foundation is uncertain, the earliest archaeological evidence is from 5496 AD, corresponding to the reign of Nero and the period of the Flavian Dynasty.File:04-491 Sestertius of Antoninus Pius .jpg|thumb|right|A copper-alloy sestertius dating to the reign of Antoninus Pius, found in Staines in 2004
By the mid-2nd century, Staines had increased in size and prosperity and the early Romano-British roundhouses had been replaced by stone buildings with flint and rag-stone foundations. Fragments of painted, plastered wall and floors of opus signinum have been uncovered, and the presence of tesserae indicates that at least one building had a mosaic floor. A collyrium stamp, found during an excavation of 7375 High Street, suggests that there was a healer living in the town, who could have administered to the wider local population. Staines declined towards the end of the 2nd century, possibly as a result of an increased incidence of winter flooding. Nevertheless, Romano-British settlement activity continued until the early 4th century, although the town appears to have been smaller and less important than it had been in the first half of the Roman period.
Following the end of Roman rule in Britain, the main settlement at Staines appears to have shifted from the High Street area to the Binbury area surrounding St Mary's Church. Archaeological evidence, including pits, ditches and pottery sherds suggests that there was a permanent settlement in this area by the mid-Saxon period and there may have been a marketplace at the northern end of Church Street. Staines may have been a fortified burh and the location of a minster church. A late-Saxon execution cemetery on London Road, containing the incomplete remains of up to thirty skeletons, suggests that the town was also an important local centre for the administration of justice.
For much of the early Saxon period, the Thames through Staines marked the border between Middlesex and Surrey. In the 9th century, the river was used by Danish Viking raiders to travel into the heart of England. In 993, the Norwegian King, Olaf Tryggvason, sailed up the Thames to Staines with a fleet of 93 ships. In 1009, a large army of Vikings attacked Oxford and retreated back along the banks of the Thames, crossing the river at Staines.
Governance
Between 1042 and 1052, Edward the Confessor rebuilt Westminster Abbey as a royal burial church and endowed it with around 60 estates in the south east of England. Staines was one of the properties granted to the Abbey and remained in its possession until the Reformation. In 1086, the manor appears in the Middlesex section of Domesday Book as Stanes. In 1086, the manor had land for 24 ploughs, six mills and woodland for 30 pigs. It provided an annual income of £35 for the Abbey. Since it was relatively close to Westminster, Staines acted as a home farm, providing for the abbot's personal household. 13th-century abbey records indicate that a market was taking place by 1218 and, in 1225, there were 46 burgesses living in the settlement, suggesting that Staines had become an important local centre.Westminster Abbey was dissolved in 1540 and Staines then became a possession of the Crown, allowing Henry VIII to extend his Windsor hunting grounds further to the east. In 1613, James I granted the manor to Thomas Knyvet, who had arrested Guy Fawkes at the Palace of Westminster eight years earlier. Following Knyvet's death, Staines passed to Sir Francis Leigh and, following the Restoration of the Monarchy, it was held briefly by Sir William Drake. The manor was then purchased by Richard Taylor, whose descendants lived at Knowle Green until the 19th century.
Reforms during the Tudor period reduced the importance of manorial courts and the day-to-day administration of towns such as Staines became the responsibility of the vestry of the parish church. The vestry appointed a constable, distributed funds to the poor and took charge of the repair of local roads. From the 17th century, the roles of Justices of the Peace were expanded to take greater responsibility for law and order in Staines.
The modern system of local government began to emerge during the 19th century. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 transferred responsibility for poor relief to the Poor Law Commission, whose local powers were delegated to the newly formed poor law union in 1836. In 1885 a local school board was established and three years later, the Local Government Act 1888 created the Middlesex County Council. An Urban District Council and a Rural District Council for the area were established in 1895 under the Local Government Act 1894, but the RDC was merged into the UDC in 1930.
Further reorganisation of the local authorities took place in the second half of the 20th century. Under the London Government Act 1963, Middlesex County Council was disbanded and the Staines UDC area was moved into Surrey. The Local Government Act 1972, which came into force on 1 April 1974, merged the Staines and Sunbury-on-Thames UDCs to form the Borough of Spelthorne.