The Thames Valley and the less barren stream beds in the Bagshot sand were inhabited in early times. A polished stone celt has been found near Egham, and a bronze spear-head in the Thames near Runnimede. The great Roman road from the Thames Valley to the south-west crossed the Thames near the ancient parish of STAINES and ran through Egham parish along the border of the counties of Surrey and Berkshire towards Easthampstead Plain in Berkshire, where it exists as the Devil's Highway. Staines lies on the east bank of the Thames, which separates it from Surrey, while the branch of the Colne known as the Shire Ditch divides it from Buckinghamshire. The town lies at the narrowest point of the parish, with two wider and roughly equal portions extending to north and south along the Shire Ditch and the river. By the bridge a piece of the Surrey bank, which was once an island, forms part of the parish and in Middlesex.

Ashford, LALEHAM, and Teddington were all chapelries of Staines in the earlier Middle Ages, but a reference to the beating of the parish bounds in 1491 shows that, though Ashford was still ecclesiastically dependent on Staines, it was by the nconsidered to be in some sense a separate parish and there was a fixed boundary between the two.

In 1009 the Danish army, which had been harrying the Upper Thames valley, is said to have crossed the river at Staines in order to avoid an English force assembling in London. The situation of Staines on the main road from London to the south-west, combined with its proximity to Windsor, has involved the town in national affairs in other ways than by those threats to demolish the bridge which have already been mentioned. The barons assembled there before they met King John at Runnymede in 1215, and Stephen Langton held a consecration there shortly after the issue of Magna Carta. In 1228 the king granted a year's pontage to the warden of the bridge, and this was renewed from time to time in the Middle Ages, while on other occasions different kings gave the bridge-wardens permission to beg alms for repair.

The Thames Valley ran through Virginia Water, an artificial lake of much later construction, past Englefield Green to the Thames. The Roman station Ad Pontes, or Pontibus, was near Staines, and from its name appears to have been the passage of the Thames before other bridges were made. STAINES parish lies between 25 and 75 feet above sea level. The soil is gravel, except for a stretch of brick-earth north of Knowle Green and along the London Road and for the alluvium of Staines Moor and the stream beds. The gravel stretches over to Egham, and Staines is the only place west of London where it is possible to cross the Thames without leaving gravel for alluvial soils either at the river itself, as is necessary farther east, or before reaching it, as farther west where the much-flooded Colne valley lies in the way.While the name Pontes, generally believed to refer to Staines, implies that the Staines Bridge existed in Roman times. The bridge is first mentioned after Roman times in 1222, when the king gave a tree from Windsor Forest for its repair. The town of Staines grew up south of the church and beside the bridge. The west and east bars of the town are mentioned in the late 13th century and the east bar again in 1490. It may be assumed that part of the parish of Staines lay in the tract of country which was known as the warren of Staines and stretched as far as Hampton. Staines contained extensive waste lands which must have been suitable for the preservation of game before the area was diswarrened in 1227.

In 1274 travellers passed through Staines wood on their way from Staines to London, and in the 14th century there was woodland at Hengrove, whose name later became attached to land in Stanwell lying near the corner of the London Road and Town Lane. In 1535 there were 10 acres of woodland attached to the manor.

Late in the Middle Ages, when the grants became more frequent, the money was sometimes also used to repair EGHAM Causeway. In 1509 the first Act relating to the bridge was passed, by which the lord chancellor appointed persons to take tolls and repair the bridge, and to account for their expenditure.

In addition to the town of Staines, there was a village at YEOVENEY in the Middle Ages. It may have lain near the Yeoveney Farm, which probably occupies the site of the old manorial buildings. To the north and south of the town lay the fields and meadows, which never seem to have been very clearly divided from each other. Though the boundary between the manors of Yeoveney and Staines is uncertain, it may be said that from a little way north of the church all the arable fields belonged to Yeoveney. They lay on the west of Moor Lane, except in the north where they probably extended across the lane north of Staines moor. They were inclosed by 1649.

The hamlets of Knowle Green and Birch Green are not mentioned in the 15th-century rentals, but the Town, Church End, and Knowle Green formed the three divisions of the parish in the later 17th century. On the outskirts of the town, Duncroft House, now an approved school, was originally built in 1631, though it has been much altered and enlarged. It contains some 17th-century work inside, though part of this was probably not in the house originally.

The roads laid out at the inclosure were soon surrounded by others set around them for building. There were anciently three lesser bridges in Staines: just below the point where the two branches of the Colne which worked the Staines mills join together before flowing into the Thames, they are crossed by a bridge in Church Street which was once known as Longford Bridge. It was mentioned in 1503, and in 1826 was said to have formerly taken foot-passengers only, while carriages had used a ford beside it. Hale Street forms a bridge over the more westerly of these two mill-streams, which is now known as the Wyrardisbury River. This was probably the bridge referred to in 1503 as Moor Bridge.

The River Ash, formerly known as Littleton Brook, flows out of the River Colne and under the London Road; in 1826 the bridge here was brick and had been built in 1822. It has since been rebuilt. The only other stream of any size in the parish is Sweeps Ditch, which also derives from the Colne and forms part of the southern boundary. In the Middle Ages there were some islands and weirs in the Colne and other streams as well as on the Thames.

In 1549 the people of Staines prayed the Privy Council that they might not be compelled to break down the bridge to impede the rebels. Since the rebels, who had risen in the west country against the prayer book, did not in the event march on London, it is probable that Staines Bridge was spared, but a century later it was destroyed in the Civil War. The heavy traffic through Staines has helped to support a large number of inns in the town. The 'George', the 'Cock', the 'Angel', the 'Swan', and the 'Hart' are all mentioned in the 15th century, the 'Lion' may have been in existence about the middle of the 16th, and was certainly there by 1612. The 'Bush' was referred to in 1601. In 1623 an improvement in the posts was called for because they took ten hours between London and Staines, but in 1601 the journey had taken under four hours and this was considered too long. There were between 12 and 20 licensed houses in the 18th century, and 11 for most of the 19th. The 'Bush', the 'Bell', and the 'Lion' were perhaps the best known in the 17th century, and the 'Bush' and the 'Angel and Crown' were the chief posting-houses in 1839. The 'Bush', at the foot of the old bridge, was also the meeting-place of the justices of the Staines division and other local bodies. It was rebuilt as the 'Clarence' at the same time as the bridge. The 'George', on the east side of Church Street, ceased to be an inn during the 18th century and was later pulled down.

The bridge has given Staines a rather fortuitous link with many people who have passed through the town, and with others, like William IV and the Rennie brothers, whose connexion was more deliberate. Apart from these, few men of wide fame have been connected with Staines. There is no evidence to support the attribution of the church tower to Inigo Jones, and its architectural style makes any connexion with him very unlikely. Sir Walter Raleigh was committed at Staines in 1603, but the popular tradition that he was tried here is incorrect: the trial was held at Winchester.

Kings and other important people must have passed through the town on many occasions: the church bells were rung several times in 1670, for instance, when the king and queen went through Staines. In 1671 it was said that after the bridge was broken down in the war, the bridge-masters had replaced it by a ferry. A wooden bridge was mentioned in 1669 and 1675 but about 1684-7, when the bridge was rebuilt, a ferry was still working and had been doing so since the bridge was demolished. In 1680 Staines and Egham were mentioned as places where the horse-guards usually lodged while the king was at Windsor. The bridge was again threatened with destruction in 1688 to impede William of Orange's advance on London. It was still made of wood in 1708. In 1839 there was a daily local coach from Staines to London in addition to the many long-distance coaches which stopped there each day. The road and bridge were comparatively little used later in the 19th century, but Staines Central Station, on the London-Windsor line was opened in 1848, and the Wokingham branch, joining the Windsor line at Staines with a bridge over the river, was opened in 1856.

Until the 19th century the river was second only to the London road as a highway through Staines. The towpath on the Middlesex bank stopped below Staines Bridge, and continued on the Surrey side above it, giving Thames Street its former name of 'Shooting Off'. The ferry provided to replace the bridge in the 17th century was needed as much to carry over the barge-horses as to take road traffic. During the 18th century, the city of London, which administered this stretch of the river, made a number of attempts to abolish the fish-weirs which impeded navigation. There had been at least one weir near Staines in the Middle Ages: it was called Savoury's Weir or Deep Weir and was probably by the curve in the river near Riverside Drive.

The city authorities constructed the lock across Penton Hook in 1815 because of frequent floods, and a weir was later made in the old stream. The only other changes in the river's course within historic times have been the disappearance of islands: the part of the parish across the river on the Surrey shore was an island as late as 1754, and in addition to it and Church Eyot there were then three islands below the bridge. The city of London's authority over the Thames can be traced as far back as the 12th century, and by the 13th Staines Bridge marked the highest point of its jurisdiction.

The earliest reference to any boundary-mark other than the bridge itself is Speed's remark that a mere-stone once stood in Staines to show the limit of the city's authority. A mark-stone stood on the bank above the town in 1613 and was moved farther from the river in 1619. The present London Stone in the Ashby Recreation Ground was apparently there by 1781 and bore the inscription 'God preserve the city of London, 1285'. Other inscriptions have since been added, though the city's authority over the river has passed to the Thames Conservancy Board.

The street of Staines (vicus de Stanes), the market, and Bridge Street presumably comprised what is now the western end of the High Street, the Market Square, and the site of the Town Hall. By 1723 the market-house was in the middle of the street where the Town Hall stands, and other buildings also seem to have divided the High Street. The quarter called the East End possibly covered the High Street east of Thames Road: as late as the 18th century the buildings there did not reach as far as the site of the railway bridge. Binbury is first mentioned in 1336 and Binbury Street soon after: the former seems to have been applied to the higher ground round the church, which was apparently then populous. It was also known as Church End. The name Binbury Street or Row later became particularly attached to what is now the north-west end of Church Street, and Church Street and Church Lane are also mentioned in the Middle Ages. It is possible that the district around the church declined in population during the later Middle Ages. There seem to have been a good many houses there in the 15th century, but in 1593 Norden described the church as standing about a quarter of a mile from the town on a little hill by itself as if it were banished the town. These districts, with the mills to the north of the High Street, comprised the medieval town: the position of the manorial buildings is unknown though they may have been near the church.

Most of the Staines fields, however, both by the church and in the south of the parish, remained open until 1845. At that date Church Field (18 a.) ran north from the church with lammas lands west of it and a small remnant of common meadow called Mill Mead (7 a.) between the two mill streams on the east. In the south Staines Field (308 a.) lay between the river and Sweeps Ditch, stretching across the Laleham Road as far north as the Shooting Off. Withygate Field (102 a.) lay between Sweeps Ditch and the Kingston Road, with inclosed lands to the north, and Thickthorns (33 a.) lay between the Kingston Road and Shortwood Common. A few acres of the open fields of Staines lay in Laleham parish, and there was also some arable land (76 a.) to the east of Shortwood which lay in Ashford Field although it was in Staines parish. A few acres of open field also survived west of Shortwood Common. The general situation of the fields had been the same in the Middle Ages, though their extent was greater then, and the divisions between the adjacent fields may not have been the same.

Further north Yeoveney Farm was built in the early 18th century, while the barns beside it are older. Between 1828 and 1832 the church and the bridge were rebuilt and Clarence Street and Bridge Street were laid out (see plates facing pp. 14, 15). In 1839 the west end of the town was said to have been much improved, and small cottages had given place to buildings of a superior character. None of these can have been in Bridge Street, where building did not start until rather later, but a number of the original houses survive in Clarence Street, including the stucco Literary and Scientific Institution (now the public library), which faces the bridge. The oldest part of the extensive brewery buildings in Church Street also dates from 1830.