Stevenage

Web Design Stevenage Hertfordshire

Approximate Population: 79,400

Stevenage is a town and district in Hertfordshire, England. It is to the east of junctions 7 and 8 of the A1(M), and is between Letchworth Garden City to the north, and Welwyn Garden City to the south.

Its population was 1,430 in 1801, 4,049 in 1901 and 79,724 in 2001. The largest increase occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, after Stevenage was designated a new town under the New Towns Act of 1946.

Stevenage may derive from Old English meaning ‘(place at) the strong oak’. The name was recorded as Stithenæce, c.1060 and Stigenace in 1086 in the Domesday Book.

The present site of Stevenage lies near a Roman road that ran from Verulamium to Baldock. Some Romano-British remains were discovered during the building of the New Town, and a hoard of 2,000 silver Roman coins was discovered in 1986 during new house building in the Chells Manor part of Stevenage. The most substantial evidence of activity from Roman times are the Six Hills, six tumuli by the side of the old Great North Road - presumably the burial places of a local family.

A little to the east of the Roman sites the first Saxon camp was made in a clearing in the woods. This is where the church, manor house and the first village were later built. Similar settlements sprang up in the nearby areas of Chells, Broadwater and Shephall.

In the Domesday Book, its Lord of the Manor was the Abbot of Westminster. The settlement had moved down to the Great North Road and in 1281 it was granted a Royal Charter to hold a weekly market and annual fair (still held in the High Street).

Web Design Stevenage Hertfordshire