Cookham Parish – The Place

Village History

The Cookham area has been inhabited for thousands of years. Several prehistoric burial mounds on Cock Marsh were excavated in the 19th century and the largest stone axe ever found in Britain was one of 10,000 that has been dug up in nearby Furze Platt. The Roman road called the Camlet Way is reckoned to have crossed the Thames at Sashes Island, now cut by Cookham Lock, on its way from St. Albans to Silchester.

By the 8th century, there was an Anglo-Saxon abbey in Cookham, under the patronage of the Kingdom of Mercia, and one of the later abbesses was Cynethryth, widow of Offa of Mercia. It became the centre of a power struggle between Mercia and Wessex, with the Thames forming a boundary between the two.

In 2021 archaeological excavations by the University of Reading discovered the site of the abbey, and revealed extensive ancient infrastructure suggesting a larger settlement and trading centre.

Later, Alfred the Great made Sashes Island one of his burhs to help defend against Viking invaders. There was a royal palace here where the Witan met in 997.

Although the earliest stone church building may have existed from 750, the earliest identifiable part of the current Holy Trinity parish church is the Lady Chapel, built in the late 12th century on the site of the cell of a female anchorite who lived next to the church and was paid a halfpenny a day by Henry II.

The townspeople resisted many attempts to enclose parts of the common land, including those by the Rev. Thomas Whateley in 1799, Miss Isabella Fleming in 1869, who wanted to stop nude bathing at Odney, and the Odney Estates in 1928, which wanted to enclose Odney Common.

The Maidenhead and Cookham Commons Preservation Committee was formed and raised £2,738 to buy the manorial rights and the Commons which were then donated to the National Trust by 1937.