palstave axehead, found in Cookham and dated to
BCE '' of the Roman Emperor
Caracalla, found in Cookham and dated to The 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 a team from the
University of Reading discovered the site of the abbey, adjacent to Cookham's parish church, and items associated with it, while the following year additional excavations 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. In the
Middle Ages, most of Cookham was owned by
Cirencester Abbey and the timber-framed Churchgate House was apparently the
Abbot's residence when in town. The Tarry Stone – still to be seen on the boundary wall of the
Dower House – marked the extent of their lands. In 1611 the estate at Cookham was the subject of the first ever
country house poem,
Emilia Lanier's "Description of Cookham", which pays tribute to her patroness,
Margaret Clifford. Exhibition, London, in 1873 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. These included Widbrook, Cock Marsh, Winter Hill, Cookham Dean Commons, Pinkneys Green Common and Maidenhead Thicket. ==Religion==