The village was originally recorded as
Stoches in the
Domesday Book of 1086, from the
Old English word
stoc meaning an outlying
farm or
hamlet. The suffix Mandeville was first recorded in 1284 when the
manor was listed as being in the hands of the powerful Norman
de Mandeville family. The former
medieval parish church, St Mary the Virgin, unusually stood alone on a damp site 1 km from the old village for no apparent reason. Therefore, it had been postulated that a
Roman mausoleum was present on the site before the church was built. The church was condemned in the mid-20th century and was demolished in January 1966 by the
Royal Engineers. In 2018 in preparation for the construction of the
HS2 high-speed railway, archaeological excavations began on the site of the old church. which dates back to 1080. In September 2021, archaeologists from LP-Archaeology, led by Rachel Wood, announced the discovery of remains on the site of the church. They unearthed a possible square foundation trench enclosed by a circular ditch containing burials and two Roman statues. In January 2022 the archaeological excavation of the site, and the discovery of significant Roman statuary and burial urns, was featured in the BBC's
Digging for Britain. The newer red brick parish church of
St Mary, consecrated in July 1866 by the
Bishop of Oxford,
Samuel Wilberforce, remains the only church in the village apart from the
Methodist church in Eskdale Road. On 13 May 2000, the new Stoke Mandeville Millennium
village sign was unveiled. It stands on a small brick
plinth on the green outside the
primary school. The sign shows colourful images on both sides of aspects of village life over the centuries. ==Transport==