Stoke Poges

A Lower to Middle Palaeolithic flint hand-axe was found in the Duffield Lane gravel pit. Other prehistoric remains may include a barrow in Stoke Park. It may be Bronze Age in date. A later Bronze Age cinerary urn, which were often buried close to earlier monuments, was found nearby during the construction of the golf course.

Not much Roman material is known in the parish, though a Roman pot was found in a field north of the village. There is also a rectangular cropmark in a field south-east of Snitterfield Farm that may be Roman, but it is as likely to be earlier or later in date.

Stoke Poges village is recorded in Domesday, along with a watermill, the site of which is now in Slough. St Giles’ church is the oldest standing building. It was built in the twelfth century and had several additions in the centuries following. Its accompanying churchyard was the subject of Gray’s Elegy and Thomas Gray is buried in the churchyard. A later, eighteenth century monument was built near the churchyard to commemorate the Elegy. There was also a chantry chapel that was later a hospital in the churchyard from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century when it was moved to its present position and is known as The Clock House.

Stoke Park was recorded as a deer park as far back as 1331. The present house was built in the eighteenth century, when Capability Brown turned the grounds into a landscaped park. It was turned into a golf course in the early twentieth century. There are many lodges around the edges of the park that served as entrance lodges, for instance the Lion Lodges, Frame Wood Lodge and so on.

Other medieval records that mention Stoke Poges date to the fourteenth century. These record a windmill somewhere in the parish and a licence to fortify the manor house. The manor house was rebuilt in the sixteenth century but then partly taken down in the eighteenth. A sixteenth century wall painting of the royal coat-of-arms survives inside, though the building is now in use as offices.

Some of the other listed buildings in the parish date to the sixteenth century, such as Church Cottage. It is built of brick, and it is likely that there was a brickworks in Stoke Poges in the sixteenth century. Records relating to the building of Hampton Court by Henry VIII refer to two brickmakers from Stoke Poges making bricks for the palace. There are seventeenth century records of Stoke Court brickworks. There are several extraction pits known around the parish, as well, such as near Woodbines Cottages and south-west of Tithe Farm.

Many of the other buildings are eighteenth to nineteenth century, such as the Red Lion pub or Sefton Park. Stoke Court was nineteenth century but was rebuilt after a fire in 1979. There were several schools in Stoke Poges in the nineteenth century. Old School Cottage is actually an eighteenth century building; there is also the school on School Lane; Stoke House was also a nineteenth century school and there is an associated building called School House.

There are also several registered parks and gardens in Stoke Poges, which include the nineteenth century parkland at Sefton Park and the twentieth century gardens and lakes at Framewood. The gardens of remembrance, which date to the 1930s, are also on the registered list.