Stevenage, United Kingdom

During the 9th and 10th centuries AD, the Saxon village in Stevenage faced frequent attacks from Viking raiders. Stevenage was on the border of the Danelaw. A Viking spearhead was discovered by archaeologists at nearby Ardeley.

According to the Domesday Book, in 1086 the Lord of the manor was the Abbot of Westminster Abbey. The settlement had moved down to the Great North Road. In 1281 it was granted a Royal Charter to hold a weekly market and annual fair, still held in the High Street.

The earliest part of St Nicholas's Church dates from the 12th century, but it was probably a site of worship much earlier. The list of rectors (parish priests) is relatively complete from 1213. Around 1500 the church was much improved, with decorative woodwork and the addition of a clerestory.

North of the Old Town is Jack's Hill, associated with the legendary archer Jack O'Legs of Weston. According to local folklore, Jack stole flour from the bakers of Baldock to feed the poor during a famine, like Robin Hood.

The remains of a medieval moated homestead in Whomerley Wood comprise an 80-yard-square trench almost five feet wide in parts. It was probably the home of Ralph de Homle. Pieces of Roman and later pottery have been found there.

The oldest surviving house in Stevenage is Tudor House in Letchmore Street, built before 1500. During the 16th century it was a butcher's shop owned by a man named Scott. From 1773 onwards it served as the town's workhouse, and later became a school from 1835 until 1885. It was the headquarters of the local town gas company from c.1885 until 1936, when it was converted into a private dwelling.

Chells Manor, a medieval hall house located three miles from the Old Town, was built in the 14th century for the Wake family on the foundations of a much older moated manor house mentioned in the Domesday Book. The site of the lost village of Chells was redeveloped during the extension of the New Town in the 1980s, and a hoard of Roman coins was discovered. In the present day, Chells is a suburb of New Stevenage.

England's earliest known papermill was established in Stevenage around 1488 by John Tate. In 1496, Tate acquired a second mill in Hertford on the site of the modern Sele Mill. Tate's papermill supplied rag paper to the household of King Henry VII of England and to William Caxton for his printed edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The Stevenage papermill was converted from an existing watermill and operated until 1507.

In 1558 Thomas Alleyne, then the Rector of Stevenage, founded a free grammar school for boys, Alleyne's Grammar School, which, despite becoming a boys' comprehensive school in 1967 (starting with the 1969 year), had an unbroken existence (unlike the grammar school in neighbouring Hitchin) until 1989, when it was merged with Stevenage Girls' School to become the Thomas Alleyne School. Francis Cammaerts was Headmaster of Alleyne's Grammar School from 1952 to 1961. The school, which has been since 1989 a mixed comprehensive school and is now an academy as of 2013, still exists on its original site at the north end of the High Street. It was intended to move the school to Great Ashby, but the Coalition government (2010–15) scrapped the move owing to budget cuts.

The grade II listed Cromwell Hotel is a 16th-century Jacobean farmhouse once owned by Oliver Cromwell's spymaster John Thurloe. It was confiscated during the Stuart Restoration of 1660 and became a hotel in 1925. The hangman Albert Pierrepoint frequently stayed here when travelling to London for an execution.

During the 17th century, the Elizabethan house at 37 High Street was the home of greengrocer and churchwarden Henry Trigg. Trigg was a philanthropist who donated another of his properties to serve as Stevenage's first workhouse. When Henry died in 1724 his coffin was placed in the rafters of the adjoining barn to prevent resurrection men from stealing his remains. In 1774, Trigg's house became the Old Castle coaching inn, and was used as a staging post by the Royal Mail. From 1999 until 2016 it served as a branch of NatWest, and as of 2022 it has been converted into a dentist's surgery.