So, when did history start around here? History, when I was at school, mostly involved exciting things like battles. Sadly, there is not much in the way of evidence that there has ever been a battle as such at Walthamstow, (if you discount the air war fought over our heads in World War Two and the pounding the Germans tried to give us) though there used to be a legend of one in the distant past. I suppose if one goes back to the very beginning, and makes some deductions, it's quite possible that there was a bit of violence on the last few occasions we were invaded. This would probably include the activities of the tribes who fought over the countryside a few miles to our north at the time that the defense works at Ambresbury Banks and Loughton Camp were made. These were built around 500BC or sometime between 650 BC and 43 AD, depending on which expert you consult. Prior to archaeological excavations which were first carried out in 1881, under the direction of General Pitt-Rivers there was a strong local belief that this was the site of the defeat and death of – Boudicca (Boadicea), at the hands of the Romans in AD 61, but these earthworks are now recognized as evidence of political instability in the earlier Iron Age. As well as the tribes at Ambresbury Banks and Loughton Camp, it is known that there were other settlements in the area, particularly dating around 3,000 years ago, when the area was an open river valley. Finds of four skeletons in the Lea Valley at the Aquatic Centre site of the 2012 Olympics to our south would suggest that there would have been people visiting, if not living on, the dry lands on the eastern side of the valley which make up Walthamstow. For those of us interested in old punch-ups, though, the people who lived in these two dated areas of settlement could have been up to 1000 years apart, so we can't speculate that people from down in the valley ever squared off against the folks holed up in the trees in what is now Epping Forest.

The debunking of the Boudicca legend, does not mean that the Roman legions could not have tramped around the area later on, of course. I also tend to believe that local legends should not be dismissed out of hand through lack of evidence. Roman remains have been found scattered around the borough proving it was a significant area of Roman occupation.

Not much is known about the history of the area after the Romans. I would like to think we would know about it if it was not fairly peaceful round here until a lot later on, when it is known that the area saw major troop movements during Alfred’s fightback against the Danish invasions. It is very likely that the Danes used the Lea valley for some of their troop movements from Hertfordshire and East Anglia into the Thames area, as well as when infiltrating up the Thames estuary itself by ship. They would have had to have passed through the Walthamstow area to do that. In 896 their fleet fled up the Lea trying to avoid capture by King Alfred, returning to Hertford, where they had prepared fortified defences against Alfred's armies. Whether Walthamstow amounted to much in those days is hard to tell. I imagine the locals cowering in the bushes or reeds of the marshes watching the two fleets haring after each other a few hundred yards away, the soldiers swearing and straining away in their boats. A danish boat was found in the 19th century buried beneath the marsh when large tracts of it were dug up when the reservoirs were created.

If this was the first time villagers had had to take cover in the marshes, its hard to tell. It is also hard to know if there was fighting in the area during the Saxon invasions of England. I would however bet there was something or other going on, if historians who consider that invasion to have amounted to one of the most comprehensive cases of wholesale ethnic cleansing that the world has ever know are right. Or then again, not. Little by way of physical evidence of any of this remains unfortunately.

History, as in the stuff that gets taught in schools, or made up by people wishing to put plaques up in our library, really seems to pick up around here shortly after the Normans got here. In 1076 the place was known as Wilcumestowe , which has been translated as ‘Place of Welcome’. (In 1086 though, it was spelled Wilcumestou). If that's correct, it doesn’t sound like any residents had been planning on giving strangers a hard time. There was no fortification of any kind when the Normans arrived, as far as I am aware. The place was described in the Domesday book a few years later, though by then it had the more fancy, Frenchified spelling.