In 2014 a series of articles were published in the Church Lawford and King’s Newnham Parish Newsletter reflecting the history of the two villages. These articles, written by Liz Parvin (King’s Newnham) and Keith Sinfield (Church Lawford) have been digitised and distributed throughout this archive depending on the period they cover.
Keith Sinfield looked at the prehistoric times in the first article.
Artefacts and interesting physical features dating from the Mesolithic era (10000 to 4000 BC) through to the Iron Age (800 BC to 43 AD) have been discovered in our two parishes Flint tools / fragments have been found and the following features have been identified: ring ditches, enclosures, round barrows, post holes and pit clusters (the latter when excavated were found to contain the cremated remains of human bones). The various features were mainly picked out from aerial photographs; the artefacts from archaeological excavations and chance discovery. The objects and features were found in an area east of the Bretford boundary, a point a little way past St Peter’s Church and within a few hundred kilometres north and south of the Avon.
The Mesolithic era was one of transition from the way people lived as huntergatherers, in the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) period, to the development of Farming in the Neolithic (New Stone Age) period. The Iron Age, and the Bronze Age before it, marked a pinnacle of achievement in the development of metal working skills Our parishes have thus seen continuous occupation by peoples representing the many stages of human development, something that we are perhaps not aware of as we live here today.
If you want to know more there is plenty of detail, and exact locations of the finds, on Warwickshire County Council’s museum website, which can be found at: Search the Warwickshire Museum TimeTrail
Other details can be found in a summary produced by the Rugby Archaeological Society in 1973, detailed here.
(Choose Rugby Borough then either King’s Newnham or Church Lawford, and choose a period of history)