Oldest village in the uk

[vinrex7]

Anyone know what the oldest village in the uk is?

[Tatty Rollox]

...Dreghorn, Ayrshire. Dates to about 3500BC. Here is the main street .....

[goldenfield]

The 'Guinness Book of Records' (1990 Edition) argued that "The strongest claimant to be Britain's oldest village is Thatcham, Berks. The earliest Mesolithic settlement there has been dated to 7720 BC".

[Tatty Rollox]

.... but the Guiness Book of Records does go on to say that the argument for Thatcham is somewhat tenuous but anyway here is the church at Thatcham. Dreghorn is perhaps better authenticated ...

[kepla]

Thatcham 7720 BC ? ? ? How on earth do they manage to date so far back with such accuracy ? I would have expected that 'about 7500 to 8000 BC' would have been more appropriate. After all, they're not likely to find written records going that far back !

[Peter Pedant]

I was gonna try Chysauster
in fact any of your local bronzre age villages

[Tatty Rollox]

I had assumed that the question was for the oldest inhabited village. Thatcham's claim is based on some lumps and bumps in the general area of the village but not in Thatcham itself. Chysauster is 2000 years old and long since uninhabited. Dreghorn has a well in the village dated to 5500 years ago and is inhabited. So, if I have interpreted the question correctly, Dreghorn it is.

[jno]

I think they found animal bones at a hunting site near Thatcham, which could I suppose be carbon-dated.

[Octavius]

Britain has been inhabited for hundreds of thousands of years. None of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain had any written language, so their history, culture and way of life are known only through archaeological finds. The first written record of Britain and its inhabitants was by the Greek navigator Pytheas, who explored the coastal region of Britain around 325 BC, and I imagine many many settlements were well established by then.

Neanderthal occupation of Britain was limited and by 30,000 BC the first signs of modern human (Homo sapiens) activity, the Aurignacian industry, are known. The most famous example from this period is the burial of the Red Lady of Paviland in modern day Wales, who actually turned out to be (as it is believed) a 21 year old male tribal chief who lived 29,000 years ago. Subsequent excavations of the area in which the skeleton was found have yielded more than 4,000 flints, teeth and bones, and needles and bracelets. If you think this is clever, check out the 300,000 Swanscombe Skull found near Dartford in Kent. (They both must have lived in a settelement somewhere!)

So if we were to define a (modern) village as being more than just a settlement or a hamlet, then the first ever village in the UK is likely to be unknown, and by the time they came to be recorded there would have been many of them. Had the villages and settlements of the inhabitants above survived (assuming they haven't or have changed name) then the GBoR claim for the 7,720 BC meolithic settlement of Thatcham as being the oldest place in Britain looks rather young.

A very good question, though.