A Brief History of Hundon
To have the temerity to attempt a history after living for just two years in the parish with only occasional visits to the Public Record Office in Bury St. Edmunds may seem foolhardy, since there may well be others with more knowledge than I have garnered.
However, assembling and committing to print my fragmented account will hopefully add a little to what those others may already know or provide a basis which can be built on and developed. Making new discoveries about our predecessors and trying to understand the motives for their actions is a natural corollary for one who has spent his working life as a policeman. The evidence -the sources – for what I say have been gathered from the work of others and my own small researches. Unfortunately there is no space here to list them.
Early Times
We shall never know for how long this valley has been settled. One of the oldest artefacts found here in 1926 is a copper tanged dagger, dated by the British Museum as Early Bronze Age (2500 BC to 1501BC), with a skull found in a pit off the Clare Road . Another is a Bronze Age (2500 BC to 701 BC) flint dagger found by soldiers digging a hole for a searchlight position at Bears Farm in 1939 and yet another is a flanged axe head of the same age found in 1961 on the western boundary of Stradishall (Hundon) Airfield.
A very recent find made just weeks before this article was written is what seems to be a leaf shaped chert/flint arrowhead with side notches found at Highpoint Prison in the mud on a boot of a Prison Officer who had been patrolling the grounds. This artefact is possibly of the Neolithic
Period (4000 BC to 2500 BC). The side notches are reportedly unique on a British arrow head and it is suggested that in view of this it could have been brought here from abroad where they are known.
The indications are that there were people moving about this area in those times but any dwellings from their settlements would have long since disappeared. It can be said that the valley would have been attractive since water from the brook and animals in the surrounding woods would provide sustenance.