Croydon Area Local Information  

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History   Croydon   is  an   ancient   town;    despite  150 years of continuing urban growth many reminders of this   still       remain.

The town of Croydon is situated at the head of the River Wandle, just to the north of a significant gap in the North Downs.  It lies 10 miles south of London, and the earliest settlement may have been a Roman staging post on the London-Portslade road, although conclusive evidence has not yet been found.

It was the Saxons who first inhabited the area in great numbers and gave Croydon its name thought to mean either 'crooked valley' or 'saffron valley'.  In the fifth to sixth centuries, it was the site of an important pagan Saxon cemetery.

By the later Saxon period, it was at the heart of a huge estate belonging to the Archbishops of Canterbury . The main Settlement at this time lay around the church and the archbishops' manor house, in the area still known as Old Town.