More about Maidenhead & Marlow

It has been suggested that the nearby Great Hill of Taplow was called the 'Mai Dun' by the Iron Age Brythons. The area of the town centre was originally known as 'South Ellington' and is recorded in the Domesday Book as Ellington in the hundred of Beynhurst.

In 1280, a bridge was erected across the river to replace the ferry and the Great Western Road was diverted in order to make use of it. This led to the growth of Maidenhead: a stopping point for coaches on the journeys between London and Bathand the High Street became populated with inns. The current Maidenhead Bridge, a local landmark, dates from 1777 and was built at a cost of £19,000.

King Charles I met his children for the last time before his execution in 1649 at the Greyhound Inn, which is now a branch of the NatWest Bank. A plaque commemorates their meeting.

A significant river resort in the 19th century, Maidenhead was notably ridiculed in Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome:

Maidenhead itself is too snobby to be pleasant. It is the haunt of the river swell and his overdressed female companion. It is the town of showy hotels, patronised chiefly by dudes and ballet girls. It is the witch’s kitchen from which go forth those demons of the river – steam-launches. The LONDON JOURNAL duke always has his 'little place' at Maidenhead; and the heroine of the three-volume novel always dines there when she goes out on the spree with somebody else’s husband."

With the railways beginning to expand in the mid-19th century, the High Street began to change again. Muddy roads were replaced and public services were installed — modern Maidenhead appeared. It became its own entity in 1894, being split from the civil parishes of both Bray and Cookham.

The town's football team, Maidenhead United, play at York Road, which is the oldest football ground in the world continuously used by the same team.

Today you can travel by train to Paddington station in London in about half an hour and junction 8/9 of the M4 motorway linking London and the west country is a mile or so from the town centre; Bristol is about an hour and a half's drive. Maidenhead has a population of around 60,000 and is part of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.

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