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Stratford is a very ancient town. Its name shows that it was situated at a ford on the Roman street, or highway, from London to Birmingham; but whether it was an inhabited place during the Roman occupation is uncertain. The earliest known reference to the town is in a charter dated A.D. 691, according to which Egwin, the Bishop of Worcester, obtained from Ethelred, King of Mercia, "the monastery of Stratford," with lands of about three thousand acres, in exchange for a religious house built by the bishop at Fladbury. It is not improbable that Stratford owes its foundation to this monastic settlement. Tradition says that the monastery stood where the church now is; and, as elsewhere in England, the first houses of the town were probably erected for its servants and dependants. These dwellings were doubtless near the river, in the street that has been known for centuries as "Old Town."

The district continued to be a manor of the Bishop of Worcester until after the Norman Conquest in 1066. According to the Domesday survey in 1085, its territory was "fourteen and a half hides," or about two thousand acres. It was of smaller extent than in 691, because the neighboring villages had become separate manors. The inhabitants were a priest, who doubtless officiated in the chapel of the old monastery (of which we find no mention after the year 872), with twenty-one villeins and seven bordarii, or cottagers. The families of these residents would make up a population of about one hundred and fifty. "Every householder, whether villein or cottager, evidently possessed a plough. The community owned altogether thirty-one ploughs, of which three belonged to the bishop, the lord of the manor." The agricultural produce was chiefly wheat, barley, and oats. A water-mill stood by the river, probably where the old mill now is; and there the villagers were obliged to grind all their corn, paying a fee for the privilege. In 1085 the annual income from the mill was ten shillings, but the bishop was often willing to accept eels in payment of the fees, and a thousand eels were then sent yearly to Worcester by the people who used the mill.

During the 12th century Stratford appears to have made little progress. Alveston, now a small village on the other side of the Avon, seemed likely then to rival it in prosperity. The boundaries of the Alveston manor were gradually extended until they reached their present limit on the south side of the bridge at Stratford (at that time a rude wooden structure), and there a little colony was planted which was known until after the Elizabethan period as Bridgetown.

We get an idea of the life led by the majority of the inhabitants of Stratford and its vicinity in the 12th and 13th centuries from the ecclesiastical records of the various services and payments rendered as rent. Many of the large estates outside of the town had been let as "knight's fees," that is, on condition of certain military services to be performed by the holders. Some of the villeins within the village had become "free tenants," or free from serfdom, and were permitted to cultivate their land as they pleased on payment of a fixed rental in money, with little or no labor service in addition. But most of the inhabitants were still villeins or cottagers, from whom labor service was regularly exacted. "Villeins who owned sixty acres had to supply two men for reaping the lord's fields, and cottagers with thirty acres supplied one. On a special day an additional reaping service was to be performed by villeins and cottagers with all their families except their wives and shepherds. Each of the free tenants had then also to find a reaper, and to direct the reaping himself. … The villein was to provide two carts for the conveyance of the corn to the barns, and every cottager who owned a horse provided one cart, for the use of which he was to receive a good morning meal of bread and cheese. One day's hoeing was expected of the villein and three days' ploughing, and if an additional day were called for, food was supplied free to the workers. … No villein nor cottager was allowed to bring up his child for the church without permission of the lord of the manor. A fee had to be paid when a daughter of a villein or cottager was married. On his death his best wagon was claimed by the steward in his lord's behalf, and a fine of money was exacted from his successor—if, as the record wisely adds, he could pay one. Any townsman who made beer for sale paid for the privilege."

In 1197 the inhabitants obtained for the town from Richard I. the privilege of a weekly market, to be holden on Thursdays, for which the citizens paid the bishop a yearly toll of sixteen shillings. The market was doubtless held at first in the open space still known as the Rother Market, in the centre of which the Memorial Fountain, the gift of Mr. George W. Childs of Philadelphia, now stands. Rother is an old word, of Anglo-Saxon origin, applied to cattle, which must have been a staple commodity in the early Stratford market. The term was familiar to Shakespeare, who uses it in Timon of Athens (iv. 3. 12):—

"It is the pasture lards the rother's sides,

The want that makes him lean."

In the course of the 11th century Stratford was also endowed with a series of annual fairs, "the chief stimulants of trade in the middle ages." The earliest of these fairs was granted by the Bishop of Worcester in 1216, to begin "on the eve of the Holy Trinity, and to continue for the next two days ensuing." In 1224 a fair was established for the eve of St. Augustine (May 26th) "and on the day and morrow after"; in 1242, for the eve of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14th), "the day, and two days following"; and in 1271, "for the eve of the Ascension of our Lord, commonly called Holy Thursday, and upon the day and morrow following." Early in the next century (1313) another fair was instituted, to begin on the eve of St. Peter and St. Paul (June 29th) and to be held for fifteen days.