You can tell that the area around Stewkley was once well wooded as the name derives from the Old English words styfic and leah and means 'tree-stump wood/clearing' or perhaps ‘Styfic's wood/clearing'. In the Domesday Book of 1086 it is recorded as Stiuelai. In the 2001 Census the parish population was 1,731.

Stewkley is the longest village in England stretching for over one and a half kilometres each side of the church of St Michaels. At one time this led to the village being split into Up Town (to the north) and Down Town (to the south).

During the time of the Civil War Cromwell stabled his horses in the church when they brought a number of guns to nearby Pitch Green Hill. Between 1912 and 1914 a sixteenth century cottage in Ivy Lane was once used as the country residence of Emmeline Pankhurst the campaigner for women's rights and leader of the Suffragettes.

Stewkley Manor

A ghost with a long flowing beard and riding a white horse is said to haunt the area around Stewkley Manor. The ghost is believed to be that of the Reverend William Wadley, ‘Old Wadley'.

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