From at least a thousand years B.C., Stone Age then Bronze Age people lived in the area that we call Baldock which surrounded the source of the river Ivel. They took advantage of the easily worked farmland, readily available water supply and the trade which came along the prehistoric trackway, now known as the Icknield Way.
It ran from the important centre around Avebury and Stonehenge east to the flint workings near Brandon in Suffolk and probably continued out to the Norfolk coast along what we now call the Peddars Way. We should not imagine that the Icknield Way was a clearly defined track following the present A505 road. It was almost certainly a series of parallel tracks about a mile wide that provided alternative routes according to the hazards offered by mud, flood and the local inhabitants.