the western boundary. A Roman cemetery containing up to 30 skeletons was discovered to the north of the village in 1874, along with an excavation variously identified as a limekiln and a tiled grave. Another Roman limekiln was found further east in 1875 near the station, close to which a Roman pavement was discovered in around 1940. The parish was well populated from the Middle Ages. In 1086 there were probably c.90 peasant households and by 1279, when 56 messuages and 20 cottages were recorded, c.275 probably resident landholders. Some 80 inhabitants paid tax in 1327 and 426 adults paid the poll tax in 1377. There were still 119 people assessed to the subsidy in 1524, and 105 households in 1563. Following subsequent growth from the 1570s, numbers may have ranged between 400 and 450 in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, increasing again from the 1620s. In the 1660s and 1670s 105 to 110 dwellings were occupied, and 107 adults were reported in 1676. There were 106 families in 1728. The population was probably again stable in the early 18th century, perhaps dropping slightly by around 1740, but began to rise from the 1750s, perhaps by a half by the 1780s. There were 166 households in the 1790s and 702 people in 1801. Until the 1840s, numbers grew by c.150 to 200 in each decade, reaching 1,023 in 1831 and 1,452 in 1851. Pressure was reduced in the 1850s by emigration, especially to Australia. The population reached as much as 1,385 in the 1870s before again declining steadily, with a sharp fall in the 1890s when many young people left, to c.1,200 between 1911 and 1931. Of over 180 men who fought in the First World War 37 perished. New building, which added 250 households to the village in the 1950s and 520 in the 1960s, increased its population to 1,396 by 1961, 4,139 in 1981, and 4,732, including 4,282 in private households, in 1991. By the 18th century, dwellings in the village mostly stood toward the eastern end of c.200 acres of surrounding crofts and closes. A main street, probably called by 1370 Church Street, linked two groups of tenements along Holm Street to the south, so named by no later than 1200 and later called Home End (Street), and along Eye Street, corrupted some time after 1400 to Hay Street, to the north-east, along whose western