Stoke Bardolph

Stoke Bardolph is a village and civil parish in the Gedling district of Nottinghamshire, England. The population of the civil parish taken at the 2011 census was 170, increasing to 598 residents at the 2021 census. It is to the east of Nottingham, and on the west bank of the River Trent. Nearby places include Burton Joyce and Radcliffe on Trent.

Because it has a small number of electors, the parish is presently governed by a parish meeting, and not a parish council.

Severn Trent Water's Stoke Bardolph Sewage Treatment Works are nearby. Severn Trent own most farmland in the area, using sludge from the sewage treatment works as fertiliser.

The Rivendell housing development began to be built in 2018 in the west of the parish, and the first residents of this moved in from March 2019.

There is no substantial evidence of occupation during early periods, but some artifacts have been found. In 1951, a Neolithic stone axehead was found in a field between the sewage treatment works and the river, while a late Bronze Age spearhead was found in the River Trent in 1928 when the channel was being dredged. It was 10.8 inches (275 mm) long, and is now at the Nottingham Castle Museum. There is some evidence of a Romano-British field system in the area, although this has been identified by aerial photography, and of the ten sites identified, none have been investigated on the ground. There is also evidence of an Iron Age promontory camp, with a bank and ditch to the east and a bank to the west. Some Roman finds probably indicate that it was occupied during the Roman period.

Before the Norman conquest of Britain, the manor of Gedling was in the kingdom of Mercia, and was held by Thegn Otta and then passed to his son Tochi. Following the conquest, the manor was given to William Peveril, and some land passed to the Bardolph family as a result of marriage during the reign of Henry II. They built a fortified manor house or moated castle near to the ferry crossing to Shelford. Evidence from the street plan of the village and the layout of the adjacent fields shows that it was established during the Medieval period. White's Directory of Nottinghamshire, published in 1853, recorded that an ancient chapel had once existed within the village, but that no trace of it then remained.

The Bardolph family were connected with the area until the late 15th century.

"The Bardolphs, who will ever remain linked by name to the county through the village of Stoke Bardolph on the banks of the silvery Trent—the Bardolphs, who once occupied a prominent place in the front ranks of English nobility, as all readers of Shakespeare's 'Henry IV.' will well remember."