Stratford (the ford of the Roman Via Strata) with its attached hamlet of Higham sits on the Suffolk/Essex border on the River Stour, Suffolk.

A series of manorial court rolls beginning in 1318 reveal that many of the medieval families were connected with the wool trade which accounts for much of its early prosperity.

Stratford's long, straggling main street lined with inns, provides evidence of its bustling prosperity in the coaching days when the town catered for a continuous traffic of cattle, turkeys and geese bound for the London market.

Ravenys on one of the sites is the subject of a picture by John Constable entitled "a house in Water Lane", now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The remaining house in this part of the village, which stands two hundred yards nearer to the river, was occupied by Matilda Hunt in 1481.

In 1587 Sir William Fisher the elder who lived either in Rose Bank or The Old Cottage next door complained of the noisy and noisome "hoggiscote and hennesroust" placed against his wall by Ralph Boyfield.

The Swan which is described in Road Books as a posting-house, had extensive stabling and accommodation for casual labourers who followed the progress of Haysel and Harvest from south to north through East Anglia.

The Black Horse has connections with the highwayman Mathew Keys, hanged on Kennington Common in 1751, who once left his watch here as a pledge for a reckoning.

Fords, a fine timber house with a meadow alongside opposite the Black Horse, is close to a narrow strip of waste land which marks the line of the old London road.

The mill was demolished about 1850 and replaced by a vast structure of five floors with a 15-foot (4.6 m) undershot water wheel and an auxiliary steam engine for use when the river was low.