Extrapolation of the known alignment from Silchester to near Ufton Nervet indicates a crossing point of the River Kennet just east of Tylemill Bridge.

Roman remains were uncovered during the excavation of the Theale Old Gravel Pit, at the end of St Ives Close, for ten years after 1887.

The Anglo-Saxons had abandoned Calleva Atrebatum, but the north to south route remained important to them as connecting the royal capital of Winchester with the boroughs of Old Basing near Basingstoke and Wallingford.

[7] The odd parish boundaries by the river indicates that the valley bottom had been converted from swamp forest to flood-meadows or reed-beds for thatching by the start of the second millennium.

The name was allegedly because the abbey used the brook to power its corn mill and flush its toilets, and so engineered its course to ensure a good head of water.

[8] From before 1241 until the 1800s, Theale, unusually, gave its name to the hundred containing the parishes of Aldermaston, Bradfield, Burghfield, Englefield, Padworth, Purley, Stratfield Mortimer, Sulham, Sulhamstead Bannister, Tidmarsh, Ufton Nervet and Woolhampton.

There is circumstantial evidence of a readjustment of boundaries between Sulham, Englefield and Tilehurst parishes and the possible transfer of Theale in the earlier Middle Ages.

[10] In the later Middle Ages, the abbey leased out many of its properties to ensure a cash income at a time when the economy was becoming increasingly cash-driven.

On 22 September 1643, soon after the First Battle of Newbury,[12] the village was the site of a skirmish between Prince Rupert's Royalist forces and the Earl of Essex's Parliamentarians.

[18] A housing estate in the south-west quadrant of the village has the street names Cavalier Close and Roundhead Road in memory of this skirmish.

In 1667, the first through coach was advertised as The Flying Machine in an advertising poster:[19] All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other place on their Road, let them repair to the Bell Savage Inn on Ludgate Hill in London and the White Lion Inn at Bath, at both which places they may be received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which performs the whole journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets forth at five in the morning.

In response to increased traffic, the first section of the Bath Road, between Reading and Theale, was made into a turnpike by Act of Parliament in 1714.

As the Bath Road thus became an established trade route and turnpike between the south-west and south-east of England, Theale became a staging post and as such was known for its numerous coaching inns.

[21] The 18th century highwayman, Dick Turpin, is said to have hidden in a secret room in The Old Lamb inn on Church Street on numerous occasions.

[22] However, the wealth engendered by a continued growth in road traffic meant that the village entered its most prosperous era, expanding substantially in the earlier 19th century before the arrival of the railway.

[citation needed] The road came back to life with the invention of the motor car, and the new status of the Bath Road as London's highway to Bristol was demonstrated on 23 April 1900, when the Automobile Club held a motor car reliability demonstration involving a cavalcade from London to Calcot Park, the home of Alfred Harmsworth who sponsored the event.

It used to cut through meadows occupying a wide flood plain, but these were dug out in the 20th century for gravel extraction and so replaced by a mosaic of lakes.

Theale village has one lake within its residential built-up area to the far west, with privately owned houses flanking it on its north side but recreational walking possible to the south.

As with other parts of the Kennet Valley, soil in Theale is a variety of chalk, flint, gravel, clay, alluvium and loam.

[31] This is a form of haematite iron ore. Theale before the 20th century was an early example of ribbon development, in that the built-up area was a long strip along the Bath Road with no side streets.

The High Street is completely built up with mainly Victorian edifices in red brick, some in patterned brickwork and some rendered in lime plaster.

[12] In 1843, writing about the effect of the railway on local business and environment, J G Robertson hypothesised that "it is probable that, in a few months, the completion of the Great Western Railway will totally annihilate the agreeable variety, and the hanging woods of Englefield and Beenham will no longer echo back the nocturnal challenge of the mail-guard's horn".

The survivors were: the White Hart, on the eastern outskirts, at Pincents Lane, and demolished in 1969; the Bull; the Falcon; the Castle and the Crown.

The village business with the highest public profile in the later 19th and earlier 20th century was Blatch's Theale Brewery, located in premises off the High Street.

[44] The company offices were at 43 High Street, a listed building, and the Bull tap house adjacent is now owned by Wadworth Brewery.

[45] Pincents Kiln exploited the proximity of chalk to a pocket of clay to make lime cement as well as bricks and tiles.

This pit was deep enough to flood as a lake, but subsequent work proceeding westwards down the Bath Road involved shallow stripping of the gravel above the water table.

Thomas Sheppard bequeathed a trust fund generating £20 a year for a school "to learn poor children to read …and to instruct them their duty to God as taught by the church catechism, and our excellent Liturgy", as he wrote.

[63] There is documentary evidence from 1291 of a chapel dedicated to St John the Baptist at Theale, belonging to the nunnery of Goring Priory at Goring-on-Thames.

In 1542, after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, the chapel was granted to Sir Leonard Chamberlain (the High Sheriff of Berkshire[65]) and to Richard Andrews.