Pre-Historic Times
A clue to Chertsey’s undocumented history starts with an insignificant little steel plate outside St. Peter’s Church, in Windsor St. This marks the spot of the old water spring which was situated at the centre of the village before the village became Chertsey town in medieval times. This knurled plate with three holes rests in the kerb just in front and a slightly to the left of the cast iron Victorian pump. This pump was given to the town by John Ivatt Briscoe MP. The pump used to stand where the plate is situated, and so did the previous village and town pumps before it, and so presumably the water spring before that.
In prehistoric times the ancient spring would have been where the three tracks met in a clearing in the woods, long after Woolly Mammoths and Auroch (extinct cattle) had wandered the area. It was the natural meeting place for people and animals to refresh themselves in the open space on high ground. So today people sitting by the war memorial are doing something on the same spot as others have done since prehistorical times. In 1910 the present pump was removed back to the position we see it today after it had been hit by a 3 ton lorry, and the spring from whence it derived its water was stopped and plated over.
Standing by this metal plate the observer will note that the ground falls away in all directions except where the Church stands at their back.
This is roughly the area of land described by historians as ‘Cerotus Isle’ (Ceroti, or Chertsi) from which the name Chertsey is derived. On a modern flood plain map this is a pear shape area of land which encompasses the Abbey site, Colonels lane, The Crown, The Olde Swan, St Peter’s Church, and Guildford St, down to about the King’s Head.
Nearby on St Ann's Hill, or Mount Eldebury as it was previously known, there was an Iron Age fort, and later a Nuns Well. The water drawn there was to have supposedly cured eye complaints. There is plenty of evidence in various Museums that this part of the Thames Valley was well inhabited. 
With plenty of oak woods, and game from the meads covered in hay and reeds, and fish in the river the ancient populace would have found being close by England's busy river link to the continent of Europe, a desirable place to live. A great natural resource of gravel, was hardly used in ancient times. No archaeology has been permitted by the large post war gravel industry in this area, so that ancient life that existed over the gravel beds can only be guessed at by the small amount of items that have turned up on lands adjacent to the Thames in the years after WW2 One of the finest examples 5th Century B.C. an oval Iron Age shield made of bronze is in the British Museum and was found in a gravel pit near to the great river. Chertsey Museum has a replica of this handsome piece.