alphagamma
Well-Known Forumite
This is actually quite an interesting question.
And by interesting i mean, of course, crushingly boring - unless you find this sort of thing interesting. Which if you don't, i will just go right ahead and assume i have lost you already.
So, if you're still here...
Evidence of occupation in Stafford extends at least as far back as the Iron Age - so we're realistically looking at c. 800 BC (probably later as it would have (nb not 'of') taken some amount of time to have got this far inland) to the arrival of the Romans in the 1st C AD.
Prior to the dig underneath Scaffoldshire Place, Iron Age settlement was securely established underneath what is now the Guildhall Shopping Centre. So that is certainly 'a' centre of Stafford.
Excavations in Clark Street unearthed Roman pottery, so there is evidence of early occupation in the Riverside area that precedes the establishment of the Burh, so that is also possibly 'a'nother centre of Stafford. But it would appear that this was pretty much at the very edge of the 'town', and it very much looks like it was where people went to dump their shit into the swamp.
One of the most interesting things about the dig underneath Scaffoldshire Place is a tentative interpretation of a curvilinear feature consistent with the outline of an Iron Age roundhouse. Not hugely easy to be definite about - they are formed, if you can imagine it, by rain dripping off the roof and sort of 'scarring' the ground underneath the roof-line - but quite probably evidence of habitation pre-Roman era, and probably by quite some margin.
So what are we to make of this evidence in determining what is the 'Centre' of Stafford?
After that - 9th/10th C - it gets even more interesting. Or possibly more crushingly boring, like, whatevar...
The Doxey action group also reckon that part of the area about to be wiped out by Lord Stafford in the interest of rugga was an early settlement.