Bracknell

Bracknell is a town and civil parish in the Borough of Bracknell Forest in Berkshire, England. It lies 11mi to the east of Reading, 9mi south of Maidenhead, 10mi southwest of Windsor, 16mi northwest of Guildford and 34mi west of central London. The town has a population of 77,256 and is twinned with the German city of Leverkusen.The town is surrounded, on the east and south, by Swinley Woods and Crowthorne Woods. The urban area has absorbed parts of many local outlying areas including Warfield, Winkfield and Binfield, and is itself, along with Binfield, a component of the Greater London Urban Area as defined by the Office for National Statistics.HistoryThe name Bracknell is first recorded in a Winkfield Boundary Charter of AD 942 as Braccan heal, and may mean "Nook of land belonging to a man called Bracca", from the Old English Braccan (genitive singular of a personal name) + heal, healh (a corner, nook or secret place). An early form of the town's name, Brakenhale, still survives as the name of one of its schools. The town covers all of the old village of Easthampstead (though not all of the old parish) and the hamlet of Ramslade.