The Iberians
About 2000 years before Christ, the prehistoric inhabitants of the British islands (pre-Celtic people) were the dark-haired Iberians (Bronze Age and Iron Age). They built Stonehenge in the south of England, on Salisbury plain, a group of huge blue stone slabs placed in concentric circles.
The Celts (700 B.C. - 43 A.D.)
Around 700 B.C. the blond-haired Celts began to arrive from Northern Europe (Germany) ( at the beginning there were the Gaels - in the North - and then the Brythons - in the South-West and West - in the fourth century). The Gaelic of the Highlands of Scotland and the Welsh [gallese o cimbrico] of Wales comes from their language. They were organised into tribes and among them there seemed to be equality between the sexes. They worshipped the natural elements and the Druids were their priests; their temples were groves in the forest. At times, they performed human sacrifices. They believed in the immortality and in the transmigration of the soul from one person to another. The Druids were massacred by the Romans.
The Romans (43A.D. - 409 A.D.)
Britain was a very productive land with a mild climate, due to the Gulf Stream. The Romans decided to invade it.
They really conquered it under Emperor Claudius (43-47 AD) and they established a Roman-British culture across the southern half of Britain.
Latin almost completely disappeared when the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britain in the 5th century. Most remarkable feature of Roman Britain: the towns. Many of them were originally army camps and the Latin name for camp, castra, has remained in modern town names ending in "caster", "chester", or "cester". Also the roads are still in existence to this day. They did not succeed in conquering Caledonia (Scotland).
Emperor Hadrian (76-138 AD) ordered the building of a wall (121 AD) to mark the border between the two countries. Long stretches of Hadrian's wall still exist.
Roman control of Britain came to an end as the empire began to collapse and in 409 Emperor Honorius was obliged to withdraw his soldiers to defend Rome against Barbarian raiders.
The Romano-British, the Romanised Celts, (who were Celtic Christian) were left alone to fight the Scots, the Irish and Saxon raiders from Germany.
The Anglo-Saxons
In 449 AD, Germanic tribes (The Angles, the Saxons and, the Jutes) raided the country destroying the Roman British towns. ( England is the "land of the Angles"). They were warlike and illiterate and used only the runic alphabet, mostly used for carving inscriptions on stone or metal.
At the end of the 6th century, a monk, Augustine, was sent by Pope Gregory I (590-604) to bring Christianity to England. He became the first Archbishop of Canterbury, the capital of Kent. But it was the Celtic Church that brought Christianity to the common people of Britain. Monasteries became important centres of learning.
In the 8th and 9th century new enemies arrived from overseas: the Vikings, who came from Norway and Denmark and were pirates.
In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the Anglo-Saxons in the battle of Hastings. The Normans spoke French and were Christians.