Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for WINCHCOMB

WINCHCOMB, a small town, a parish, and a district, in Gloucester. The town stands on the river Isborne, under the Cotswolds, at the terminus of the Winchcomb and Midland railway, 6¾ miles NE of Cheltenham; was known, at Domesday, as Wincelcombe; had a mitred Benedictine abbey, founded in 798 by King Kenulph, destroyed by the Danes, and rebuilt as a secular college in 985 by Bishop Oswald; was a residence and the burial-place of King Kenulph; numbers amongst its natives Bishop Tideman and the physician Merret; is a borough by prescription, with two bailiffs and eight burgesses, possessing little jurisdiction; is also a seat of petty sessions and county courts; carries on industry in a silk factory, a large paper mill, a tan-yard and skin-yard, and four flour-mills; and has a post-office‡ under Cheltenham, a banking office, a police station, a neat recent town hall, a reading room, a mechanics' institute, an early English and Tudor parish church, Baptist and Wesleyan chapels, two endowed schools with £70 a year, a national school, a workhouse, charities £48, a weekly market on Saturday, and five annual fairs.—The parish includes eleven hamlets, and comprises 5,700 acres. Real property, £13,486. Pop., in 1851, 2,824; in 1861, 2,937. Houses, 634. Sudeley Castle, Postlip Hall, Corndean Hall, and the Abbey are chief residences. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value, £200.* Patron, Lord Sudeley. A chapel of ease and a Wesleyan chapel are at Gretton; and a ruined Norman Chapel is at Postlip.—The district contains 21 parishes and 3 parts; and is divided into Guiting and Cleeve sub-districts. Acres, 57,494. Poor rates in 1863, £4,667. Pop. in 1851, 10,136; in 1861, 10,082. Houses, 2,245. Marriages in 1866, 65; births, 335,0 of which 23 were illegitimate; deaths, 172,-of which 58 were at ages under 5 years, and 9 at ages above 85. Marriages in the 10 years 1851-60, 630; births, 3,027; deaths, 1,843. The places of worship, in 1851, were 26 of the Church of England, with 4,584 sittings; 5 of Baptists, with 655 s.; 3 of Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, with 518 s.; and 5 of Wesleyans, with 723 s. The schools were 16 public day-schools, with 534 scholars; 14 private day-schools, with 172 s.; 32 Sunday schools, with 1,500 s.; and 1 evening school for adults, with 25 s.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a small town, a parish, and a district"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Winchcombe AP/CP       Winchcombe RegD/PLU       Gloucestershire AncC
Place names: WINCELCOMBE     |     WINCHCOMB
Place: Winchcombe

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