Herefordshire Past No. 13 Spring 2012

Herefordshire
Past
The Newsletter of The Trust for the
Victoria County History of Herefordshire
Registered charity no. 1070427
Series 2, No. 13 Spring 2012
Chairman’s Letter
There is a lot of activity to report this time, much of it initiated by the central VCH
staff in London and involving all the counties in which the VCH is working.
2012, as everyone knows, is the Queen’s
Diamond Jubilee year, and the VCH nationally
is playing a part in the celebrations. The idea of
the Victoria County History was originally
conceived at the time of Queen Victoria’s
Diamond Jubilee, and at a discussion in
London last year, Sylvia Pinches suggested that
at this next Diamond Jubilee the present queen
might be reminded of that fact. This idea was
taken up enthusiastically by the Executive
Editor, an approach was made to Buckingham
Palace through London University, and the
result has been that the Palace has agreed to a
Rededication of the Victoria County History
series. This does not mean that the name of the
series will change (that would be too confusing!), but future volumes will be
dedicated ‘by gracious privilege to Queen Elizabeth II in celebration of Her
Majesty’s Diamond Jubilee’ as well as being ‘inscribed to the memory of her late
majesty Queen Victoria’. We hope that this indication of royal support will raise
the profile of the History nationally and encourage others to support it too.
To assist with the publicity, the central VCH staff are producing a special
Diamond Jubilee Celebration publication, which will be launched at the annual
In this issue ...
News from the Centre
Bosbury Update
Researcher Sought
Robert Higgins of Eastnor and the Somers Arms
Study Day at Eastnor Castle
St. Katherine’s Almshouses and their 19th century Residents
Bishop Athelstan of Hereford
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Marc Fitch lecture in London on 25 June. The publication, which will be available
both in hard copy and as an e-book, will start with a brief history of the VCH and
go on to give a short account of the state of the History in each county in England.
Those counties where work is in progress, including Herefordshire, will each have
a double page spread to describe the county and the VCH work being done there.
I had a quick look at some of the pages on the computer when I was in London in
March, and I think it will be a handsome book and an excellent way of telling
potential donors about the VCH and its work.
In addition to all this work at the centre, all counties are being encouraged to hold
events during the Diamond Jubilee year to publicise the VCH. Ours will include
an exhibition in the community showcase in Hereford City Library from 11 to 22
September. We thought the story of Herefordshire histories would be an
interesting subject, so the exhibition will illustrate the various attempts that have
been made to write a history of the county. It will include some of the books that
have been published in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, and will
culminate, of course, in the current VCH work. In conjunction with the exhibition
the Woolhope Club will have a lecture on the antiquary John Duncumb (17641839) and his work. We shall also have a presence at the Herefordshire Diamond
Day on 11 July. All in all the Diamond Jubilee year is going to be a busy one, and
we hope a successful one.
My last letter was an appeal for funds, and we are most grateful to those who so
generously responded. We are also delighted to be able to report that our
application to the LEADER+ scheme for £3,850 to fund preliminary research into
Bosbury buildings has at last been successful. It’s most encouraging to be able to
report the receipt of a grant, even if only a small one! The LEADER+ money will
help us to get through the current year without drawing too much on our reserves,
and we hope that our Diamond Jubilee celebrations will raise some money as well
as being enjoyable and telling Herefordshire people about the VCH and its work.
Nevertheless, we still need more money, and all donations or offers of help with
fund-raising will be gratefully accepted!
Meanwhile research and writing have continued. There is a report on the Bosbury
project later in this Newsletter. My history of Eastnor is at last finished and has
been sent to the Executive Editor of the VCH in London for final editing. It should
soon be on our website: www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/counties/herefordshire.
We are in discussion with the central VCH staff about hard copy publication in
VCH format (though of course not yet in a red book). With Eastnor complete we
hope to have the resources to start some work on Colwall in the near future.
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News from the Centre
The main news from the central VCH in London, of course,
relates to the Jubilee Rededication celebrations, but two other
events should be mentioned.
The Institute of Historical Research is running a Summer
School in Local History from 25 to 27 June. This will be held
in London University, and inexpensive accommodation in
student halls has been arranged for participants. The Summer School has been
designed with VCH volunteers in mind, and includes sessions on the different
sources available for local history, and on themes including people and places,
landscape, locality and region, and land ownership. Sylvia Pinches will be
contributing a session on Family and Neighbourhood and I will be giving a brief
introduction to Palaeography. Full details are available on the IHR website:
www history.ac.uk.
On the evening of 25 June, during the Summer School but a separate event, the
annual Marc Fitch Lecture will be given by Professor David Starkey, well
known for his television programmes, on a theme particularly relevant to the
Diamond Jubilee year, ‘Head of Our Morality: why the twentieth-century British
monarchy matters’.
All VCH counties are planning events to mark the Diamond Jubilee and the
Rededication of the History. They will be particularly high profile in Wiltshire
where the VCH will be the centrepiece of the Lord Lieutenant’s exhibition in
Salisbury Cathedral Close.
Postage costs
The recent steep rise in postal charges has considerably increased the cost of
sending out the Newsletter and other letters to supporters. It would save a
lot of money (which could be put towards VCH work) if more people would
agree to receive future Newsletters and other communications by email.
Please email [email protected] if you are willing to do this.
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Bosbury Update
The volunteers in the Wills Group have now transcribed about half of the 210
probate documents for the period 1500-1700. The transcripts are being added to
the VCH ‘Explore’ website (http://explore.englandspastforeveryone.org.uk). Key
information on people, places, farming and trade equipment, household goods and
charities is being added to the database about Bosbury and will help inform the
eventual parish history. The wills and inventories provide a fascinating glimpse
of life in Bosbury, the occupations that were followed, family relationships and
charitable impulses. The status of testators ranged from labourers to gentlemen,
with occupations including many husbandmen and yeomen, reflecting the
agricultural nature of the parish. There were craftsmen, too, such as John Powell
the trencher maker who owed John Allen 14s. 6d. for aspen in 1593. There is
some information about land ownership, and occasionally the house a testator
lived in is mentioned, as in the case of Francis Cowell who died in 1636,
bequeathing ‘the farm called the Nowles alias Notend wherein he then did dwell’.
This may be identified with Notehouse Farm in Foxhill, Bosbury – a late-16th- or
early 17th-century timber-framed building.
This sort of identification is the focus of a project on Bosbury houses towards
which VCH Herefordshire has just been awarded a grant of £3,850 through
LEADER+ (funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs,
the European Fund for Rural Development and the West Midlands Rural
Development Fund). This money will pay for some research to be done in national
repositories (see advert). The short project will culminate in a local history day in
Bosbury, partly to share the information gleaned and partly to encourage more
people to come forward with information, old deeds and photographs. Other
support has come from the Ledbury branch of the Workers Educational
Association, which is running a
course on ‘house history’ this
spring, taught by Sylvia
Pinches. Some people on the
course are researching Bosbury
buildings, including ones
which no longer exist but
appear on historic maps. VCH
Herefordshire is also delighted
to be working with the Bosbury
Chroniclers to encourage
interest in Bosbury’s past and
to share research.
Village Stores c. 1905
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The volunteers in the Wills Group have now transcribed about half of the 210
probate documents for the period 1500-1700. The transcripts are being added to
the VCH ‘Explore’ website (http://explore.englandspastforeveryone.org.uk). Key
information on people, places, farming and trade equipment, household goods and
charities is being added to the database about Bosbury and will help inform the
eventual parish history. The wills and inventories provide a fascinating glimpse
of life in Bosbury, the occupations that were followed, family relationships and
charitable impulses. The status of testators ranged from labourers to gentlemen,
with occupations including many husbandmen and yeomen, reflecting the
agricultural nature of the parish. There were craftsmen, too, such as John Powell
the trencher maker who owed John Allen 14s. 6d. for aspen in 1593. There is
some information about land ownership, and occasionally the house a testator
lived in is mentioned, as in the case of Francis Cowell who died in 1636,
bequeathing ‘the farm called the Nowles alias Notend wherein he then did dwell’.
This may be identified with Notehouse Farm in Foxhill, Bosbury – a late-16th- or
early 17th-century timber-framed building.
Researcher sought
VCH Herefordshire seeks to to appoint a history graduate to undertake research
for the Bosbury local history project. This will entail travel to the National
Archives, Kew and the National Monument Record, Swindon amongst other
national repositories. Work to include collaboration with the Bosbury
Chroniclers in preparation of exhibition. This is a fixed-sum contract of £3750
for four weeks work to be completed over a three-month period. Candidates
must have experience of local history research and palaeography skills; a
knowledge of Latin would be an advantage. Letters of application, including the
names of two referees, should be sent to:
Dr J. Cooper, [email protected]. Closing Date: 21 May 2012.
This post is part-funded by the European Union (EAFRD) and Defra through the
VITAL Herefordshire LEADER programme.
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Robert Higgins of Eastnor and the Somers Arms
Jean Currie has found two interesting notices in the Hereford Journal for July
1806 concerning an Eastnor farm. One asks the debtors and creditors of the late
Mr. Robert Higgins of Eastnor to send their demands to Mr. Thomas Higgins of
Eastnor or Mr. John Pye of Brampton, Herefordshire on or before 20 August of
that year.
The second notice announces the sale by auction of Robert Higins’s farming stock
at ‘Gatler’s End’ Eastnor. His livestock comprised 12 cows and 12 calves, 14
‘fresh’ cows nearly fat, 1 milk cow, 9 two-year-old heifers; 1 two-year-old
bullock; 1 spayed heifer; 6 three-year-old bullocks; 14 yearling cattle; 8 weaned
calves; 4 draught horses and ‘geering’; 3 saddle horses; 4 two-year-old colts; 4
yearling colts; 3 mares with foals; c. 300 sheep and lambs; 160 pigs; 4 sows and
pigs; 1 sow in pig. His ‘implements of husbandry’ included 3 wagons, 2 wains, 1
cart, a plough, harrows and various other implements as well as about 40 cider
hogsheads in good repair and some hogshead staves, spokes etc. His growing corn
comprised about 25 acres of wheat, 6 acres of barley, 5 acres of peas, and 4 acres
of oats, and he had 45 tons of ‘well-ended’ hay and clover. It is an interesting
snapshot of an early 19th-century farm.
C. J. Robinson’s Mansions and Manors of Herefordshire provides details of the
Higgins family, who were substantial farmers or lesser gentry, established in
Eastnor for several generations. Robert was a younger son of Thomas Higgins,
who was dead by 1806; Thomas Higgins and John Pye who were administering
Robert’s estate were his elder brother and his brother-in-law. Another brother,
Joseph Higgins, was rector of the parish from 1795 to 1847. Robert would seem
to have been a gentleman farmer. The land tax records show that he farmed land
leased from the Eastnor Estate: Upper House Farm near Midsummer Hill in 1792,
and Loweshurst in 1806. Both farms were relatively large by the standards of the
period. A survey at Eastnor Castle shows that Loweshurst comprised about 75 a.
when it was acquired for the Eastnor Estate in 1792 including 22 acres of arable,
15 acres each of pasture and meadow, 14 acres of orchards, and an acre of
woodland. Judging by its assessment for land tax, Upper House was nearly twice
the size of Loweshurst in the 1790s, although it was only 57 acres in 1851. Had
Robert moved from a large farm to a smaller one, perhaps because he was running
down his farming activities in his last years, or was he farming both farms at the
time of his death?
The Eastnor Castle material shows that Gatlers End was the farmhouse for
Loweshurst, and that it stood on the site of the Somers Arms. The present building
there appears to have been built as an inn shortly after Robert Higgins’s death, but
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t may incorporate parts of an earlier house. Perhaps one day it will be possible to
examine the building carefully to see if parts of Robert Higgins’s house do survive!
Although the new house was a purpose-built inn, it was also a farmhouse for most
of the 19th century. The house was called the Somers Arms by 1819 when the twin
son and daughter of the occupier, Richard Matthews, were baptised. Richard’s
occupation was given as farmer that year, but in 1824 he was described as an
innkeeper, and in 1841 when he occupied the house with his wife, three children
and two servants, he was a farmer and innkeeper. In 1851 Matthews, then 74 years
old, farmed only 10 acres. In 1861 a new tenant, William Lane, was farming 90
acres as well as running the inn with the help of his daughter and two servants,
one of them an ostler. By 1871 William had been succeeded by his son, another
William Lane, who employed three domestic servants and a nurse for his infant
son at what was then the Somers Arms Hotel. When the census was taken in 1881
the innkeeper Williams, a new tenant since 1871, was away. He and his wife
employed a waitress, an ostler and a general servant.
The house was still a public house in 1885, but by 1890, no doubt under the
influence of the teetotal Lady Henry Somerset at Eastnor Castle, it had become a
temperance hotel and boarding house at which ‘visitors to Eastnor Castle will find
every accommodation: large rooms, tents for parties, stable and coach house,
posting, &c’. In 1891 a widow, Fanny Hodges, was the ‘hotel proprietress’ and
seems to have run the business with the assistance of her unmarried children, the
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eldest of whom was a barmaid – presumably serving non-alcoholic drinks only.
The respectability of the establishment was proved by the fact that the curate in
charge of the parish boarded there. The presence of a ‘cowman/domestic servant’
suggests that there was still some agricultural land attached to the house. By 1899
the hotel’s attractions, as advertised by its tenant Francis James in Tilley’s
Ledbury Almanack, had been expanded to include ‘good accommodation for
gentlemen in the hunting season’. It also offered ‘special terms for cyclists’ as it
provided ‘quarters for the Cyclist Touring Club’. Business may have been
declining, however, for in 1901 James was a grazier and hotel-keeper who
employed only one general servant and one general labourer to run both
businesses. In 1911 he described himself as a boarding-house keeper, employing
a housemaid in the boarding house and a farm labourer.
Janet Cooper
Study Day at Eastnor Castle 19th April 2012
David Whitehead, who had done much of the organizing for this event, recalled
its origin in the desire of James Hervey-Bathurst to mark the bicentenary of the
laying of the foundation stone of the Castle by his ancestor the first Earl Somers
on 24 April 1812. The study day was also an anniversary of the death of Lord
Byron, a tutelary spirit of this period. Seven fascinating talks, a tea break and a
delicious soup and sandwich lunch were somehow fitted into seven hours,
rigorously controlled by Dr Janet Cooper, Chairman of the Herefordshire Victoria
County History Trust, who introduced each speaker and kept them to time, like
Lady Somerset's maid who, Ros Black told us, conducted her mistress's addresses
with a handkerchief.
Janet started the day with a presentation of the history of the proprietors of
Eastnor Parish and the rise and fall, accretion and dispersal of their holdings up to
1800. Dr Sylvia Pinches took this further with her overview of the Eastnor Estate
farms, making, as did all speakers, much use of slides of the beautiful 18th- and
19th-century estate maps from the Castle archive. Sylvia with Dr Peters and
volunteers had made a close study of the Castle's farms, their historic buildings
and use through the summer of 2010.
David Lovelace, the third speaker, presented a lively view of his work in progress
on the parkland and woods of the Eastnor Estate, sharing his excitement at
discoveries in the Muniments Room. He showed the schedule for the 13-year
coppicing of woods and copses across the Estate for 1804-17, producing no doubt
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scaffolding etc for the Castle's building work. David showed how accurate the
old surveyors work was by overlaying them with contemporary maps. The
individual trees they had measured in fitted their GPS positions exactly.
Robin Whittaker, since his retirement from Worcestershire Record Office, has
been managing a project on the Worcestershire material in the Castle Archives.
He revealed some of the wonderful maps and documents he had been working on.
Lunch – a hot mug of tomato soup and very delicious sandwiches – was served in
the formal dining room with rows of family portraits, some of very high quality
like Romney's beautiful full length of the young first Earl while Baron Evesham.
And there was the chance to look at other public rooms of the Castle and at Pugin's
fireplace with its stemma and genealogical paintings. In his usual haste he had
presumed he was working for a medieval castle with massive walls and made it
much too deep. Adapting it ate up his fee, but he got kudos by showing it at the
Great Exhibition of 1851. He was horrified to find the Castle was by the hated
Smirke and an example of the 'pagan' architecture he was fighting against.
After lunch Tim Hoverd stood in for Ruth Butler who was unable to give her talk
on G.F.Watts. There was consolation in being able to see the many Watts
paintings hanging in the small terrace lounge, and it was a privilege to hear about
Tim’s recent work at nearby Bronsil Castle, its history and present condition. He
demonstrated that the Bucks' view of Bronsil (below) was probably an invention
based on a description with reference to later castles like Leeds. It had been built
in the mid 15th century, probably adapting 13th-century work, by the immensely
rich Lord Beauchamp, friend and chancellor of Henry VI, who gave licence for
emparking and crenellation. It was an amenity castle surrounded by pleasure
gardens and water features for his daughters to enjoy, signs of which remain in
humps and dips which have now been recorded.
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Next was David Whitehead on the
building of Eastnor Castle between
1812-24 for John Somers Cocks,
1st Earl Somers. Young Cocks
inherited his father Charles Cocks'
title of Baron Evesham and the
great wealth of both the Cocks' and
Somers' houses – wealth that
attracted an earldom. Castle Ditch
House, the family home sited below
the Castle, had only recently been
extended by local architect
Anthony Keck, who had a
successful practice in Herefordshire
and was recommended by the Earl's
father-in-law Dr Treadway Nash.
But an earl required a castle and the
fashionable Regency architect Sir
Robert Smirke was brought in. The
Castle went up quickly and at great expense (at least £86,000) as labour and
material flooded the site. The foundation stone was laid on 24th April 1812 and
the first ashlar stone two months later; the family wing was ready for occupation
in 1814. David gave details of the logistics of getting the materials to the site, a
good hard stone being quarried in the Forest of Dean and moved by trackway,
river and canal, giving a boost to transport development in the area. Many
wonderful plans, working drawings and views were shown. David related the
Castle's building to the unrest of the time and the gentry's need for security with
revolution across the Channel and rick-burners nearer home. Interior decoration,
including that of the great hall (above), was left for later earls to complete.
Ros Black was the last speaker. Her book on the redoubtable Isabella, Lady Henry
Somerset, was launched at Eastnor Castle last year. Isabella's sufferings at the
hands of her Beaufort husband turned the over-protected and sensitive soul
portrayed by Watts into a woman of steely determination and dedication who gave
herself to temperance and suffrage causes and the amelioration of poverty in
Ledbury and on her Duxhurst Estate near Reigate where she built a reformatory
village for inebriate women, now sadly demolished. Ros’s book A Talent for
Humanity records this worthy life.
It would have been nice to have dressed for a baronial dinner at this stage and then
retired to the guest bedrooms. My flat was a bit of an anticlimax.
Philip Weaver
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St. Katherine’s Almhouses
and their 19th Century Residents
St. Katherine’s Hospital was founded in about 1232 by Hugh Foliot, Bishop of
Hereford at that time. Two charters by Bishop Foliot described the purpose,
government and endowments of this medieval hospital. The first, granted about
1231, declares that the hospital is dedicated to God and the blessed Katherine of
Alexandria ‘for the support of wayfarers or pilgrims and the poor’. The second
charter, dated March 1233, referred to the ‘poor and weak’ and conferred the
government of the hospital on the Dean and Chapter of Hereford Cathedral, who
remain its guardians today. As there was a strong religious element in its
foundation, St. Katherine’s was in danger of dissolution at the Reformation, but
in 1568 Queen Elizabeth granted the hospital and its possessions to the master
and his successors and appointed ‘twelve honest poor men deserving well of the
state for their service’ as almsmen. The hospital has continued as an almshouse
since then.
The national census, begun in 1801, has continued every ten years since, except
for 1941 (because of the 1939-45 war). The detailed records from 1841 onwards
list everyone resident in the country on the night of the census, including the
inhabitants of St. Katherine’s Almshouses. In the 19th century they were referred
to as inmates and so considered to be living in an institution.
As part of the campaign to remove the Butcher Row from the High Street, the
dilapidated almshouses and northern end of the Butcher Row were demolished
in the second decade of the 19th century. There were 24 dwellings planned for
the new St. Katherine’s, featuring a central tower, designed by the distinguished
architect Robert Smirke. The first 12 units were completed in 1822. The north
wing, comprising the remaining 12 dwellings, was built some 44 years later in
the mid-1860s, doubling the capacity of the almshouses.
A review of the almshouse residents in the censuses from 1841 to 1911 shows,
as is still the case today, that there were far more women than men among the
almspeople and that the women lived longer than the men. Out of 40 male
inhabitants, only 3 were bachelors, 19 were widowers and 18 came with their
wives to live at St. Katherine’s. Of the women, 16 were spinsters, 22 arrived
with their husbands, and the remaining 46 were widows. Some residents lived
on for several decades at St. Katherine’s until their deaths, whilst a few stayed
for a while before moving away to be with or near their relatives.
Working backwards through time, each census gives a snapshot of the residents’
families, their children, and sometimes of their parents too: where they lived,
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their trades as well as the trades their children followed, who they married and
even of grandchildren. Their trades were many and varied, with agricultural
work predominating, as would be expected in a rural area like Herefordshire.
Although many aspired to be farmers, most were agricultural labourers and in
their declining years many moved into town and reverted to gardening to earn a
living.
Three residents had formerly worked for the Dean and Chapter of Hereford
Cathedral. Edward Bridges gave his occupation as ‘Apparitor’, an ancient title
known to Chaucer; he acted to keep order in the Cathedral Close, as did Richard
Phillips and later Richard Bodenham, who called themselves ‘Keeper’ or
‘Custodian of the Cathedral Close’. Today the title Cathedral Constable is used.
In Ledbury, as in other towns, many people learned their trade by way of an
apprenticeship Before the Elementary Education Act of 1870 introduced
education for 5-13 year-olds, some children were already apprenticed as young
as 10 years old. A number of St. Katherine’s residents had been teachers.
Abednego Pope, who died in 1863, was a Dancing Master, and Elizabeth
Hanford and her husband were both teachers in Hereford later in the century.
John Phillips, a widower, whose wife and daughters were all teachers, had for
many years been the Agent to the Commissioners of the Turnpike Returns,
whilst Sarah Matthews lived up at the Bradlow Turnpike, where her husband, a
mason by trade, was also the Toll Gate Keeper.
A number of people were involved with the postal service. Charlotte Richards
worked for many years as the postmistress in Colwall, George Badsey described
himself as a post office messenger or letter carrier, and William Stephens
worked as a post inspector. At least a dozen residents were involved in various
leather trades: the women as gloveresses and shoe-binders, the men as
shoemakers or bootmakers. A similar number were born into or worked in
public houses, or ran lodging houses, before coming to St Katherine’s.
A number of the men were tailors or drapers, or both, specialising in linens or
woollen cloth, and had frequently married a seamstress or dressmaker, a useful
union. Several of the spinsters had also earned their living by stitching, as
seamstresses or dressmakers. Among the other residents and their families were
a linen weaver from Gloucestershire, a woollen blanket weaver who came from
Witney in Oxfordshire and even a straw-bonnet maker.
Several men had formerly worked as hauliers or carriers, while others had been
employed as builders, bricklayers or masons. There was even a gunmaker.
Edwin Nott was mentioned as a timber dealer in Hints of Ledbury, printed and
published in 1831 by Thomas Ward; he went to London with his wife Sarah and
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son Thomas in the late 1830s, and died there in 1872. Sarah returned to
Ledbury, ending her days in St. Katherine’s.
Other residents included Ann Wintle of Hazle Mill, Emma Russell whose father
ran New Mill for many years, and Richard Hickman, a corn miller whose parents
had been almshouse residents a few decades before him. Many of the women
had worked as housekeepers or laundresses, especially once widowed, and a few
acted as monthly nurses caring for women in the weeks following childbirth.
Several had worked as cooks, including ‘Mrs’ Rachel Edwards, who was a
spinster but used the title ‘Mrs’ as was customary in her profession.
Finally there were various retired shopkeepers: a butcher, a baker, several
grocers and a bookseller, as well as a couple of carpenters and cabinet makers.
The expression ‘All human life is there’ certainly applied to St. Katherine’s in
the 19th century.
Celia Kellett
Very likely taken during the summer of 1905, this photo, featuring the
Masters’ House (on the left, covered in ivy) and the mediaeval Hospital
building (its timber-framed gable facing the lawn), shows a strong
contrast between the status and style of living of the master (and
presumably his family) compared to that of the residents of the mostlyconcealed almshouses. The lawn is now a car park for the town.
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Bishop Athelstan of Hereford
The earliest reference to Bosbury comes in the 12th-century Latin chronicle
attributed to John of Worcester which records that in 1056 ‘Athelstan bishop of
Hereford, a man of great sanctity, died on 10 February at an episcopal estate
called Bosbury’ and was buried at Hereford. Who was this first known resident
of the bishop’s ‘palace’ at Bosbury?
His was one of the longest episcopates of the Anglo-Saxon period, lasting from
c. 1015 until his death, and during it he, like other bishops, attended the king’s
court fairly regularly. At one point he was in dispute with the bishop of
Worcester over the eastern boundary of Hereford diocese; the settlement was
recorded in a book then in the cathedral, now at Pembroke College, Cambridge.
At a more local level, we have in the Hereford Gospels, which are still in the
cathedral library, an account of a suit in the Hereford shire court at which
Athelstan was one of the judges. A man claimed land in Wellington and Cradley
against his mother. On Bishop Athelstan’s instructions, representatives of the
court were sent to the mother to hear her side of the story. She declared firmly
that her kinswoman, the wife of one of the court representatives, was to have all
her land and possessions ‘and my own son never a thing’. The mother’s wishes
prevailed, possibly helped by an association with Bishop Athelstan.
During his time as bishop, Athelstan rebuilt the cathedral at Hereford. Nothing
is known of this building, but it was described as a ‘glorious minster’. It was
destroyed in 1055 by the Welsh in alliance with an outlawed English earl. The
invaders robbed it of the relics of St Ethelbert and other saints, and of its
vestments and other equipment. The shock of these events may have hastened
Athelstan’s death, although he was no doubt already frail. By c. 1043 he was
going blind, and a Welsh bishop named Tremerig was appointed to assist him.
(Tremerig’s death in 1055 seems almost certain to have been the result of the
Welsh sack of Hereford.) Was Athelstan at Bosbury because his house in
Hereford was uninhabitable, or did he visit the manor regularly?
Janet Cooper
Sources: Hereford Cathedral, A History, ed. G. Aylmer and J. Tiller; The
English Church 1000 – 1066, F. Barlow; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. D.
Whitelock.
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The Committee
The chairman is Dr Janet Cooper, formerly Editor of the Essex VCH and a
member of the central VCH committee. The other trustees are Professor Chris
Dyer (Leicester University, formerly chairman of the VCH central committee)
and the Herefordshire historians Ron Shoesmith, Brian Smith and David
Whitehead (our Vice Chairman), plus Tom Davies (our Hon. Treasurer), Angela
Bishop (our Hon. Secretary) and Gill Murray (formerly of the 6th Form College,
Hereford).
They are joined by committee members Joe Hillaby (Herefordshire and Ledbury
medieval historian), Ruth Richardson (lately 6th Form College, Hereford) and
Professor Charles Watkins (Nottingham University).
Our Herefordshire patrons are: Mr Lawrence Banks, CBE, DL, representing the
Lord Lieutenant of Herefordshire; The Right Revd Anthony Priddis, the Lord
Bishop of Hereford; Sir Roy Strong; Mr James Hervey-Bathurst, CBE, DL; Mr
Edward Harley.
The Trust’s aim is to support the writing of the history of the
towns and parishes of Herefordshire as part of the Victoria
History of the Counties of England. The VCH, ‘the greatest
publishing project in English local history’, is managed by the
Institute of Historical Research, University of London. It is
renowned for its scholarship but also aims to be accessible to
the growing number of local historians throughout the country.
Contact details:
Dr. Janet Cooper
16 Merrivale Crescent, Ross-on-Wye HR9 5JU
email: [email protected]
[email protected]
This Newsletter is published in May and November.
Back copies can be viewed on
www.victoriacountyhistory.ac.uk/counties/herefordshire