Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for STROUD

STROUD, a town, a parish, and a district, in Gloucestershire. The town stands on a declivity, on the Thames and Severn canal, and on the Swindon and Gloucester railway, adjacent to the rivulets Frome and Slade, amid a romantic country, 9 miles SSE of Gloucester; is long and straggling; has undergone much recent improvement; is a seat of petty sessions and county-courts, and a polling place; publishes a weekly newspaper; and has a head post-office,‡ a r. station with telegraph, two banking offices, four chief inns, a town hall, public subscription rooms, a police station, a church rebuilt in 1867, but retaining the tower and spire of an ancient church, a chapel ofease, six dissenting chapels, a Roman Catholic chapel, a large cemetery of 1855, an endowed school, national and British schools, a mutual improvement society, with lecture hall, reading room, library, and class rooms, an hospital, a dispensary, a workhouse, and charities £506. A weekly market is held on Friday; fairs are held on 10 May and 21 Aug.; an extensive cloth manufacture, of long standing, and much celebrity, is carried on; and there are, in the town or in its neighbourhood, dye-houses, silk-mills, iron-foundries, breweries, flour-mills, saw-mills, logwood-crushing mills, chemical works, and artificial manure manufactories. A parliamentary borough of S. was constituted by the reform act of 1832, includes all S. parish, 12 other parishes, and a part; and sends two members to parliament. Electors, in 1833, 1,247; in 1863, 1,400. Pop. in 1851, 36,535; in 1861, 35,517. Houses, 8,183.

The parish includes the tythings of Lower Lyppiatt, Upper Lyppiatt, Pakenhill, and Steanbridge. Acres, 3,810. Real property, £32,719; of which £43 are in quarries, £475 in canals, and £600 in gasworks. Pop. in 1851, 8,798; in 1861, 9,090. Houses, 1,923. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value, £300.* Patron, the Bishop of G. and B. The p. curacy of Whiteshill is a separate benefice.—The district is cut into the sub-districts of Stroud, Bisley, Rodborough, Minchinhampton, Horsley, Painswick, and Stonehouse. Acres, 43,720. Poor rates in 1863, 16,397. Pop. in 1851, 37,386; in 1861, 36,448. Houses, 8,379. Marriages in 1863, 271; births, 1,176,-of which 70 were illegitimate; deaths, 793,-of which 239 were at ages under 5 years, and 33 at ages above 85. Marriages in the ten years 1851-60, 2,763; births, 11,489; deaths, 8,016. The places of worship, in 1851, were 28 of the Church of England, with 15,056 sittings; 12 of Independents, with 5,000 s.; 14 of Baptists, with 5,633 s.; 2 of Quakers, with 210 s.; 10 of Wesleyans, with 2,763 s.; 6 of Primitive Methodists, with 748 s.; 2 of Calvinistic Methodists, with 790 s.; 2 of Lady Huntingdon's Connexion, with 695 s.; 1 of the New Church, with 90 s.; 2 of Brethren, with 200 s.; 2 of Latter Day Saints, with 110 s.; and 1 of Roman Catholics, with 521 s. The schools were 51 public day-schools, with 3,893 scholars; 72 private day-schools, with 1,233 s.: 61 Sunday schools, with 7,958 s.; and 3 evening schools for adults, with 59 s.


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

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a town, a parish, and a district"   (ADL Feature Type: "cities")
Administrative units: Stroud CP/Ch       Stroud RegD/PLU       Gloucestershire AncC
Place: Stroud

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