•  Winchcombe, Gloucestershire

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In 1870-72, John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales described Winchcombe like this:

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. ...

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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.

Winchcombe through time

Winchcombe is now part of Tewkesbury district. Click here for graphs and data of how Tewkesbury has changed over two centuries. For statistics about Winchcombe itself, go to Units and Statistics.

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