North Nibley

This is one of the occasional series of Parish Notes complied by Sue Ross and first published on our Facebook group. You are welcome to comment with further information about the parish.

North Nibley is a parish comprising of some 3430 acres, with (in 2020) a population of 938 people. The designation ‘North’ distinguishes it from two other villages of the same name, all three formerly in Gloucestershire.

It is roughly triangular in shape, and the apex penetrates deeply into the dissected part of the Cotswold plateau. Four miles to the west, the triangle’s base runs north to south for some three miles through the lush Vale of Berkeley. The Doverle brook, Nibley’s main watercourse, rises under the escarpment from two heads and traverses the parish from east to west, forming a part of the northern parish boundary. In its heyday this stream powered seven mills in the parish.

Most of us have seen the Tyndale Monument while driving along the M5. It was erected in 1866 in commemoration of William Tyndale, an early translator of the Bible. A copy of the Bible used to be kept in the chamber at the top of the monument.

It is 34 metres tall and is usually open, so that one can ascend the spiral staircase to the top.

At the time of its construction, it was thought that Tyndale was born at nearby Hunts Court Farm. Two previous attempts were made to build the monument on Stinchcombe Hill, on the opposite side of the valley.

St Martins Church

We are fortunate to have an unusual relic of worship in St Martins Church – the Seating Plan in 1629.

It is rich in detail and names 120 inhabitants, mainly men, who own or occupy the house which entitles them to a seat. Family relationships, earlier owners, names of individual houses and the named hamlets all appear.

An example is ‘In the next seate, which is next above the pulpitt, theis 4 clayme Ancient seatroomes belonging to their houses, vz. 1 William Curnocke for the house at the little grene, wherein hee dwelleth called Burrows Court 2. Thomas Trotman for his house in Forthey wherin he dwelleth 3. John Workman of fordend for his house there. 4. John Dunynge of Horend for his house there’

The plan was transcribed by Joyce Popplewell and can be found in the Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society, Volume 103, 1985.

The church with its stumpy west tower overlooks the uphill approach from the Vale to the village.

The south aisle is the oldest standing part, reputedly built as a thank-offering by William Lord for his victory at Nibley Green in 1470. Reputedly, 150 of the dead were buried alongside.

The nave’s north wall and the chancel were completely rebuilt in 1833 and 1861 respectively.

The information is taken from Joyce Popplewell’s ‘Study of Settlement and Land Use in a South Gloucestershire Parish’, an invaluable resource for those who wish to research further.

Nonconformity in Nibley

North Nibley Congregational Chapel (or Tabernacle) was built in 1815 and since then has played a major part in village life, with a large congregation and thriving Sunday school. Sadly attendance and membership dropped over the past 100 years and continued to decline.

In 2013 it was decided with deep regret to close the Chapel doors for the final time.

There was also a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel on the Street, built in 1805. This had closed by the 1870s, when it became a ‘Literary Institute’. The lower photo is of the present-day building on the site.

When the Religious Census was taken on 30th March 1851, the Congregational Chapel had three services on a Sunday, in the morning, afternoon, and evening, and the average attendance was 120, 60, and 270 respectively. Attendance at the Wesleyan Chapel was 40 for the afternoon service, and 68 for the evening service.

The popularity of Nonconformist worship at the time is probably related to the intensification of the cloth industry in the parish, and the poor housing provided for the rising population.

Mysteriously, the 1851 Census also records an Independent meeting at Bradley Green, on the edge of the parish near Wotton under Edge. No other information is given, except that the usual attendance was 500. I would love to know more about this, as I imagine that it might be an informal open-air meeting.

For a period, Tyndals Free Institute Reading and Lecture Rooms was situated on The Street. Its minutes, from 1877 to 1895, are held at Gloucestershire Archives (ref D5981).

As well as books and newspapers, it was agreed that drafts and dominoes would be supplied for the use of the members. It would open every evening, Sunday excepted, between 6 and 10pm and that ‘ladies would be admitted every Monday evening’. Coffee and cocoa would be available.

Local boy made good, Llewellin Allen (a builder and decorator living on St Michaels Hill, Bristol) was President and, on 22nd October 1877 gave a talk on ‘Manliness’. Very 19th century.

It was sold (as part of the estate of Henry Perrett of Bournstream) in December 1912, to Rev’d R G Carr for £70

One wonders what lay behind the motion that Mr William Perrin proposed, and Mr J Bennett seconded, that the Institute should not be used for any Religious Service whatever.

North Nibley is exceptionally lucky with the quality of records available to the researcher.

The Berkeley Estate Map of 1763, a portion of which appears opposite, is a meticulously detailed record of Berkeley holdings in the parish. Until recently, it was thought that the accompanying schedule was missing, but it has been located and they are held at the Archives of Berkeley Castle.

The 1798 Catalogue of the Nibley Estate and its map fills in the gaps in the Berkeley map.

John Smyth’s parish-by-parish account The Hundred of Berkeley remains the best source of the parish’s history until the mid 17th Century, naming the owners of holdings. A copy of the transcription is held at Wotton under Edge Historical Society and Gloucestershire Archives.

Mills

The river Doverte seems more of a brook than a stream, as it passes through the parish. But at one time, it supported five mills associated with the cloth-making industry. In the 1820s a slow irreversible decline began and, by 1870 only one mill still made cloth.

The picture of Longs Mill shows the (now disappeared) mill buildings.

A terrace of house was built to house the workers and the remains of it are in the lower picture.

Teasels!

Teasels were cultivated because they played an essential part in woollen cloth manufacture. After drying, the heads were placed in racks and used to raise the nap on cloth, removing knots and unevenness, without injury to its texture.

Simeon Weakes was a person I had been researching for some time. All that I knew was that he had been baptised at Dursley Methodist Church in March 1840, the son of Samuel and Rachel Wicks and, in the 1841 Census, was living with his parents in Forthay.

With the help of the British Newspaper Archive, I found that John Brinkworth (Simeon’s maternal grandfather) was declared a bankrupt, a month before his daughter’s marriage in 1839. He was referred to as a ‘clothier and teazle dealer’.

Four months previously, according to the Cheltenham Journal and Gloucestershire Fashionable Weekly Gazette, ‘a fire broke out in the premises occupied by Mr Brinkworth, at North Nibley, which, with a large stack of teazles, were entirely consumed. Had not the Wotton under Edge Fire Engine been promptly sent to the spot, the loss of property must have been much larger. The premises were partly insured.’

In 1850, John appears in Chatham, New York State – with the surname Pitts. Of course, one shouldn’t make assumptions, but, to me at least, it seems likely that John was escaping the law when he emigrated, perhaps burning his own property and escaping his creditors.

Simeon fought in the American Civil War, and died, aged 76, in 1916, in Michigan.

The image comes from https://www.exploringbuildinghistory.co.uk/the-teasel-in-the-english-woollen-cloth-industry/ and is of a ‘handle’ house at Darshill near Shepton Mallet – vents for drying (which may have been used for drying teasels).

Nibley House

What we see now at Nibley House is the remodelling, with a new front, in 1763. It was the home of John Smyth (1567–1641), steward of Berkeley Castle and the estates of the Berkeley family.

The Ridge House

The Ridge House was built in a commanding position above the east end of the parish in 1816 for Edward Sheppard, a local clothier. It was sold in 1837, when Sheppard (like many other clothiers of the time) became bankrupt. He subsequently moved with his family to The Firs at Quatford, outside Bridgnorth.

The house was bought by George Bengough, an heir to the Bristol City Bank and Cadell publishing fortunes. He added a second lodge and built a delightful cast-iron bridge in the grounds in 1840 and a chapel at The Ridings in 1841.

The house became a residential hotel or country club before the First World War, and was then occupied for some years by a local solicitor. In 1913 the estate passed to John Crosbie Bengough (1888-1916), whose death in the First World War landed his younger brother, Nigel James Bengough (1895-1980) with two lots of death duties to pay.

By 1921 The Ridge itself was unoccupied and deteriorating, and efforts to find a new tenant were unsuccessful. After lengthy negotiations, it was finally sold to Charles Kingsley Cory (1890-1967), who already owned adjacent lands. A few years later, he demolished it except for the carriage courtyard at the east end of the complex. The exact date of demolition is uncertain. A press report in 1933 stated that it was intended to demolish the house, but not until May 1937 does another report mention that demolition had taken place.

The photos, courtesy of Terry Luker, show the conservatory and billiard room, and the Ridge chapel.

All that remains today are two gatehouses on the Wotton Road, and the carriage court.

The population of the parish grew to 1562 in 1831, declining rapidly after that, with the collapse of the woollen industry.

People built their own dwellings on waste that bordered the roads and greens. Much of this has disappeared, but an example can by seen at Golden Cottage, on the Wotton road. This, and neighbouring houses, were built on a narrow strip of land adjoining the road.

Golden Cottage is number 606 on the Tithe Map.

Landowners took advantage of this, by building as many houses as they could cram onto a plot, as can be seen on the Tithe Map for Pitcourt, Howley, Forthay and, as shown on the picture, Barrs Lane.

The Square, circled in blue, was still present in living memory. I was told that ‘it was the source of all the colds and bugs in the village’. It was demolished and replaced by Tyndale Close. The other areas have long-since vanished.

The Square was built by Elias Smith, who leased Milmans Farm, on the Wotton road.

(permission for the reproduction of the Tithe maps kindly given by Geoff Gwatkin).

Isle of Rhe

The population of the parish grew to 1562 in 1831, declining rapidly after that, with the collapse of the woollen industry.

At the time of the Parliamentary Enclosure in 1867, the only areas available for ‘improvement’ were the Great and Little Greens (the former is outlined in yellow). and some wide roadside verges.

The South-Westerly portion of the Great Green was bought by Rev’d Bloxsome, and his property, the Isle of Rhe, became a small estate.

(map reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland).

Beer!

There were several beer houses and pubs in the parish (in contract with neighbouring Stinchcombe, where the landowner didn’t allow them to be built).

The Black Horse is still in business, as is the New Inn, tucked away in Waterley Bottom, and once called the Leather Bottel.

Others were the White Hart, opposite the Black Horse, the Kings Head, at the bottom of Frog Lane, the Golden Hart, in Pit Court, and The Cross Keys, on the Street.

From Mann’s report on the Woollen Industry of Gloucestershire (1913)

‘It is difficult to conceive how the poor managed to live [with the decline of the industry], and the situation was aggravated by the most pernicious Beer Act of 1830, which empowered any ratepayer to open his house as a beer-shop, free from any Justice’s license or control…These beer-houses, for which lonely spots seem frequently to have been designedly chosen, were too often the haunts of bad characters and receivers of stolen property’

In Nibley, only the White Hart was run by a victualler. The Kings Head and the Black Horse were run by widows (in 1861) who were also employed as a butcher, and, in the latter case, a grocer. The Cross Keys was run by Mr Limer, a butcher, and the Golden Hart by an agricultural labourer.

More Sources

What you have read here is only a partial view of the information available for the Parish. If you wish to find out more, I would recommend that you look at

North Nibley – A study of Settlement and Land Use in a South Gloucestershire Parish, by Joyce M Popplewell.

Under the Hill, by Simon Herrick. Published by Alan Sutton Publishing in 1979. A readable study of the woollen industry in the area, plus the more interesting houses (including The Ridge).

Gloucestershire Woollen Mills by Jennifer Tann

The is a One-Place-Study of the parish, very much a work in progress, at North Nibley One-Place-Study – A collection of historical information about the parish of North Nibley, the place and the people.

Published: 11 months ago