Place:Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, England

Watchers
NameBishop's Castle
Alt namesBishop's Castlesource: WeRelate abbreviation
Bishop's-Castlesource: Family History Library Catalog
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish, Borough (municipal)
Coordinates52.483°N 3°W
Located inShropshire, England
See alsoPurslow Hundred, Shropshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Clun and Bishop's Castle Rural, Shropshire, Englandrural district 1967-1974
South Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area 1974-2009
Shropshire District, Shropshire, Englandunitary authority covering the area since 2009
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Bishop's Castle is a small market town in the southwest of Shropshire, England, and formerly its smallest borough. According to the 2011 UK census it had a population of 1,893.

Bishop's Castle is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) east of the Wales-England border, about 20 miles (30 km) northwest of Ludlow and about 20 miles (30 km) southwest of Shrewsbury. To the south is Clun and to the east is Church Stretton. The town is within an agricultural area and has also become known for its alternative community including artists, musicians, writers and craftspeople. The surrounding area is hillwalking country. The long distance footpath the Shropshire Way runs through the town and Offa's Dyke is only a few miles to the west.

At the end of the 19th century Bishop's Castle was quite a large civil parish. This is part of a description from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"The parish extends beyond the borough liberties; and includes the townships of Broughton, Colebatch, Woodbatch, and Leewith-Oakeley. Acres: 5,649. Real property: £11,542. Population: 2,083. Houses: 434. The property is divided among a few. The manor belongs to the Earl of Powis. Bishops-Mote, on a high hill, a mile W of the town, is an ancient entrenchment of nearly an acre. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Hereford. Value: £350. Patron: the Earl of Powis."

When Bishop's Castle became a municipal borough in 1885 this area beyond the borough became a separate civil parish named Bishop's Castle Rural (parish). This parish is discussed separately in WeRelate.

In 1967 Bishop's Castle discarded its borough status and, along with Bishop's Castle Rural (parish), joined the newly formed Clun and Bishop's Castle Rural District. In 1974, following the regulations of the Local Government Act 1972, all rural districts were abolished and the parishes within them joined non-metropolitan local districts. In this case, the local district was the South Shropshire District. In 2009 five local districts of Shropshire merged together to form the Shropshire District, a unitary authority.

Contents

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The castle

Documented history begins in Saxon times for Bishop's Castle when Edwin Shakehead, grateful for being miraculously cured of the palsy at Saint Ethelbert's tomb in Hereford Cathedral gave part of his lands to the incumbent Bishop of Hereford. A successive Bishop of Hereford built a castle, originally a motte and bailey design, in 1087 to defend the church and village from the threat of the Welsh (its site ). The castle has been under attack several times, not always by Welsh raiders, most notably in 1263 when John Fitzalan, Lord of Arundel and feudal Lord of Oswestry and Clun, held it under siege in the course of a feud with the Bishop of Hereford and caused significant damage, estimated at 1,060 marks.

In the Early Middle Ages the castle and parish were situated partly in Wales and partly in England so territorial disputes literally 'came with the territory'.

In 1557 the castle was described as follows: "thirteen rooms covered with lead, a tower on the outer wall on the eastern side containing a stable, and two rooms covered with tiles. There were two other rooms called 'le new buyldinge' situated on the outer wall between the building over the gate and the tower called 'le prison tower'. There was also a dovecote, a garden, a forest and a park."

As peace came to the Welsh Marches Bishop's Castle became one of the notorious rotten boroughs, an electorally corrupt situation wherein the tiny borough elected two members of parliament from 1585.

In 1618 the castle started to deteriorate and in the 1700s the stone keep and surroundings were flattened to make a bowling green. (Some historians believe that the houses along Market Square and Castle Street were built upon the foundations of an outer wall due to the curvature of the houses).

In 1642, the Three Tuns Brewery was established on its current site, making it the oldest licensed brewery site in Britain. While some of the current building dates to the seventeenth century, the main building is a Victorian tower brewery erected about 1888.

In 1719 – the fifth year of the reign of George I and the year Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe – the Castle Hotel was constructed over the site of the old baille [the French word for an enclosed court] of the ancient castle. It was built on the orders of a local landowner, James Brydges (1673–1744), who in the year the hotel was completed was created Duke of Chandos. In an age of unabashed corruption, he acquired a number of lucrative sinecure offices and amassed such wealth that he was known as 'Princely Chandos'.

The 1st Duke of Chandos sold the Castle Hotel to John Walcot who in turn sold it to Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive of Plassey (1725–1774), known as 'Clive of India', who amassed such wealth during his time in that country that Horace Walpole writing from London to a country friend said: 'you will be frightened by the dearness of everything ... I expect that a pint of milk will soon not be sold under a diamond, and then nobody can keep a cow but my Lord Clive'. From Lord Clive the hotel descended to his son, Edward, and then to his grandson, who changed the family name to Herbert, his mother's maiden name. The older Edward became Earl of Powis on the death of his brother-in-law, George Herbert, 2nd Earl of Powis (of the previous creation of that title).

Local landowners, including Lord Clive expended large sums of cash buying votes, a common practice at the time in some areas to ensure a seat in Parliament. In 1726 one unsuccessful parliamentary candidate was subsequently able to prove that of the 52 people voting for his rival, the incumbent MP, 51 had received bribes and inducements. The Reform Act 1832 eradicated this practice and Bishop's Castle was disenfranchised.

All that is physically left of the castle today is a 10 m long, coursed stone wall on the west side of the castle site which is 2 m thick and 3 m high. It was overgrown with ivy and was recently renovated to keep it safe and stable. The Castle Hotel stands on the site of the castle itself and is largely built of stone salvaged from the original castle.

The town

The layout of the town in the present day shows that originally the town was made up of 46 burgage plots which were separated by a few small lanes which have developed to be Church Street, Union Street and Station Street.

In 1249 a Royal Charter for a weekly market and an annual fair was granted. They are both still very popular.

In the 17th century, Bishop's Castle Town Hall was constructed as a new administrative centre, a court and a prison. It was refurbished with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund and was re-opened in June 2014.

The town was classified as a municipal borough in 1885. It lost this status in the 1960s, but still has a mayor and its regalia. It is now a "Quality Town Council".

Bishop's Castle was close to the epicentre of a magnitude 5.1 earthquake on 2 April 1990, which was felt throughout much of England and Wales.

The town is located close to the Shropshire Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

Research Tips

  • The historical short form for Shropshire was "Salop". This is quite often found in archive material.
  • Shropshire Archives, Castle Gates, Shrewsbury SY1 2AQ
  • Shropshire Family History Society.
  • The GENUKI main page for Shropshire provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and there is also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then.
  • GENUKI also provides transcriptions of parish registers for numerous parishes throughout Shropshire. These will be noted at the bottom of this list as time permits for the parishes involved. Each register is preceded by historical notes from the editor-transciber and other details than simply births, marriages and deaths that have been found in the individual books from the parishes. These registers probably only go up to 1812 when the proscribed style for registers across the country was altered.
  • GENUKI lists under each parish further references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. (URLs for these other websites may not be up to date.)
  • The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851. There is a list of all the parishes in existence in 1851 with maps indicating their boundaries. The website is very useful for finding the ecclesiastical individual parishes within large cities and towns.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time, Shropshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are similar pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions that existed pre-1974. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
  • The two maps below indicate the boundaries between parishes, etc., but for a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from this selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile.
  • Map of Shropshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. (Unfortunately the online copy of this map has pencil codings in each parish which make it difficult to see the orignal.)
  • Map of Shropshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were a number of changes to urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.
  • A map of the ancient divisions named "hundreds" is to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time. Some of the hundreds were broken into separate sections with other hundreds in between.
  • The website British History Online provides four volumes of the Victoria County History Series on Shropshire. Volume 2 covers the religious houses of the county; Volume 4 provides a history of agriculture across the county, and Volumes 10 and 11 deal with Munslow Hundred, the Borough of Wenlock and the Telford area (i.e., the northeastern part of the county). The rest of the county is not presently covered. References to individual parishes will be furnished as time permits.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Bishop's Castle. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.