Place:Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England

Watchers
NameTewkesbury
Alt namesTedechesberiesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 115
Teodechesberiesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 115
Teodekesberiesource: Domesday Book (1985) p 115
Mythesource: hamlet in parish
Southwicksource: hamlet in parish
TypeParish (ancient), Civil parish, Borough (municipal)
Coordinates51.983°N 2.15°W
Located inGloucestershire, England
See alsoTewkesbury Hundred, Gloucestershire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Tewkesbury District, Gloucestershire, Englanddistrict municipality of which the town of Tewkesbury is one of the principal communities
Contained Places
Cemetery
Tewkesbury Abbey
source: Family History Library Catalog
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names


the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Tewkesbury is a town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It stands at the confluence of the River Severn and the River Avon, and also minor tributaries, the Swilgate and Carrant Brook. It gives its name to the Borough (or district) of Tewkesbury (established 1974), of which the town is the second largest settlement, (Cheltenham being larger). From 1837 until 1974 it was a municipal borough.

At the 2011 UK census the town itself had a population of 10,704. If the neighbouring modern parishes of Wheatpieces (3,577) and Ashchurch Rural (957) [both redirected to Walton Cardiff], Northway (5,080) [redirected to Ashchurch] are added, the figure rises to 20,318.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Tewkesbury.

A nineteenth century description

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of Tewkesbury from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"TEWKESBURY, a town, a parish, a [registration] sub-district, a [registration] district, and a hundred, in Gloucestershire. The town stands on the river Avon, at its influx to the Severn, and on a branch of the Bristol and Birmingham and Gloucester railway, 10 miles NNE of Gloucester; took its name from the Saxon hermit Theokus; rose around a monastery founded, in 715, by Odo and Dodo, dukes of Mercia; belonged, after the Norman conquest, to the Conqueror's wife Matilda and to R. Fitzhamon; was known at Domesday as Teodechesberie.
"[It] passed to successively the Clares, the Despencers, the Beauchamps, Warwick the king-maker, Henry VII., and the Seymours; is noted for the great defeat of the Lancastrians, in 1471, by Edward IV., at the Gastons about ½ a mile to the S., followed by the capture of Queen Margaret and the murder of her son; is noticed by Shakespeare, both in connexion with Prince Edward's murder, and for the manufacture of "Tewkesbury mustard;" was ravaged by the plague in 1592-3; suffered from the conflicting forces, both royalist and parliamentarian, in the civil wars of Charles I.; was visited, in 1788, by George III.
"[It] had the dramatist Estcourt for a native, and Archbishop Secker, Bishop Butler, and Dr. Chandler as pupils at a Presbyterian academy in it; and gives the title of Baron to the Earl of Munster.
[Description of the church omitted]
"The town comprises three principal streets, with a number of lanes and alleys; contains a few specimens of ancient houses; and has, of late years, been greatly improved. The town hall was built in 1788. A handsome, one-arched, iron bridge, 176 feet in span, over the Severn, was built in 1824. The music-hall was formerly a Quakers' chapel. The theatre has been converted into a silk-mill. A range of buildings, for the manufacture of patent renewable stockings, with a shaft 125 feet high, was erected in 1861. Trinity Church was built in 1837. The new cemetery, a little to the S of the town, comprises 7 acres, contains two chapels, and was opened in 1857. There are three dissenting chapels, an endowed grammar-school with £52 a year, national and British schools, a dispensary, a workhouse, several suites of alms houses, and other charities £456.
"The town has a head post-office, a telegraph station, two banking offices, and a large hotel; is a seat of sessions and county courts, and a polling place; and publishes two weekly newspapers. A weekly market is held on Wednesday; great markets, on the second Wednesday of June, Aug., and Dec.; fairs, on the second Monday of every month except Oct.; and the manufacture of stockings, bobbinet-lace, nails, and leather is carried on. The town is a borough by prescription; was first chartered by Elizabeth; is governed, under the new act, by a mayor, 4 aldermen, and 12 councillors; sent two members to parliament from 1609 till 1867; was reduced, by the reform act of the latter year, to the right of sending only one; and is regarded, both municipally and parliamentarily, as conterminate with the parish. Corporation income: about £836. Amount of property and income tax charged in 1863: £1,498. Real property, in 1860: £18,130, of which £880 were in canals, and £300 in gasworks. Electors in 1833: 386; in 1863: 383. Population in 1851: 5,878; in 1861: 5,876. Houses: 1,268.

The parish, though nominally conterminate with the town, includes the hamlets of Mythe and Southwick. Well-preserved remains of a Roman road are at Mythe, and near the Severn; and fine mineral springs, similar to those of Cheltenham, are in the adjoining parish of Walton-Cardiff. The head living is a vicarage, and that of Trinity is a [perpetual] curacy, in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. Value, of the former: £313; of the latter: £300. Patron, of the former: the Lord Chancellor; of the latter: Trustees."

Research Tips

Online sources which may also be helpful:

  • Tewkesbury in A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 8/Tewkesbury hundred in the Victoria County History series provided by the website British History Online. Tewkesbury, being a comparatively large town, is given a very long article in this volume.
  • GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish in the county. The emphasis here is on ecclesiastical parishes (useful before 1837)
  • A listing of all the Registration Districts in England and Wales since their introduction in 1837 and tables of the parishes that were part of each district and the time period covered with detailed notes on changes of parish name, mergers, etc. Respect the copyright on this material.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki for Gloucestershire provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
  • A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Tewkesbury. 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.