Contained Places - Neighborhood
- Thrupe
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
Croscombe is a village and civil parish west of Shepton Mallet and from Wells, in the Mendip district of Somerset, England. It is situated on the A371 road in the valley of the River Sheppey.
Croscombe has a village hall, a shop, a public house, a Church, a chapel and a school.
History
- the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia
North-east of the village and within the parish boundary is Maesbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort.
It was first recorded in 706 when King Ine of Wessex referred to the village as Correges Cumb. The parish of Croscombe was part of the Whitstone Hundred. Croscombe emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries with a boom in the wool trade. During this period many houses, cottages and hostelries were built and the church was reconstructed.
During the Industrial Revolution, silk, mining, quarrying and milling replaced the wool trade. In 1848 the River Sheppey powered two mills for grinding corn, one for winding silk, and another used as a stocking manufactory.
The Old Manor was built around 1460–89 as a rectorial manor house for Hugh Sugar, the Treasurer of Wells Cathedral. It was altered in the 16th and 18th centuries, and in the 20th century by the Landmark Trust.[1] It has been designated as a Grade I listed building.
The village cross was put in place in the 19th century, replacing an older one which had been there since the 14th century. It is heavily weathered (the rock type is oolite - a soft limestone), especially on the front right where it serves as a seat for patrons of the adjacent public house now known as 'The Cross' bed and breakfast.
In August 1861 the local waywardens decided that the village cross was a hindrance to the public way and endeavoured to remove it. The villagers were much against this and when masons from a neighbouring city began the act of despoiling it, the villagers gathered around the cross in its defence and a melee ensued involving both men and women inhabitants. The demolishing party were eventually driven off but not before the shaft had been broken and its finial broken in two. A flag was hoisted by the villagers bearing upon it the legend "Be Faithful" . During that night around 30 villagers volunteered to bivouac around the cross to guard it during the night. No other attempt has been made to remove the cross since.
The village's public house is The George Inn.
Research Tips
- The Somerset Heritage Centre (incorporating what was formerly the Somerset Record Office and the Somerset Local Studies Library) can be found at its new location at Langford Mead in Taunton. It has an online search facility leading to pages of interest, including maps from the First and Second Ordnance Survey (select "Maps and Postcards" from the list at the left, then enter the parish in the search box).
The Heritage Centre has an email address: [email protected].
- Three maps on the A Vision of Britain through Time website illustrate the changes in political boundaries over the period 1830-1945. All have expanding scales and on the second and third this facility is sufficient that individual parishes can be inspected.
- Somerset Hundreds as drawn in 1832. This map was prepared before The Great Reform Act of that year. Note the polling places and representation of the various parts of the county.
- Somerset in 1900, an Ordnance Survey map showing rural districts, the boundaries of the larger towns, the smaller civil parishes of the time, and some hamlets and villages in each parish
- Somerset in 1943, an Ordnance Survey map showing the rural districts after the changes to their structure in the 1930s
- Maps provided by the National Library of Scotland are also very useful. This map is currently set to an area now in the Sedgmoor District as it existed in the late 19th century, but can be moved to anywhere in the county using a variety of background maps. There is a very good search facility.
- A Vision of Britain through Time has a group of pages of statistical facts for almost every parish in the county
- GENUKI gives pointers to other archive sources as well as providing some details on each parish. 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. The compiler has gone to a lot of work to provide this material. Respect his copyright.
- The FamilySearch Wiki for Somerset provides a similar but not identical series of webpages to that provided by GENUKI
- English Jurisdictions, a supplementary website to FamilySearch outlining local parish boundaries in the middle on the 19th century. The information provided is especially useful for establishing the relationship of the ecclesiastical parishes in large towns and cathedral cities.
- The Victoria History of the Counties of England – History of the County of Somerset, produced by The Institute of Historical Research at the University of London is a scholarly website with articles tracing the history of individual parishes which are sorted into their hundreds, the early subdivisions of the county. It traces the ownership of estates and manors, describes the local church in detail, and usually provides a map of each parish. The volumes for Somerset are much more recent than those for other counties. It appears to be a work in progress, only covering about half the county so far. A map of the places covered in the series is given in Volume 6, but 3 more volumes have been published since then. If a parish is included there will be a note in its Research Tips.
- The Somerset and Dorset Family History Society
- The Weston super Mare Family History Society
- The Bristol and Avon Family History Society
- A list of all Somerset parishes with online transcripts of parish registers The size of Somerset makes this a huge project. If it does not yield what you are looking for, try getting in touch with the organizer with patience and politeness.
- Somerset Online Parish Clerk project home page
- A collection of West Somerset Parish Register Transcriptions are online courtesy of Martin Southwood
- source: Family History Library Catalog
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