LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICES.
A book of evidences of Over Lypiatt
manor compiled c. 1725 transcribes and extracts a
number of court rolls, the earliest for 1457. (fn. 34) Only
two original court rolls of the manor apparently
survive, for 1581 (fn. 35) and 1724; to judge from the
number of tenants' deaths reported at the latter date,
no court had been held for some years. (fn. 36) The court
baron of Thomas Freame's Nether Lypiatt manor
was mentioned in 1649, (fn. 37) but no court rolls for that,
the Hospitallers' Nether Lypiatt manor, or Paganhill manor, are known to survive. In the case of
Paganhill the fragmentation of the manor probably
caused an early demise of its court. Frankpledge
jurisdiction over the whole parish was exercised by
the Bisley hundred court at which tithingmen for
each of the four tithings of the parish made
presentments in the 1540s. (fn. 38)
The accounts of the two churchwardens survive
for the period 1623-1715, (fn. 39) and vestry minutes for
1762-83 (fn. 40) and 1807-56. (fn. 41) By the 1770s there were
four overseers of the poor, one responsible for each
tithing. (fn. 42) The parish officers were empowered to
build poorhouses in 1677, (fn. 43) and in 1724 the parish
made an agreement with Thomas Poole of Minchinhampton, joiner, for the construction of a workhouse,
planned as a long range of two storeys and attics with
16 bays of windows. It was built at the upper end of
Silver Street. (fn. 44) The paupers in the workhouse were
usually employed in one of the branches of the cloth
industry. A master of the workhouse appointed in
1725 was given a loan of £50 to enable him to
employ them in card-making and was allowed £20 a
year out of their earnings and a weekly maintenance
allowance of 18d. for each person. (fn. 45) In 1774 a broadweaver and in 1797 a linen-weaver contracted to
manage the poor in the house. (fn. 46) In 1803 there were
65 paupers in the house who earned £88 in that
year, about a fifth of what it cost to keep them. (fn. 47)
The general burden of poor-relief was eased by
the contributions from the Stroud feoffees, while the
frequent apprenticeships made by the parish officers
in the 18th century were financed in part by the
funds of two other charities. (fn. 48) In 1827 the parish
had a grant of £150 from the Committee for the
Relief of the Manufacturing Classes which was used
to employ paupers on a programme of road and
footpath improvement. (fn. 49) A salaried officer called the
inspector of the poor was employed at the beginning
of the 19th century; the office was discontinued in
1810 but a salaried assistant overseer was employed
from 1815. A doctor was retained from 1817. (fn. 50) In
1773 the vestry took action to enforce the badging
of paupers, (fn. 51) and in 1829 the weekly pay of a pauper
who had been seen in a public house was ordered to
be discontinued. (fn. 52)
The numerous poor who periodically became
chargeable on a parish where the cloth industry
dominated the economy were said c. 1775 to be not
particularly burdensome, although it was then noted
that, whereas £328 had once sufficed for poor-relief
in years when trade was good, since 1766 around
£500 had been needed; (fn. 53) the rise in the cost of
relief had evidently continued in 1791 when a
broadweaver contracted to farm all the poor of the
parish for £800 and their earnings. (fn. 54) By 1803 the
cost of relief had risen to £1,567, (fn. 55) and in the 1820s
and 1830s it was usually over £2,000. (fn. 56) In 1803 the
number of paupers receiving regular relief outside
the workhouse was 259 and the number occasionally
relieved 288; (fn. 57) between 1813 and 1815 the numbers
on permanent relief were about the same but there
had been a considerable reduction in the numbers on
occasional relief. (fn. 58) In 1836 Stroud became the centre
of the Stroud union. (fn. 59) A new workhouse for the
union was built in 1837 (fn. 60) at the east end of the town
on the north side of the Bisley road. A large complex
of stone-built blocks centred on a chapel, it could
house up to 500 paupers. (fn. 61) It was decided to let the
old Stroud parish workhouse as a police station in
1839, (fn. 62) but it was apparently later sold.
The powers of the vestry over the administration
of the town, to some extent curtailed by the Stroud
feoffees' ownership of the market-place, continued
until 1825 when a street improvement Act was
passed. The jurisdiction of the commissioners
appointed under the Act extended to as much of the
parish as lay within a radius of a mile from the
parish church. (fn. 63) In 1856 the powers of the commissioners were superseded by a local board of
health, (fn. 64) and Stroud became an urban district in
1894. (fn. 65)
The improvement commissioners made contracts
for paving the streets and laying sewers in 1825 and
1826. (fn. 66) In 1833 they lit the streets with gas supplied
by a company formed in that year by a group which
included William Stears, a Leeds gas engineer, the
clothiers Thomas and Samuel Marling, and the
iron-founder John Ferrabee. The company, which
built its works in the south part of Paganhill
tithing near Fromehall Mill, also laid on supplies
to mills and shops in the parish. (fn. 67) In 1858 it was
incorporated as the Stroud Gas Light and Coke Co.,
and an Act of 1864 gave it powers to enlarge its
works and extend its area of supply. (fn. 68) Part of the
eastern end of the parish was supplied by the
Brimscombe and Chalford Gas Co. which had been
formed by 1822, (fn. 69) and whose undertaking was
acquired by the Stroud company in 1936. (fn. 70) By 1863
the Stroud local board of health had carried out a
system of drainage and built a sewage works next to
the gas-works at Fromehall. (fn. 71) The U.D.C. was
empowered to supply electricity in 1903, (fn. 72) but it
was not until c. 1916 that a supply was laid on to the
town, and it was carried out by a private undertaker,
J. H. Edwards, under powers granted in 1912. (fn. 73) An
'engine-house' built adjoining the new blind-house
in Nelson Street in 1830 was presumably for a public
fire-engine, and in 1838 the Stroud feoffees paid
money to the improvement commissioners towards
the cost of a new engine. (fn. 74) The board of health was
maintaining a small permanent brigade in 1868 when
it also lent its support to the formation of a volunteer
brigade. (fn. 75)
Water supply for the town before the later 18th
century was from wells, the chief of which were
Gainey's Well north-east of the town, Hemlock's
Well to the south which was in use by 1618, (fn. 76) and a
well at the Cross. A pump drew the water from the
well at the Cross by 1720 when money was assigned
for its maintenance, but it later fell into disuse and
was removed before 1826. A new pump erected
by the improvement commissioners in 1839 did not
function satisfactorily and was later converted to a
drinking-fountain. (fn. 77) In 1744 Richard Arundell
obtained permission from the lord of Over Lyppiat
to convey water by pipes from a house called Snows
to the town. (fn. 78) The scheme was never completed
but c. 1769 Benjamin Grazebrook laid leaden pipes
from Gainey's Well to a reservoir near the Cross and
supplied houses in the lower part of the town in
return for annual payments. (fn. 79) By the early 19th
century another system had been built to supply the
upper part of the town from springs near Kilminster Farm. In 1834, the Stroud Water Works Co.
proprietors of Grazebrook's works, purchased the
other concern from its owner William Hopson. (fn. 80) In
1864 the company sold its works to the board of
health, (fn. 81) who in 1882 were supplying the town from
Gainey's Well and large reservoirs built at the
junction of the new and old Bisley roads. (fn. 82) In 1882
the new Stroud Water Co. was incorporated and
empowered to supply the surrounding parishes and
the outlying parts of Stroud parish by means of
a pumping station at Chalford and a reservoir on
Minchinhampton common, (fn. 83) and from 1890 the
Stroud U.D.C. took water from the company to
supplement its own supply. (fn. 84) In 1938 the urban
district's and the company's concerns were merged
in a joint water board for the district. (fn. 85)
A dispensary supported by subscriptions was
established at Stroud before 1755, and from 1823
was housed in a building on the corner of Bedford
Street and George Street; a casualty hospital was
built adjoining it in 1835. (fn. 86) In 1875 a new 30-bed
Stroud General Hospital, built by public subscription, was opened south of Trinity church. (fn. 87) It
was enlarged in 1890 and a new wing added in
1919. (fn. 88) The General Hospital remained independent
of the joint hospital board formed before 1897 by
the Stroud U.D.C., the Stroud R.D.C., and the
Nailsworth U.D.C.; the board maintained an
isolation hospital for smallpox cases in Bisley parish
and in 1904 built a new infectious diseases hospital at
Cashe's Green near Randwick. (fn. 89) A burial board
was formed in 1855 and a cemetery laid out east of
the town by the Bisley road. (fn. 90)