GROWTH OF THE TOWN AND OUTLYING SETTLEMENTS.
Tetbury 1974
Tetbury town occupies a low
but clearly defined hill, bounded on the east side by
the river Avon and on the south by a tributary brook.
On the south-east the hill is emphasized by manmade ramparts and much of the rest of its circumference has a sharp though apparently naturally
formed ridge, parts of which were adopted as the
outer boundary of properties. The origin of the
south-eastern ramparts is obscure. A tradition of a
British fortification is recorded by Camden (fn. 62) and the
ramparts presumably existed by the 8th century
when the name Tetbury was first recorded. (fn. 63) The
part of the hilltop just above was probably the site of
the 7th-century minster church, and the parish
church was later built there. Some kind of inner
earthwork stood in the field above the ramparts until
the mid 18th century when it was levelled to make
pleasure-grounds. The work revealed masonry and
some late-Saxon and early-medieval coins, giving
rise to the belief that a castle had stood there; (fn. 64) the
absence of documentary references to a castle (fn. 65)
makes the supposition unlikely but the site may have
been that of an early manor-house. The field above
the ramparts belonged to the manor in 1594 when it
was called the Barton, (fn. 66) a name which probably
derives from the rectory tithe-barn of Eynsham
Abbey which stood north of the field, on or near the
site of Barton Abbots house. (fn. 67)
The early development of the town occurred on
the other side of the hill, north of the meeting of its
two principal roads, from Bristol to Cirencester and
from Malmesbury to Minchinhampton. The manorhouse stood on the north edge of the hill on the site
of the house called the Priory. (fn. 68) If an earlier site near
the church had been abandoned in favour of it, the
reason may have been the need for a regular watersupply, for two important wells lay on the north side
of the town; (fn. 69) also the easier contours of the land
made possible the laying out of grounds, which
included a small park north of the house and a
garden west of it. (fn. 70) After the creation of the borough
c. 1200 the first burgages were apparently established
on Cirencester Street, the old road to Cirencester
descending the hill east of the manor-house. Ten
burgages granted to Acornbury Priory c. 1230 were
there, (fn. 71) and the street was called the high street in
1459. (fn. 72) The early-13th-century grant also mentioned
the horse-pool at the bottom of Cirencester Street (fn. 73)
where in 1502 stood a ducking-stool, which gave the
street the alternative name of Gumstool Street (fn. 74) or
Gumstool Hill. Between the street and the manorhouse grounds was the original market-place, the
Chipping or Chipping Croft; the inference to be
drawn from the name itself is confirmed by the
description of a house in Cirencester Street in 1459
as backing on the 'croft called the market-place', (fn. 75)
and in 1594 the old tolsey building stood in the
Chipping at the entrance to Chipping Lane. (fn. 76)
The town probably expanded quickly in the 13th
century; the rent from the borough mentioned in
1296 suggests a total of about 100 burgages. (fn. 77) The
building up of the other streets was presumably well
advanced by then, although they are not recorded
until later. Church Street, the south-west part of the
Bristol-Cirencester route, was mentioned in 1398 (fn. 78)
and Hatter Street recorded a few years earlier (fn. 79) was
evidently that called Harper Street by the earlier
17th century, running north-westwards from
Church Street's south end. (fn. 80) The Minchinhampton
road in the north-west part of the town, called West
Street until c. 1800 when it became known as Long
Street, (fn. 81) was mentioned in 1397. (fn. 82) The Malmesbury
road in the south-east part of the town, usually called
Silver Street but also called Malmesbury Street in
the 16th century, (fn. 83) was presumably also developed at
an early date.
By the late 16th century the site of the market had
moved southwards to where the two main roads meet
on the north side of the central block of the town; by
1594 the new market-place was already the site of the
White Hart, the chief inn of the town, a number of
other inns, and the church house, (fn. 84) and the markethouse and town hall building put up there in 1655
was later the focus of town life. (fn. 85) The course of the
two main roads, which are aligned as if to cross in the
middle of the central block, suggests that the central
block may once have been included in the precincts
of an old manor-house near the church and before
that perhaps in those of the Saxon minster; but it is
perhaps more likely that the roads were diverted
northwards by infilling of the central area after the
market had moved there. The moving of the market
was probably connected with the growing importance of Long Street, which benefited from the
increasing use made of the roads which meet its far
end as an alternative and easier route to Bristol and
Cirencester; (fn. 86) no doubt the street was affected too by
the growth of trade with Minchinhampton and the
cloth-producing Stroud Valley region. Long Street
also had the advantage over most of the other streets
of the town of providing level and more suitable sites
for large houses; those in it generally have longer
street-frontages than the narrow burgages in the
steeper streets.
By the late 16th century the town had taken the
shape that it was to preserve largely unaltered until
the 20th. The houses in Cirencester Street extended
down to the bottom of the hill to meet the open
fields; Long Street, already the longest street, was
built up to its far end, and beyond the junction with
the road later called Comber's Mead there were a
few houses at the entrance to the later Hampton
Street; Church Street was largely built up and there
were some houses at the entrance to Harper Street;
in Silver Street, at the angle of which was an open
space called the Green, the houses extended down to
the Long bridge; and Church Lane, between the
Green and Church Street, and Chipping Lane,
between the Chipping and the market-place, had
some buildings. The central block was also built up
at least in part, for there were some houses on the
east side of Church Street and on the west side of
Silver Street. (fn. 87)
Although the pattern of the town was laid down
by the late 16th century, few houses survive from
before that period. One house which retains
medieval features is appropriately in the earliest
recorded part of the town, between Cirencester
Street and the Chipping. The surviving fragment
appears to be the screens-passage, porch, and service
end of a hall-house which faced east on a courtyard;
although largely reconstructed in the 16th century, it
retains two 14th-century doorways. The hall end on
the north retained 14th-century windows in the
early 19th century but that end was demolished and
replaced by a pair of cottages in 1859. (fn. 88) The house
was perhaps typical of the medieval burgages of the
town but little other early evidence survives, for the
great majority of the houses in Tetbury were rebuilt
in the prosperous years of the 17th and 18th
centuries. One of the earliest of the period is a house
on the west side of Church Street, built in 1620 by
Richard Talboys, (fn. 89) a prominent townsman, who
later bought Doughton manor. (fn. 90) It is a substantial
range built at right angles to the street, but the
principal elevation, which has gables and projecting
bays, fronts the street. Around the market-place
most of the houses were rebuilt later in the 17th
century, several of them as inns. The former Three
Cups inn, in Church Street west of the markethouse, was a substantial building with three gables
which was remodelled in the early 1970s. The Crown,
dated 1693, is a gabled building near the top of
Cirencester Street, and the Talbot at the east end of
the market-place is a long 17th-century range,
refronted in the early 19th century. The White Hart,
on the north side of the market-place, was rebuilt in
the mid 19th century. (fn. 91) The old church house on the
corner of Church Street and Long Street was rebuilt
in the 17th century and remodelled in 1783, probably by Thomas Thompson, a surgeon. (fn. 92) At the east
end of the market-place, in the entrance to Cirencester Street, there was a small island of buildings,
including an ancient forge, (fn. 93) an inn, and a lesser
market-house. (fn. 94)
The principal houses were built in Long Street.
The Close, long the chief residence of the town,
stood on the south-west side with extensive grounds
occupying much of the area between Long Street
and Harper Street. (fn. 95) In 1594, described as a fair new
building, it belonged to Thomas Estcourt (fn. 96) of
Shipton Moyne, who settled it on his son Edmund;
Edmund's daughter Mary married Francis Savage (fn. 97)
and the Savage family lived at the Close until 1850. (fn. 98)
From soon after that date it was the home of the
solicitor, Josiah Tippetts Paul (d. 1875), (fn. 99) and in the
mid 20th century it became the Close Hotel. Part of
the building may survive from the late-16th-century
house but it was largely rebuilt in the 17th century as
a substantial, gabled house ranged round a courtyard. It was extensively altered at later dates and in
1974 was being restored after a serious fire.
About the middle of Long Street is a notable
group of houses, most of them built by leading
clothiers and wool-staplers in the late 17th and early
18th centuries. The district council office on the
south-west side is a substantial, gabled house of
traditional type with a porch bearing the date 1677
and the initials of John Thomas, a clothier. (fn. 1) The
long house adjoining (nos. 36-8), which has small
gables and mullioned and transomed windows, is
dated 1703 and has initials which are apparently for
William Lloyd. (fn. 2) On the opposite side of the road the
Ferns, which housed Sir William Romney's School
in the mid 20th century, was rebuilt c. 1800 but had
long been an important residence. It was bought in
1671 by Nathaniel Body, clothier, whose family
occupied it until 1770 when it was sold to John Paul
(d. 1787); members of the Paul family lived there
until 1892. Its gardens behind the street were laid
out on former grounds of the manor-house acquired
by Nathaniel Body. The house adjoining the Ferns
on the south-east side, which from 1853 was part of
the same property, (fn. 3) was acquired by Nathaniel
Mayo, clothier, in 1627. Later occupants included
Hopeful Vokins, a tobacconist, who bought it in
1703, and the wool-stapler Edward Tugwell (d.
1788), who bought it in 1763. (fn. 4) The house, which has
a hipped roof and mullioned and transomed windows, was evidently rebuilt by Vokins soon after he
acquired it. (fn. 5) The late-17th-century gabled house (no.
43) on the other side of the Ferns belonged to the
clothier Jonathan Shipton in 1710. (fn. 6) From at least
1823 until the mid 20th century it housed the Paul's
family firm, originally Letall and Paul, (fn. 7) and it
remained a solicitor's office in 1974. The remainder
of the street has a number of houses of similar period
although of humbler type, including no. 25B which
has the date 1694 and the initials of George Wickes. (fn. 8)
The other streets, particularly Cirencester Street
and Silver Street, have many small houses of the 17th
and early 18th centuries. There was evidently new
building at that period on the rear portions of the
long burgage tenements of Cirencester Street which
had back doors on the Chipping in the 16th century. (fn. 9)
By the 1690s several such tenements included
cottages facing on the Chipping and the lane which
descends by a series of steps to the bottom of the hill.
The area had become one of the humbler parts of the
town: the houses there belonging to the Estcourts
were occupied in the 18th century by such people as
carpenters, masons, and cordwainers. (fn. 10) At the
bottom of Cirencester Street, however, a small but
fairly ornate house was built in 1741, possibly by one
of the Wickes family of wool-staplers. (fn. 11)
The late 18th century was a time of self-conscious
improvement of the town, stimulated in particular
by the vicar John Wight, who gave a legacy for
removing encroachments from the streets. (fn. 12) The
south part of the town was enhanced by the building
of the new church and Bath Bridge in the 1770s;
Wight himself rebuilt the vicarage (fn. 13) and in 1776
added a new wing to a house that he had acquired
called the Bartons, south-west of the churchyard. (fn. 14)
In the same part of the town Barton Abbots, at the
Green, had been built in the mid 18th century by
William Savage, a wool-stapler, on the site of some
houses which he bought in 1730. In 1796 it was
bought and altered by Robert Clark Paul, (fn. 15) and
Whyte-Melville, the writer, was a later occupant. (fn. 16)
The street front, the staircase, and some other
internal fittings survive from Savage's house, but
extensive additions were made on the south-east in
the late 18th century and the 19th, and further
extensions on the south-west in the early 20th. The
house was extensively modernized in the 1960s.
In the late 18th century or very early 19th some
new houses were put up around the Chipping, which
became a more fashionable area after the building of
a large mansion on the old manor-house site in
1766. (fn. 17) Access to the Chipping from the town was
improved in 1781 by widening Chipping Lane, (fn. 18) and
the road from the north corner of the Chipping to
meet the old Cirencester road was apparently cut at
the same period. (fn. 19) Near the end of the 18th century
some large classical-style houses were built on the
west side of the Chipping, formerly occupied by the
manor-house gardens, (fn. 20) and at the same period two
houses were built on the north side and several on
the east side were refronted. Below the Chipping, at
the northern edge of the town, a substantial house
called the Croft was built in the late 18th century
together with an ornamental cottage in matching
style.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries there was
some addition to the area of the town, in particular
by the building of cottages along Harper Street.
Similar development occurred at the entrance to the
Charlton road, in Comber's Mead, and in Hampton
Street. At the entrance to Hampton Street some
substantial warehouses were put up c. 1784 by a
wool-stapler, Matthew Bamford. (fn. 21) They survive as
the most obvious reminder of the former industry of
the town, where a number of houses had premises
for trade adjoining; (fn. 22) a large warehouse stood north
of the Close until the mid 20th century (fn. 23) and another
survives behind a house on the east side of Church
Street. In the mid 19th century a new church and
school were built on the west side of Tetbury, but
between the early years of the century and its late
years there were no additions to the area of the town
and very little rebuilding, reflecting the stagnation of
trade. At the end of the century, after the building of
the railway in 1889, an estate of small stone houses,
mostly semi-detached, was laid out at Northfield
between the two Cirencester roads. (fn. 24) The town was
not significantly enlarged, however, until the mid
20th century when council estates were built north
of it on the Minchinhampton road and Blind Lane
(renamed Lowfield Road); over 100 houses had been
built by the late 1940s. (fn. 25) Later there was considerable private housing development in the same area
and on the old manor-house park, on the old
Cirencester road, and south of the town across Bath
Bridge. Infilling also occurred in the town itself,
notably on the former grounds of the Close and the
Ferns behind the houses in Long Street.
Outside the town the parish was sparsely populated in the post-medieval period, but earlier there
seems to have been a considerable population in the
four outlying hamlets of Upton, 1½ mile NNW. of
the town, Charlton ½ mile WNW., Elmestree 1½ mile
WSW., and Doughton 1¼ mile SSW. The Upton
estate had 16 tenants in 1086, (fn. 26) and in 1221 there
were 52 tenants on an outlying estate granted to the
Beauchamp family, most of them in Upton and some
in Doughton and Charlton. (fn. 27) In 1327 16 people were
assessed for tax at Doughton, 15 at Charlton, 14 at
Upton, and 9 at Elmestree, (fn. 28) and the equivalent
figures at the poll-tax of 1381 were 15, 26, 19, and
10. (fn. 29) The population of the hamlets later declined
and by the 17th century only Charlton appears to
have been of any size. (fn. 30) The attraction of the town
and its growing prosperity may have contributed to
the decline, particularly in reducing the number of
non-agricultural occupations in the hamlets, but
piecemeal inclosure of the open fields, which was
under way at the beginning of the 17th century, was
probably a more important factor. It is perhaps
significant that Charlton, where the open fields
survived largely intact until the late 18th century, (fn. 31)
remained the most populous hamlet. Eleven households were assessed for hearth-tax there in 1672
compared with a total of 15 in the other hamlets. (fn. 32)
By the 19th century Elmestree comprised only its
manor-house and the other hamlets were diminutive
groups of dwellings. (fn. 33) At Upton, where the foundations of demolished houses were said to be visible in
the 1770s, (fn. 34) a 17th-century farm-house and a few
19th-century cottages stand on the lane running to
Upton House. The rebuilding of Upton House on a
grander scale in the mid 18th century (fn. 35) and the
laying out of its grounds probably caused the diversion of the Tetbury-Minchinhampton road from the
lane to bypass the hamlet with two sharp bends.
Charlton hamlet, on the Tetbury-Wotton road,
comprises only the buildings at the manor site and a
few cottages, one of which housed the Three Cocks
inn by 1824 (fn. 36) and until the Second World War. (fn. 37)
Doughton, on the Bristol road, has two substantial
farm-houses, basically of the 17th century, a few
later cottages, and the large early-17th-century
manor-house. The only ancient outlying farmstead
in the parish is the Grange on the east boundary,
which belonged to Kingswood Abbey and was
probably the home of the monks in the 1140s. Of the
other large houses in the outlying areas, Upton
Grove, south-east of Upton, was built by a Tetbury
mercer c. 1680 and Highgrove, north of Doughton,
was built by one of the Pauls at the end of the 18th
century. (fn. 38)
The inclosures produced a number of outlying
farm-houses, mainly north of the town in the former
open fields of Tetbury tithing. One of the earliest
was probably Highfield Farm, where a house was
built by Richard Talboys of Doughton shortly
before 1663 when he conveyed it to two of his
younger sons. Colly Farm further north was also
built in the 17th century and formed the centre of an
estate acquired by the Savage family of the Close,
which added Highfield farm to it in 1766. (fn. 39) Hillsome,
Farm by the Cirencester road, where the house was
rebuilt in Cotswold style c. 1922, (fn. 40) was established
by the early 18th century (fn. 41) on an inclosure made
before 1594. (fn. 42) The original house at Lowfield Farm
was built on inclosures from the Upton fields shortly
before 1683 when it became part of the Upton House
estate. (fn. 43) In the south part of the parish the farmhouses are more widely scattered and appear to have
been established rather later, although Longfurlong
Farm was recorded in 1701. (fn. 44) Hookshouse had been
established by 1777 (fn. 45) and Parsonage Farm probably
dates from an inclosure made at the end of the 18th
century. (fn. 46) Charlton Down (formerly Elmestree
Farm) and Down Farm, two of the farm-houses
designed for the Westonbirt estate by Lewis
Vulliamy, were built in the late 1840s. (fn. 47)