WHY MINSTERWORTH IS SUCH A LONG VILLAGE?
So many times I’ve been asked why Minsterworth is such a long strung-out village. Undoubtedly, the presence of the River Severn and of the main roadway has influenced development (the road was turnpiked in 1726), but the origins of the matter are more historic and go back at least to Anglo Saxon times.
The Domesday Book commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086 describes the lands controlled by Anglo Saxon lords before the Normans took control and it provides us with a good idea of what the area we now think of as Minsterworth looked like. According to Domesday, the area of Minsterworth comprised three separate manorial estates each with its own community, two small ones known as Murcott and Dunny and the third larger one un-named but identifiable by analysis as Minsterworth.
Thus we have a picture of three separate hamlets or communities under different manorial lords.
This situation continued through much of the medieval period with all three estates being held by the abbey of St Peter’s Gloucester but under the over-lordship of the Crown and then of the Duchy of Lancaster. By the 13th century a parish church was set up to serve this collection of settlements and this too had the effect of bringing them closer together as a single parish.
Following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, the lands of Minsterworth were redistributed or sold off by the Crown to wealthy new owners and we begin to see the development of a single manor of Minsterworth. Its centre and manor house was probably near to the church, very likely where Tithe Cottage now stands. By 1757 when Sir Charles Barrrow acquired the rights to the manor and set up his grand residence at Hygrove, Minsterworth was effectively a single manor estate and a consolidated settlement stretching from Murcott in the north-east down to Dunny in the west.
Terry Moore-Scott
January 2018
The Domesday Book commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086 describes the lands controlled by Anglo Saxon lords before the Normans took control and it provides us with a good idea of what the area we now think of as Minsterworth looked like. According to Domesday, the area of Minsterworth comprised three separate manorial estates each with its own community, two small ones known as Murcott and Dunny and the third larger one un-named but identifiable by analysis as Minsterworth.
Thus we have a picture of three separate hamlets or communities under different manorial lords.
This situation continued through much of the medieval period with all three estates being held by the abbey of St Peter’s Gloucester but under the over-lordship of the Crown and then of the Duchy of Lancaster. By the 13th century a parish church was set up to serve this collection of settlements and this too had the effect of bringing them closer together as a single parish.
Following the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, the lands of Minsterworth were redistributed or sold off by the Crown to wealthy new owners and we begin to see the development of a single manor of Minsterworth. Its centre and manor house was probably near to the church, very likely where Tithe Cottage now stands. By 1757 when Sir Charles Barrrow acquired the rights to the manor and set up his grand residence at Hygrove, Minsterworth was effectively a single manor estate and a consolidated settlement stretching from Murcott in the north-east down to Dunny in the west.
Terry Moore-Scott
January 2018