Sherston, Wiltshire
Sherston is a village and civil parish about west of Malmesbury in Wiltshire, England. The parish is bounded to the north by the county boundary with Gloucestershire, and to the southeast by the Fosse Way, a Roman road. The parish includes the hamlets of Easton Town, immediately east of Sherston; Pinkney, further east along the Malmesbury road; and Willesley, to the north. The infant River Avon passes Sherston, Easton Town and Pinkney, on its way to Malmesbury. The parish lies within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. History The Fosse Way, a major Roman road, passes nearby and forms the southeastern boundary of the modern parish. A Romano-British farmhouse from around 350 was discovered at Vancelettes Farm, north of Sherston village. The earliest surviving record of Sherston, then called ''Scorranstone'', is an Anglo-Saxon document of 896. In 1016, a battle between Cnut the Great and a West Saxon army on the hills around Sherston may have involved a loc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wiltshire Council
Wiltshire Council is a council for the unitary authority of Wiltshire (excluding the separate unitary authority of Swindon) in South West England, created in 2009. It is the successor authority to Wiltshire County Council (1889–2009) and the four district councils of Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, and West Wiltshire, all of which were created in 1974 and abolished in 2009. Establishment of the unitary authority The ceremonial county of Wiltshire consists of two unitary authority areas, Wiltshire and Swindon, administered respectively by Wiltshire Council and Swindon Borough Council. Before 2009, Wiltshire was administered as a non-metropolitan county by Wiltshire County Council, with four districts, Kennet, North Wiltshire, Salisbury, and West Wiltshire. Swindon, in the north of the county, had been a separate unitary authority since 1997, and on 5 December 2007 the Government announced that the rest of Wiltshire would move to unitary status. This was later put in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sopworth
Sopworth is a small village and civil parish in northwest Wiltshire, England, on the county's border with Gloucestershire. The village lies about west of Sherston and west of Malmesbury. The parish is within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Domesday entry Sopworth is mentioned in the 1086 Domesday Book, its entry falling under section XXXII, The Land of William Deu. It reads: Local government The civil parish does not elect a parish council; instead the first tier of local government is a parish meeting, which all electors are entitled to attend. The parish is in the area of Wiltshire Council unitary authority, which is responsible for all significant local government functions. Parish church The Church of England parish church of St Mary the Virgin is Grade II* listed. Probably begun in the 13th century, it was altered and extended in the 15th century, and restored in 1871 by T.H. Wyatt. Pevsner describes the church as "drastically restored". Built pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Luckington
Luckington is a village and civil parish in the southern Cotswolds, in north-west Wiltshire, England, about west of Malmesbury. The village is on the B4040 road linking Malmesbury and Old Sodbury. The parish is on the county border with Gloucestershire and includes the village of Alderton and the hamlet of Brook End. Geography The Cotswolds are designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) which means it is recognised as containing some of Britain's finest countryside. As such it is protected as a special landscape of national importance. The area covers 790 square miles, of which some 80% is farmland. The region is delineated by the belt of rich limestone – the source of building materials for cottages, fine buildings and churches. The limestone Cotswold stone in the northern Cotswolds is a rich honey coloured brown which gradually grades creamier towards the south at Luckington. Badminton House is just across the county border, about southwest of Luckingt ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wards And Electoral Divisions Of The United Kingdom
The wards and electoral divisions in the United Kingdom are electoral districts at sub-national level, represented by one or more councillors. The ward is the primary unit of English electoral geography for civil parishes and borough and district councils, the electoral ward is the unit used by Welsh principal councils, while the electoral division is the unit used by English county councils and some unitary authorities. Each ward/division has an average electorate of about 5,500 people, but ward population counts can vary substantially. As of 2021 there are 8,694 electoral wards/divisions in the UK. England The London boroughs, metropolitan boroughs and non-metropolitan districts (including most unitary authorities) are divided into wards for local elections. However, county council elections (as well as those for several unitary councils which were formerly county councils, such as the Isle of Wight and Shropshire Councils) instead use the term ''electoral division''. In s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Unitary Authorities Of England
The unitary authorities of England are those local authorities which are responsible for the provision of all local government services within a district. They are constituted under the Local Government Act 1992, which amended the Local Government Act 1972 to allow the existence of counties that do not have multiple districts. They typically allow large towns to have separate local authorities from the less urbanised parts of their counties and originally provided a single authority for small counties where division into districts would be impractical. However, the UK government has more recently proposed the formation of much larger unitary authorities, including a single authority for North Yorkshire, the largest non-metropolitan county in England, at present divided into seven districts. Unitary authorities do not cover all of England. Most were established during the 1990s, though further tranches were created in 2009 and 2019–21. Unitary authorities have the powers and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parish Councils In England
Parish councils are civil local authorities found in England which are the lowest tier of local government. They are elected corporate bodies, with variable tax raising powers, and they carry out beneficial public activities in geographical areas known as civil parishes. There are about 9,000 parish and town councils in England, and over 16 million people live in communities served by them. Parish councils may be known by different styles, they may resolve to call themselves a town council, village council, community council, neighbourhood council, or if the parish has city status, it may call itself a city council. However their powers and duties are the same whatever name they carry.Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 Parish councils receive the majority of their funding by levying a precept upon the council tax paid by the residents of the parish (or parishes) covered by the council. In 2021-22 the amount raised by precept was £616 million. Other fund ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wootton Bassett (UK Parliament Constituency)
Wootton Bassett was a parliamentary borough in Wiltshire, which elected two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons from 1447 until 1832, when the rotten borough was abolished by the Great Reform Act. History The borough consisted of the town of Wootton Bassett, a market town in northern Wiltshire. Even when the borough was created by Henry VI it was a town of little consequence, with no significant industry or trade; by the 19th century it suffered from endemic unemployment, and the money to be gained by electoral corruption was probably one of its economic mainstays. In 1831, the population of the borough was approximately 1,500, and contained 349 houses. The right to vote was exercised by all inhabitant householders paying scot and lot. At the last contested election, this amounted to 309 eligible voters, of whom 228 cast valid votes; in other words, only a comparatively small proportion of households were excluded from the franchise. The local landowners were gen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thomas Estcourt Cresswell
Thomas Estcourt Cresswell (12 July 1712 – 14 November 1788) was an English landowner and politician. Biography He was the son of Richard Cresswell (MP for Bridgnorth and then Wootton Bassett) and his wife Elizabeth Estcourt, daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Estcourt, of Pinkney Park, near Malmesbury in Wiltshire. He began his career as a merchant trading with China and India, but ceased this occupation around 1732. He inherited the heavily encumbered Pinkney Park estate in 1743 from his father. Cresswell was returned as Member of Parliament for Wootton Bassett from 1754 to 1774. He died at his seat in Pinkney Park on 14 November 1788. He had gained a degree of notoriety as a bigamist after his marriage in February 1744 to a wealthy heiress, Miss Anne Warneford, granddaughter and eventual heir of Sir Edmund Warneford of Sevenhampton and Bibury, Gloucestershire. Anne had married Cresswell in good faith and had borne him two children but another woman, his cousin Elizabe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Norton, Wiltshire
Norton is a small village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about southwest of Malmesbury. The parish includes the hamlets of Foxley and Bremilham (also known as Cowage). The Sherston branch of the Bristol Avon forms the north boundary of the parish. History Bronze Age ring ditches and signs of early medieval or Saxon settlement are in the east of the parish, near Cowage Farm. The Fosse Way Roman road forms the west boundary of the parish, where it is a bridleway. The east–west road between Malmesbury and Sherston passes through Foxley and Bremilham. From the late 17th century until 1756 this was the main route between Oxford and Bristol. Foxley and Bremilham were separate ecclesiastical parishes until 1893 when Bremilham was united with Foxley. In 1934 Foxley (with Bremilham) was transferred to the civil parish of Norton. Religious sites Norton The Anglican Church of All Saints at Norton is Grade II listed. There was probably a church in the 13th century, wh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Cresswell (politician)
Richard Cresswell (1688–1743) was an English landowner and politician. The first son of a "roaring Shropshire squire" Richard Cresswell of Sidbury, Shropshire and his wife Mary Moreton, and grandson of a staunch Cavalier, also named Richard Cresswell (formerly a page to Charles I); Cresswell was nicknamed "Black Dick Cresswell". He had inherited his father's unstable traits, but also his grandfather's loyalism. His father, having been disinherited, was described as "a perfect madman", "a Judas and devil incarnate" by his son-in-law, who when obliged to stay with the family for a time at Sidbury, wrote that "to live with him (Cresswell the elder) is to live in Bedlam, for he is made up of noise, nonsense, railing, bawling and impertinence....". Richard Cresswell succeeded in 1708 to his grandfather's very considerable estates, including several manors in Staffordshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire. By the time he married, Cresswell was already enjoying a reputation as a "gidd ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Thomas Estcourt (died 1702)
Sir Thomas Estcourt (c1645–1702) of Pinkney, near Sherston in Wiltshire, was an English landowner and politician. He was the son of Sir Thomas Estcourt (d. 1683) of Sherston Pinkney, master in Chancery, by his first wife Magdalen, daughter of Sir John Browne of East Kirkby, Lincolnshire. He matriculated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford in 1661, aged 16, and was admitted to Lincoln's Inn the following year. He served as high steward of Malmesbury, was elected to sit in parliament for the town in 1673 and was knighted in 1674. In 1678, then living in Chelsea, he married Mary, daughter of Sir Vincent Corbet, 1st Baronet. Although a Court supporter in parliament, he was charged with complicity in the Rye House Plot and withdrew to Flanders in the entourage of the Duke of York. He regained his Malmesbury seat at James II's accession, but was inactive. He lost the election at Malmesbury in 1690, but narrowly won at Bath in 1695. He stood down in 1698 in favour of his Wiltshire neighbour Alexa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |