Birtsmorton is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

in the Malvern Hills of

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

, England, which at the 2021 census had a population of 257. It is in the south-west of the county, not far from the borders with

Herefordshire Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthshire ...

and

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

History

The church is dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul and dates from the 14th century. There is a large manor house, Birtsmorton Court, which is used today as a wedding venue. It was the home for many centuries of the Nanfan family, some of whose tombs are in the church. In 1703, the Rev. Samuel Juice, a former rector, endowed a village school in Rye Street. Birtsmorton was the birthplace of the chairmaker

Philip Clissett Philip Clissett (born 8 January 1817, Birtsmorton, Worcestershire, England; died 17 January 1913, Bosbury, Herefordshire) was a Victorian country chairmaker who influenced and inspired the English Arts and Crafts Movement through various arch ...

who lived in the parish from his birth in 1817 until about 1842.

Toponymy

The village belonged to the Le Bret family from the 12th century onwards. ''Bret'' means

Breton Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally ** Breton people ** Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany ** Breton (horse), a breed **Ga ...

. The same family name is associated with

Westonbirt House Westonbirt House is a country house in Gloucestershire, England, about southwest of the town of Tetbury. It belonged to the Holford family from 1665 until 1926. The first house on the site was an Elizabethan manor house. The Holfords r ...

near

Tetbury Tetbury is a town and civil parish inside the Cotswold district in England. It lies on the site of an ancient hill fort, on which an Anglo-Saxon monastery was founded, probably by Ine of Wessex, in 681. The population of the parish was 5,250 in ...

References

Villages in Worcestershire Civil parishes in Worcestershire {{Worcestershire-geo-stub