Hawkesbury is a hamlet 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. Civil parishes can trace their origin to the ancient system of parishes, w ...

South Gloucestershire South Gloucestershire is a unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of Gloucestershire, South West England. Towns in the area include Yate, Chipping Sodbury, Kingswood, Thornbury, Filton, Patchway and Bradley Stoke. The southern p ...

, England. The hamlet, consisting of a few cottages around a triangular green, lies west of Hawkesbury Upton, off the

A46 road The A46 is a major A road in England. It starts east of Bath, Somerset and ends in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, but it does not form a continuous route. Large portions of the old road have been lost, bypassed, or replaced by motorway developme ...

. The civil parish includes Hawkesbury itself, the larger village of Hawkesbury Upton and the hamlets of

Dunkirk Dunkirk ( ; ; ; Picard language, Picard: ''Dunkèke''; ; or ) is a major port city in the Departments of France, department of Nord (French department), Nord in northern France. It lies from the Belgium, Belgian border. It has the third-larg ...

, Petty France and Little Badminton. At the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,235, increasing to 1,263 at the 2011 census. Prior to 1991, what is now the

Hillesley and Tresham Hillesley and Tresham is a civil parish in the Stroud District of Gloucestershire, England. It had a population of 591 according to the 2001 census, decreasing to 391 at the 2011 census. The parish contains the villages of Hillesley and Tresham ...

parish in

Stroud District Stroud District is a local government district in Gloucestershire, England. The district is named after its largest town of Stroud. The council is based at Ebley Mill in the district of Cainscross, west of central Stroud. The district also ...

formed the northern part of the parish. The parish is in Cotswold Edge

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected t ...

, which stretches south to Tormarton. The Cotswold Way passes the two settlements and north of Hawkesbury, just east of the Cotswold Way, is a slim tower, the Somerset Monument (picture on the right).

History

John Marius Wilson John Marius Wilson (c. 1805–1885) was a British writer and an editor, most notable for his gazetteers. The '' Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales'' (published 1870–1872), was a substantial topographical dictionary in six volumes. It was ...

described 19th-century Hawkesbury in his '' Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales'' as a "tything, a parish, and a sub-district, in Chipping-Sodbury district, Gloucester…has a post office, of the name of Hawkesbury-Upton, under Chippenham, a police station, and a fair on the last Friday of Aug." The population of Hawkesbury at that time was 466 and the town had 108 houses. Together with the

tithings A tithing or tything was a historic English legal, administrative or territorial unit, originally ten hides (and hence, one tenth of a hundred). Tithings later came to be seen as subdivisions of a manor or civil parish. The tithing's leader or s ...

of Upton, Hillesley, Little Badminton, and Saddlewood-with-Tresham and Killcott, the parish of Hawkesbury had a population of 2,173 in 499 houses. Hawkesbury was a rural parish in

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( , ; abbreviated Glos.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by Herefordshire to the north-west, Worcestershire to the north, Warwickshire to the north-east, Oxfordshire ...

, in which agriculture and animal husbandry were economically dominant. The climate in southwestern Gloucestershire was partial to raising potatoes, along with domesticated animals. Cattle and sheep were important to the livelihood of the residents of Hawkesbury, and a fair was held on the last Friday of August for the sale of those animals. The raising of sheep was a principal source of income, primarily for their wool. Homes constructed along streams aided in the wool production industry as it provided water necessary for dying and washing. This water also provided means to grind corn in grist mills and finish cloth in

fulling Fulling, also known as tucking or walking ( Scots: ''waukin'', hence often spelt waulking in Scottish English), is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of woven cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate ( lanolin) oils, ...

mills.http://www.hawkesburylocalhistorysociety.co.uk/windmill.html Hawkesbury Local History Society,"Hawkesbury Upton’s Mill"

Religious sites

The Church of St Mary was built in the 12th century. It is a Grade I

listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

Monument

There is a monument (the ' Somerset Monument') on the Cotswold Edge at . The monument was erected in 1846 to commemorate General Lord Edward Somerset, a soldier son of the 5th

Duke of Beaufort Duke of Beaufort ( ) is a title in the Peerage of England. It was created by Charles II in 1682 for Henry Somerset, 3rd Marquess of Worcester, a descendant of Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, legitimised son of Henry Beaufort, 3rd D ...

(whose ancestral home is at Badminton), who had served with distinction at Waterloo. The first keeper of the monument was Shadrack Byfield, a one-armed veteran of the Anglo-American

War of 1812 The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...

, whose memoirs of that conflict have achieved a measure of fame.

References

External links

*http://www.hawkesburyhistory.com/ {{South Gloucestershire Villages in South Gloucestershire District Civil parishes in Gloucestershire