Hawkesbury is a hamlet consisting of a few cottages around a triangular green. It is also the name of a

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

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, Thornbury, Filton, Patchway and Bradley Stoke, the latter three forming part ...

unitary authority A unitary authority is a local authority responsible for all local government functions within its area or performing additional functions that elsewhere are usually performed by a higher level of sub-national government or the national governmen ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in which Hawkesbury itself lies, it is located west of

Hawkesbury Upton Hawkesbury Upton is a village in South Gloucestershire, England, east of the much smaller Hawkesbury. It lies north of Horton, east of Dunkirk and south of Alderley and Hillesley. Hawkesbury Upton is close to the A46 road. The village lies on ...

, 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 developmen ...

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

Dunkirk Dunkirk (french: Dunkerque ; vls, label=French Flemish, Duunkerke; nl, Duinkerke(n) ; , ;) is a commune in the department of Nord in northern France.Petty France and Little Badminton. According to 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 parish in Stroud District formed the northern part of the parish. The village 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 to t ...

. This ward starts at ''Hawkesbury'' in the north and stretches south to Tormarton. The total population of this parish taken from the 2011 census was 3,381. The

Cotswold Way The Cotswold Way is a long-distance footpath, running along the Cotswold Edge escarpment of the Cotswold Hills in England. It was officially inaugurated as a National Trail on 24 May 2007 and several new rights of way have been created. His ...

passes by the two settlements. There is a monument (the ' Somerset Monument') on the

Cotswold Edge The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Juras ...

at . The monument was erected in 1846 to commemorate General

Lord Edward Somerset General Lord Robert Edward Henry Somerset (19 December 17761 September 1842) was a British soldier who fought during the Peninsular War and the War of the Seventh Coalition. Life Somerset was the third son of Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beauf ...

. He was a soldier son of the 5th

Duke of Beaufort Duke of Beaufort (), a title in the Peerage of England, 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 Duke of So ...

, (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 (18 June 1812 – 17 February 1815) was fought by the United States of America and its indigenous allies against the United Kingdom and its allies in British North America, with limited participation by Spain in Florida. It bega ...

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

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 1870–72), was a substantial topographical dictionary in six volumes. It was a c ...

described nineteenth century Hawkesbury in his ''

Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales The ''Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales'' is a substantial topographical dictionary first published between 1870 and 1872, edited by the Reverend John Marius Wilson. It contains a detailed description of England and Wales. Its six volumes h ...

'' 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 included 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 with 499 houses Hawkesbury was a rural parish in

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 ...

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 as there was a fair held on last Friday in 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 A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that has been separat ...

and finish cloth in

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

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 or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

References

External links

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