Purton is a

hamlet ''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts ...

on the west bank of the

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

, in the civil parish of

Lydney Lydney is a town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is on the west bank of the River Severn in the Forest of Dean District, and is 16 miles (25 km) southwest of Gloucester. The town has been bypassed by the A48 road since 199 ...

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 ...

, England. It lies opposite the village of

Purton Purton is a large village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, about northwest of the centre of Swindon. The parish includes the village of Purton Stoke and the hamlets of Bentham, Hayes Knoll, Purton Common, Restrop, The Fox and Widham. Th ...

near Berkeley on the east bank of the river. The name of the place derives from the Old English ''pirige tun'', meaning "pear orchard". It was mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

. Purton was a small port, and there was a ferry across the river, Purton Passage, to the other Purton by 1282. In the late 18th and early 19th century, there was also a ford across the river here. In 1740, the removal of a large rock from the river bed on the Berkeley side caused the river to shift its channel. This meant only a single crossing a day was possible and led to a decline in the trade. The river had returned to its old channel ten years later, although it was altered by another shift in 1761. In the late 18th century and the early 19th the river was often forded at Purton, but some people, misjudging the tide times, were drowned. The ferry continued in use until 1879, when it was replaced by the

Severn Railway Bridge The Severn Railway Bridge (historically called the Severn Bridge) was a bridge carrying the railway across the River Severn between Sharpness and Lydney in Gloucestershire, England. It was built in the 1870s by the Severn Bridge Railway Co ...

. The

manor house A manor house was historically the main residence of the lord of the manor. The house formed the administrative centre of a manor in the European feudal system; within its great hall were held the lord's manorial courts, communal meals ...

is a Grade II*

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 I ...

. It dates from 1618 and lies immediately above the Chepstow/Gloucester railway line which passes in a deep cutting at that point. It has a principal block, of three

storey A storey (British English) or story (American English) is any level part of a building with a floor that could be used by people (for living, work, storage, recreation, etc.). Plurals for the word are ''storeys'' (UK) and ''stories'' (US). T ...

s and three

bays A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

, parallel with the river and a wing which projects to the north-east, with a small extension added in the 19th century.

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked w ...

, in its listing record, describes the manor house as "an important survival, somewhat modified over the centuries". A barn to the west of the manor house is listed at Grade II. Old Severn Bridge House, which Verey and Brooks note was formerly a hotel, is also Grade II listed. To the north of the hamlet, the Purton

Viaduct A viaduct is a specific type of bridge that consists of a series of arches, piers or columns supporting a long elevated railway or road. Typically a viaduct connects two points of roughly equal elevation, allowing direct overpass across a wide v ...

crosses the road from Etloe. Designed in 1830, and contemporary with the

Stockton and Darlington Railway The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. The world's first public railway to use steam locomotives, its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Darli ...

, it was planned as part of a crossing of the Severn, the Purton Steam Carriage Road which was never completed. Historic England consider the viaduct of "considerable historical and industrial archaeological interest".

Footnotes

References

Sources

* * * {{Severn from Gloucester to Bristol Hamlets in Gloucestershire Lydney Forest of Dean