Rudgeway is a village in

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 ...

in south west England, located between

Alveston Alveston is a village, civil parish and former royal manor in South Gloucestershire, England, inhabited in 2014 by about 3,000 people. The village lies south of Thornbury and north of Bristol. Alveston is twinned with Courville sur E ...

and

Almondsbury Almondsbury () is a large village near junction 16 of the M5 motorway, in South Gloucestershire, England, and a civil parish which also includes the villages of Hortham, Gaunt's Earthcott, Over, Easter Compton, Compton Greenfield, Hallen and ...

on the A38 trunk road. It lies west of Earthcott, Latteridge, Iron Acton and

Yate Yate is a town and civil parish in South Gloucestershire, England. It lies just to the southwest of the Cotswold Hills and is northeast of Bristol city centre and from the centre of Bath, with regular rail services to Bristol and Gloucester. ...

on the B4059 road.

Etymology

The name Rudgeway refers to a local section of Roman road known as the Ridge Way or Rudge Way which ran through it on the path now followed by the A38. The road started in what is now the Sea Mills area of

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

, near the present-day site of Sea Mills railway station, and ran in a north-north-easterly direction via the Ridge Way section towards

Gloucester Gloucester ( ) is a cathedral city and the county town of Gloucestershire in the South West of England. Gloucester lies on the River Severn, between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, east of Monmouth and east ...

. The name of the village has appeared on various documents throughout history as Rugewei (in 1191), Rugweye (1248), Rigweye (1276) and as both Rudgeway and Rudgewaye in 1587.

The village

Rudgeway is located in the parish of

and is spread out along the upper edge of the escarpment above the

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 ...

floodplain on the A38 road. It lies approximately north of the

Almondsbury Interchange The Almondsbury Interchange in South Gloucestershire, is one of the United Kingdom's largest motorway stack interchanges. The interchange is one of only three four-level stacks in the UK, spanning a range (including slip roads) of 1 km ...

between the villages of

and Alveston, to the north of Bristol. The village contains a small number of listed buildings, including the grade II-listed Old Church Farm. Formerly known as Alveston Manor, it was originally built as a house for the Veel family in the late 16th century and features their coat of arms above the front door along with the year 1634. By the end of the 18th century it was being used as a farmhouse and in 1960 the property was purchased by the aircraft engine manufacturer Bristol Siddeley, who were later purchased by and almagamated into Rolls-Royce Limited. Rolls-Royce used the property as a conference centre and for visitors' accommodation until 2017 when it was bought from them and converted into a hotel. Within the grounds of Old Church Farm is the ruin of St Helen's Church, which is also grade II-listed. All that remains of the building now is the tower and a portion of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

wall. The remains of the church are also a

scheduled monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

. The neighbouring Pypers estate also has a number of buildings and structures that are all grade II-listed. These include main house itself, originally built in the late 18th century with additions made in the 19th and 20th centuries and built in the classical style, the entrance gates and surrounding piers and walls, and the stables and adjacent wall and piers. The only other listed building in Rudgeway is the Grade II Tockington Park Farmhouse. Built in the 17th century and extended in the nineteenth, its barn is said to contain a portion of Roman wall. A small former

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

chapel, known as Ebenezer Chapel, was built in the village in 1896 and closed in 2001 and has since been converted into a private dwelling. There is one pub in Rudgeway, ''The Masons Arms'', which lies at the northern edge of the village on the A38 Gloucester Road. The village was formerly home to Silverhill School, an independent preparatory school now based in Winterbourne. The establishment took its name from Silverhill Brake, the road on which it was located, and was based there from 1949 until 1992. Since 1994 the former school building, known as Silverhill, has been home to a

market research Market research is an organized effort to gather information about target markets and customers: know about them, starting with who they are. It is an important component of business strategy and a major factor in maintaining competitiveness. Mar ...

and data processing company.

Demographics

The village is split across two UK census Output Areas (numbered E00075103 and E00075104 by the

Office for National Statistics The Office for National Statistics (ONS; cy, Swyddfa Ystadegau Gwladol) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament. Overview The ONS is responsible for t ...

) which combined were estimated to have a population of 593 in 2015. These output areas covered the village of Rudgeway as well as a few surrounding farms and isolated dwellings. It is an area of relatively low deprivation, with 2019 figures ranking the

Lower Layer Super Output Area ONS codes are geocodes maintained by the United Kingdom's Office for National Statistics to represent a wide range of geographical areas of the UK, for use in tabulating census and other statistical data. These codes are also known as GSS codes, wh ...

in which the village resides as the 21,849th most deprived neighbourhood out of the 32,844 in England in terms of

Index of Multiple Deprivation Index (or its plural form indices) may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Index (''A Certain Magical Index''), a character in the light novel series ''A Certain Magical Index'' * The Index, an item on a Halo megastru ...

, putting it in the 40% least deprived areas nationally. This was a big fall from 2015 when it was ranked 29,860th, putting it in the 10% least deprived areas of England.

References

External links

{{South Gloucestershire Villages in South Gloucestershire District