Weston-sub-Edge (also known as Weston Subedge) is a village 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 ...

, England.

History

This Cotswold village, recorded 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 manus ...

, lies at the foot of Dover's Hill. Named after Robert Dover who organised his ‘Olimpick’ Games there from 1612, it is a well-known beauty spot with extensive views over the surrounding countryside. The

Cotswold Olimpick Games The Cotswold Olimpick Games is an annual public celebration of games and sports now held on the Friday after Spring Bank Holiday near Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. The games likely began in 1612 and ran (through a period of dis ...

, held annually, were revived in 1966. The Bowling Club, formed in 1987, has adopted certain features – their blazer badge is the silver castle (presented then as a prize in some events) while Robert Dover can be seen on the men's ties. The designs are taken from the frontispiece to the “Annalia Dubrensia”, a book of poems written in praise of Robert Dover and published in 1636. The hill was gifted to The

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

in 1928 and lies within the Cotswolds AONB. The Romans occupied Weston from the 2nd Century AD, a date based on coins and pottery found in the village. Their

Ryknild Street Icknield Street or Ryknild Street is a Roman road in England, with a route roughly south-west to north-east. It runs from the Fosse Way at Bourton on the Water in Gloucestershire () to Templeborough in South Yorkshire (). It passes through A ...

(now called Buckle Street) forms the parish boundary with Saintbury and provided a link with

Watling Street Watling Street is a historic route in England that crosses the River Thames at London and which was used in Classical Antiquity, Late Antiquity, and throughout the Middle Ages. It was used by the ancient Britons and paved as one of the main ...

and The Fosse Way. Weston, said to have been a station for the Imperial Post, lies roughly halfway between

Alcester Alcester () is a market town and civil parish of Roman origin at the junction of the River Alne and River Arrow in the Stratford-on-Avon District in Warwickshire, England, approximately west of Stratford-upon-Avon, and 7 miles south of Reddit ...

and Slaughter Bridge, near

Bourton-on-the-Water Bourton-on-the-Water is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England, that lies on a wide flat vale within the Cotswolds Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The village had a population of 3,296 at the 2011 census. Much of the village ...

, where Ryknild joins the Fosse. There are three listed

Romano-British The Romano-British culture arose in Britain under the Roman Empire following the Roman conquest in AD 43 and the creation of the province of Britannia. It arose as a fusion of the imported Roman culture with that of the indigenous Britons, ...

sites in the village, including one just below the Lynches Wood. It is said that the Romans grew their vines on the clearly defined terraces there. Not far from the hill is the Kiftsgate Stone, the stone pillar marking the Kiftsgate

Hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 and preceding 101. In medieval contexts, it may be described as the short hundred or five score in order to differentiate the English and Germanic use of "hundred" to des ...

. It is an

ancient monument In British law, an ancient monument is an early historical structure or monument (e.g. an archaeological site) worthy of preservation and study due to archaeological or heritage interest. The ''Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 ...

. Here in Saxon times, the Court of the Hundred met and public announcements were proclaimed. The Stone can be seen on the boundary of Weston Park, almost 200 acres of ancient woodland, first sold from the Giffard Estate in 1610. It still remains in private hands. A

boundary stone A boundary marker, border marker, boundary stone, or border stone is a robust physical marker that identifies the start of a land boundary or the change in a boundary, especially a change in direction of a boundary. There are several other t ...

at the south end of the parish was erected in the 18th century and has been designated as a

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 ...

. The manor house, next to the church, was built in the late 17th century. The village has some stone houses and a public house, called the Seagrave Arms which was built in the 17th century. In 1981 a

Civil War A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies ...

coin hoard (the Weston-sub-Edge hoard) comprising 309 coins sealed in a lead pipe was found in a building then used as the village hall. The school, built in 1852, was closed in 1985, and the small post office closed in 2008. Weston-sub-Edge railway station is a disused station on the

Honeybourne Line The Gloucestershire Warwickshire Steam Railway (GWR, GWSR or Gloucs-Warks Steam Railway) is a volunteer-run heritage railway which runs along the Gloucestershire/Worcestershire border of the Cotswolds, England. The GWSR has restored and reo ...

from to Cheltenham which served the village between 1904 and 1960.

Name

The exact spelling of the name is inconsistent, with several variants being used. The

refers to Westone, but the

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

currently use the spelling Weston Subedge, and that is the spelling used by the government in its statutory instruments. However the Parish Council now uses the hyphenated version. The hyphenated version appeared on all of the railway timetables when the

was active, as is shown in the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-1872. To add to the problem, Royal Mail use a spelling of Weston-Subedge on postal addresses.

Industry

As well as a few local businesses, Weston Industrial Estate just north of the village provides a number of specialist businesses. The site of the estate was originally developed as a service area for

RAF Honeybourne Royal Air Force Honeybourne or RAF Honeybourne was a Royal Air Force station located south of Honeybourne, Worcestershire, England and east of Evesham, Worcestershire, England The station was operational from 1940 or 1941 to 1946 or 15 Nove ...

and a number of the original buildings from the 1940s are still recognizable today. The area contained the CO's office,

NAAFI The Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes (NAAFI ) is a company created by the British government on 9 December 1920 to run recreational establishments needed by the British Armed Forces, and to sell goods to servicemen and their families. It runs ...

and Sergeants Mess well away from the main runways and taxi areas.

Religious sites

The church of St Lawrence was built in the 13th century. It underwent

Victorian restoration The Victorian restoration was the widespread and extensive refurbishment and rebuilding of Church of England churches and cathedrals that took place in England and Wales during the 19th-century reign of Queen Victoria. It was not the same proc ...

Frederick Preedy Frederick Preedy (2 June 1820 – 28 March 1898) was an architect and glass painter in England. Life Preedy was born in Offenham near Evesham in Worcestershire and died at his son's home in Croydon. During his early life his family moved from ...

in the 1850s. The

lych gate A lychgate, also spelled lichgate, lycugate, lyke-gate or as two separate words lych gate, (from Old English ''lic'', corpse), also ''wych gate'', is a gateway covered with a roof found at the entrance to a traditional English or English-style ch ...

was added in 1922 by

Norman Jewson Norman Jewson (12 February 1884 – 28 August 1975) was an English architect-craftsman of the Arts and Crafts movement, who practised in the Cotswolds. He was a distinguished, younger member of the group which had settled in Sapperton, Glouce ...

Exclave

The civil parish of Weston-sub-Edge is one of the few left in England to have a detached portion. The northern part of the parish is separated by a narrow strip of Aston Subedge's land.

References

External links

Parish Council guide to and information about Weston-sub-Edge
{{authority control Villages in Gloucestershire Civil parishes in Gloucestershire Cotswold District Enclaves and exclaves