LONGTREE HUNDRED
In 1086 Longtree hundred comprised Avening, Cherington, Horsley, Lasborough,
Minchinhampton, Rodmarton (and its hamlets of Hazleton and Culkerton),
Shipton Moyne, Tetbury (and its hamlet of Upton), Westonbirt, and Woodchester; the hundred was assessed at a total of 98½ hides and 13 yardlands. (fn. 1)
Tarlton, later a hamlet of Rodmarton, was included under Cirencester hundred and the
greater part of the two estates mentioned was probably within Coates parish. (fn. 2) A hide in
Woodchester was included under Blacklow hundred (fn. 3) although all of the parish later
lay in Longtree. Otherwise the constituents of the hundred have remained unchanged.
Rodborough, originally part of Minchinhampton, emerged as a separate parish, and
Westonbirt and Lasborough later formed a single parish for civil purposes. Nailsworth,
a new civil parish created in 1892 out of parts of Avening, Horsley, and Minchinhampton, is given a separate history in this volume.
Longtree hundred was one of the group known as the Seven Hundreds of Cirencester, (fn. 4) which were apparently administered with the royal manor of Cirencester before
1189 when Richard I granted them with the manor to Cirencester Abbey. The abbey
held them, for a fee-farm rent of £30, (fn. 5) until the Dissolution and in 1547 they were
granted to Thomas Seymour, Lord Seymour of Sudeley, who was attainted and
executed in 1549. (fn. 6) In 1552 the Crown granted them to Sir Anthony Kingston (fn. 7) (d. 1556)
who was succeeded by his niece Frances, wife of Sir Henry Jerningham. (fn. 8) In 1559
Henry and Frances sold the hundreds to Sir Thomas Parry (fn. 9) and they afterwards
followed the same descent as Bisley hundred. (fn. 10)
Cirencester Abbey held the Seven Hundreds with wide-ranging liberties, of which
view of frankpledge, return of writs, infangthief, and custody of prisoners were
confirmed by Edward III in 1343, (fn. 11) and felons' and fugitives' goods by Richard II in
1391. (fn. 12) Thomas Parry successfully defended his right to those liberties in 1569 (fn. 13) and
Sir Robert Atkyns challenged the sheriff of the county for infringing his right to return
writs in the 1670s. (fn. 14)
Two of the manors of Longtree hundred secured full quittance of the hundred
jurisdiction. Cherington was a member of the honor of Wallingford, the lord of which
held the view and exercised his other wide liberties in the manor. (fn. 15) The lords of Tetbury
had view of frankpledge, infangthief, and waif by ancient right in 1287 (fn. 16) and later
claimed felons' and fugitives' goods, although that claim was challenged by the lord of
the hundred in 1688. (fn. 17) In four other manors the rights of the lord of the hundred were
limited. The lord of Shipton Moyne laid claim unsuccessfully to gallows in 1223 and
c. 1235 the abbot of Cirencester made an agreement with him over their respective
rights; the biannual view of frankpledge for the manor was to be held in the manor
court by the abbot's bailiffs and the lord of the manor was to have the amercements,
paying an annual composition. (fn. 18) A similar agreement about the view was made with
Troarn Abbey in 1255 or 1256 about Horsley manor, where the abbot of Cirencester's
bailiffs had been prevented from holding the view for 40 years. (fn. 19) Like agreements were
made with Caen Abbey for its manors of Minchinhampton and Avening c. 1270 and
with the lord of Woodchester at some time before the early 15th century. (fn. 20) In the
Caen manors and Woodchester the abbot of Cirencester's rights were also curtailed
by the lords' right to gallows and other liberties. (fn. 21)
The remaining places in the hundred were represented at the biannual hundred
view of frankpledge; for that purpose Lasborough, Westonbirt, and Shipton Dovel in
Shipton Moyne parish each formed single tithings, and Rodmarton was represented
by its tithings of Rodmarton Trowbridge, Rodmarton Keynes, and Culkerton. The
meeting-place, described as at Chavenage Down in the early 15th century, (fn. 22) was
evidently Chavenage Green where the Cotswold ridgeway met a number of important
local roads. (fn. 23) There presumably stood the tall tree which gave its name to the hundred
and to Longtree Bottom, the valley running north from the green. The view was
probably still being held there in the later 16th century when the tithings made
presentments and paid cert money at views held in spring and autumn; at one of the
views representatives of Shipton, Horsley, Minchinhampton, and Woodchester
attended to pay cert money and ask for the lord's bailiffs to be sent to hold the view in
those manors. (fn. 24) The custom of wardstaff, involving watching duty on certain nights of
the year, was recorded in 1394; it was apparently limited to the tithings which attended
the view (fn. 25) and they owed a 2d. fine called wake in the later 16th century, evidently in
place of it. In the late 16th century the ordinary three-weekly sessions of the hundred
court, dealing mainly with pleas of debt, were held at Cirencester, one court meeting
for the whole Seven Hundreds. (fn. 26) Those sessions, and perhaps later the view as well,
were held at Cirencester until 1792 when replaced by a court of requests. (fn. 27) Court rolls
for the Seven Hundreds survive for the period 1558-69 and for 1573-4. (fn. 28)
The parishes of Longtree hundred extend from the river Frome on the north to the
county boundary with Wiltshire on the south-east and south. In the north-west part of
the hundred the Nailsworth stream and its tributaries form deep valleys which in
places are still thickly wooded; other woodland, on the hills above, was cleared over the
centuries by the exercise of customary rights by the tenants of the manors. The
remainder of the hundred is formed by arid and mainly treeless plateau-land which was
farmed as extensive open fields and sheep-pastures. The buildings are of the local
oolite and include numerous clothiers' houses in the north-western valleys and some
substantial country houses in the south.
A network of ancient tracks, including the Great Cotswold ridgeway and some
Roman roads, crossed the plateau in the south part of the hundred. Later the road
system centred on routes to Cirencester, from Stroud across Minchinhampton common,
from Wotton under Edge following part of the ridgeway, and, most important, from
Bristol through Tetbury; the Tetbury-Stroud route, linking those three, was also of
growing importance. The valleys of the Nailsworth area suffered from poor communications until 1780 when the new Bath-Gloucester road was built and others improved, and
further improvements to the road system in the valleys were made in the early 19th
century. The Swindon-Gloucester railway line was built along the Frome valley, but
the railway system penetrated the hundred only by branch lines to Nailsworth and
Tetbury, both closed in the 1960s.
Longtree Hundred 1845
In the early Middle Ages settlements were fairly evenly spread over the hundred but
later the industrialization of the north-western valleys and the depopulation of some of
the smaller settlements in the south and east parts upset the balance. Tetbury, the
principal town, was established as a borough and market town c. 1200 and in the 17th
and 18th centuries enjoyed considerable prosperity, based on its market for wool and
agricultural produce and on its wool-stapling industry. Minchinhampton was also a
market town with a local trade, although it never rivalled Tetbury. The land around
those two centres was used extensively for sheep-farming in the Middle Ages,
particularly by the monastic landowners, Caen Abbey, Kingswood Abbey, and Bruton
Priory. The north-western valleys came to be dominated by the cloth-making industry
and shared the characteristics of Bisley hundred to the north. New hamlets of weavers'
cottages were established around Nailsworth, where they proved a fruitful field for the
nonconformist churches, and around Minchinhampton common. Rodborough,
Woodchester, and Nailsworth in particular were dominated by their numerous clothmills and by clothier families such as the Webbs, Hallidays, and Pauls. In the hundred
as a whole, however, the landowning families, including the Ducies, and lesser families
such as the Sheppards, Stephenses, and Coxes, remained an important influence.
In the 19th century the industrial development of the north-western valleys continued. The cloth industry, based on fewer and larger mills, remained an important
source of employment, and after the middle of the century new industries were
introduced, including pin-making, stick-making, iron-founding, flock- and shoddymaking, and bacon-curing. Some of those and most of the surviving cloth-making
businesses were replaced in the 20th century by industries such as chemicals, light
engineering, and plastics. Nailsworth grew into a small town in the 19th century, and
from the late years of the century Rodborough was encroached on by the suburbs of
Stroud, and Minchinhampton was developed as a residential area. In the south and
east parts of the hundred in contrast life retained a traditional pattern in the 19th
century. Tetbury stagnated, and the landowning families, particularly the Estcourts at
Shipton Moyne and the Holfords at Westonbirt, retained their dominance over their
parishes. In the 1970s, although Tetbury had undergone some expansion, that part of
the hundred remained sparsely populated and still centred mainly on its estates and
large farms.