Bromyard

Bromyard is a town in Herefordshire, England, in the valley of the River Frome. It lies near the county border with Worcestershire on the A44 between Leominster and Worcester. Bromyard has a number of traditional half-timbered buildings, including some of the pubs, and the parish church is Norman. For centuries, there was a thriving livestock market. The town is twinned with Athis-de-l'Orne, Normandy.

History

Bromyard is mentioned in Bishop Cuthwulf's charter of c. 840. Cudwulf established a ''monasterium'' at ''Bromgeard'' behind a 'thorny enclosure' with the permission of King Behrtwulf, King of the Mercians. Ealdorman Aelfstan, the local magnate, was granted between 500 and 600 acres of land for a ''villa'' beside the River Frome. The settlement in the Plegelgate Hundred was allocated 30 hides for 'the gap n the forestwhere the deer play.' The county court assembly was on Flaggoner's Green, now a hill in the modern borough and where the cricket club is situated. 42 villani (villeins, villagers), 9 bordars (smallholders), and 8 slaves were recorded in the Domesday Book entry in 1086, one of the largest communities in Herefordshire.

The first mention of the spelling "Bromyard" was in Edward I's ''Taxatio Ecclesiasticus'' on the occasion of a perambulation of the forest boundaries to set up a model for Parlements in 1291. It began to appear regularly in the church and court records of the 14th century.

Like Leominster, Ledbury, and Ross-on-Wye, the town and fair at the manor of Bromyard was probably founded in ''c''1125 during the episcopate of Richard de Capella (1121–1127). As with those other three towns, the bishops of Hereford had had a manor and minster there since Anglo-Saxon times. As at Ledbury the church was collegiate, with an establishment of clergy known as "portioners", but without a master and common seal. Surveys for the bishop made c. 1285 and 1575-80 give valuable information about the town's first few centuries. Bromyard contained 255 burgage and landowner tenancies in the 1280s which paid a total rent of £23 10s 7 1/2d to the bishop. A Toll Shop at Schallenge House ("Pie Powder" from ''pieds a poudre'') was where market tolls were paid and summary jurisdiction dealt out.

After the Reformation (1545) there were 800 communicants making Bromyard then "a markett toune...greately Replenyshed with People", the third town in the county with a population of about 1200 souls. By 1664 Bromyard had fallen behind Leominster, Ledbury and Ross in population. Besides the central town area, the large parish used to consist of the three townships of Winslow, Linton, and Norton; these areas were civil parishes in the 20th century.

During the civil wars, Prince Rupert's troops in March 1645 "brought all their oweron Bromyard and Ledbury side, fell on, plundered every parish and house, poor as well as others, leaving neither clothes nor provision, killed all the young lambs in the country, though not above a week old. Charles I stayed the night in Bromyard at Mrs Baynham's house (now Tower House) on 3 September 1645 on his way to Hereford In 1648, Parliament ordered the sale of the cathedral's property in Bromyard Forrens (i.e. outside the borough) for £594 9s 2d.

Bromyard Grammar School was re-founded in 1566 after the original chantry endowments had been nationalised. In 1656, the City of London Alderman John Perrin, from Bromyard, left the school £20 per annum, to be paid through the Goldsmiths Company. The company improved the school buildings in 1835. The building still stands in Church Street, but the school became part of the first comprehensive school in Herefordshire in 1969, now known as Queen Elizabeth High School. A Congregational Chapel was built in 1701.

Commercial centre

For centuries, market day was always held on a Monday at Bromyard. The market town was a centre for agriculture with a fair for selling produce grown locally; as well as beef, there were hops, apples and pears, and soft fruit remained vital late into the post-war era. Some farms remained in the church's hands until the late 20th century. The carrier system also operated in Bromyard, within a given radius of the Teme to the north, Frome Hill to the east, and Lugg to the south. The dealers brought supplies to the many outlets, pubs, inns, traders and by the 19th century the shops.

In 1751, Bromyard obtained a Turnpike Trust that established a toll road as far as Canon Frome, with some minor roads turnpiked to prevent tax evasion. By 1830 town's fortunes had flagged down to only fifth in the county from second 300 years before; its stage wagons visited only 15 times per week. This reflected its place in the Industrial Revolution which came very late to Bromyard, partly because it took so long to connect the town to the railway system. A sandstone quarry was opened at Linton, just east of the town, in the 1870s, but the hopes for extensive sales of good quality building stone were disappointed and by 1879 it was producing bricks and tiles from the Old Red Sandstone marls. This business continued until the 1970s.

The town's water supply and sanitation was very poor until late in the 19th century; Benjamin Herschel Babbage conducted an inspection in 1850 (as he had the same year for the West Yorkshire town of Haworth). Babbage was horrified by the unsanitary conditions in the town, and reported to the General Board of Health into the town's water supply and lack of a sewerage system. He said that he had "met with considerable opposition to the application of the Public Health Act to this town, from a large number of the inhabitants, upon the ground of the supposed expense of carrying out the sanitary reforms which I found to be so much needed." No action was taken by the town vestry for over twenty years. The town belatedly acquired a piped water supply in 1900.

During World War I, Bromyard was the site of an internment camp, where the Irish nationalist Terence MacSwiney (future Lord Mayor of Cork who would die on hunger strike), was both interned and married.

In World War II, between autumn 1940 and 1945, Westminster School was temporarily relocated to a variety of buildings on the outskirts of the town, principally Buckenhill, and including, for various purposes, Brockhampton
Clater Park
Whitbourne Rectory an
Saltmarshe Castle

From the 1950-60s, the town underwent substantial housing development, including both private and council housing, and shops along the high street flourished serving both Bromyard and surrounding rural communities. A bypass was built and completed in the 1970s to stop traffic along the A44 between Worcester and Leominster having to pass through the town. A community centre, including a public library and leisure centre was opened in the 1990s.

Governance

There are two electoral wards, Bromyard West and Bromyard Bringsty. The latter includes several villages to the north east.
Bromyard borough has a town council. Herefordshire Council is a unitary authority.

Bromyard is one of three market towns (Leominster, Bromyard and Ledbury) in the parliamentary constituency of North Herefordshire. The current member as of the snap general election of 2017 is Conservative Bill Wiggin MP.

Bromyard is served by the Bromyard and Winslow Town Council which has three clerks and a Mayor. It has 18 councillors who are predominately independent

Bromyard and Winslow is a civil parish in Herefordshire. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 4,144, increasing to 4,236 at the 2011 census. The parish contains the town of Bromyard, and Winslow which is a sparsely populated rural area to the west. In 2014 the population was estimated to have risen to 4,600, and increase of about 200 or 4.5%, and 2% higher than the county's average. In 2015 a national influenza and pneumonia epidemic meant that the birth and death rate almost reached parity causing a slow down in the town's population growth. The town centre is considered among the 25% most deprived in the country for older people, irrespective of its relatively low population density.

Culture

The Bromyard & District Local History Society was founded in 1966, with a centre open three days a week which contains an archive, library and an exhibition room.

The Conquest Theatre (run by volunteers) provides a programme of plays, films, variety, musicals, operettas, ballet, pantomime and concerts in a purpose-built centre constructed in 1991.

The Time Museum of Science Fiction is in the centre of Bromyard, housing exhibits from TV programmes including Dr Who, Red Dwarf and Thunderbirds, as well as props from the ''Star Wars'' films.

Bromyard Arts is a not-for-profit enterprise with facilities for artists, craft makers, writers, musicians and performers.

At Christmas time, volunteers known as the Bromyard Light Brigade organise a display of Christmas lights which are put up in October and switched on the last Saturday of November, running for the five weeks up to Christmas until after the New Year. The group established links with Blackpool Illuminations in 2010, and Blackpool's director Richard Ryan performed the switching-on ceremony in the same year; the volunteers were awarded The Queen's Award for Voluntary Services that same year.

Bromyard is the home of "Nozstock: The Hidden Valley Festival", which attracts around 5,000 visitors at the end of July every year. This three-day event showcases bands from around the country across nine stages, alongside dance arenas, a cinema, a theatre and comedy stage, circus, and a vintage tractor arena.

The Bromyard Gala, an annual weekend festival of country sports, vintage vehicles and displays of various kinds, is held in July.

Bromyard holds a three-day folk festival each year in September, which particularly concentrates on English traditional music.

Sports

Sports clubs in Bromyard include Bromyard Town F.C.

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