Barnwood
 

Barnwood : Local Government

A court roll of Barnwood manor survives for 1292, when the court was attended by the abbey's Cranham tenants and dealt with estate matters, including the care of woodland. ⁷⁸ By 1558 the court was held, sometimes in the church house, ⁷⁹ by the lord farmer and was attended by the Wotton and Cranham tenants, who made their presentments separately. In the period 1558-71 the court usually met twice a year and was concerned with tenures, the collection of pig tack or pannage, the maintenance of ditches, driftways, and footbridges, and infringement of common pasture rights. ⁸⁰ In the years 1726-47 and 1774-1867, for which there are court books and a record of a 1796 court of survey, the court's business was almost exclusively tenurial. The court met frequently at the Salutation inn and from 1783 was held by the dean and chapter. ⁸¹ In 1821 Dudstone hundred court ordered the dean and chapter to provide stocks and a pound at Barnwood. ⁸²

The parish had two churchwardens in 1543 ⁸³ and two surveyors of the highways in 1665. ⁸⁴ The churchwardens received the rent from Barnwood common in the mid 18^th century. ⁸⁵ The accounts of the two overseers of the poor for the years 1705 and 17-9-11 survive. ⁸⁶ Annual expenditure on poor relief rose from £110 in 1776 to £292 in 1803. In the early 19^th century the number of persons receiving regular help, 30 in 1803, fell and the cost of relief was kept down despite a considerable increase in the number receiving aid occasionally, 16 in 1803, and 105 in 1815. ⁸⁷ In the early 1830's the annual cost averaged £139. ⁸⁸ The parish, which until 1799 had used the church house as a poorhouse, ⁸⁹ built ten small poorhouses with gardens at the east end of the village in the early 19^th century. Those houses were sold to J.W. Walters, ⁹⁰ after the parish joined the Gloucester poor-law union in 1835. ⁹¹ Barnwood was later part of Gloucester rural district until absorbed by the city in 1967. ⁹²

Notes :-
78         Glos. R.O., D 936A/M 1, rot. 3d.
79         P.R.O., E 134/40 Eliz. I. Hil./3.
80         Glos. R.O., D 1815, Barnwood, Wotton, Cranham and Tuffley ct. rolls 1558-71.
81         Ibid. D 936/M 1/1-3; M 5.
82         Ibid. D 326/M 22.
83            Hockaday Abs. xxix. 1543 subsidy, f. 5; xliv, 1572 visit. F. 14.
84         Glos. R.O., Q/SIb 1, f. 69.
85         Ibid. D 1740/E 3, f. 74.
86         Ibid. P 35/IN 1/1.
87         Poor Law Abstract, 1804,176-7; 1818, 150-1.  
88         Poor Law Returns (1835), 67.
89         Glos. R.O., Q/RI 70; cf. Ibid. (map L, no. 35); P 35/IN 1/1, bapt. 22 Mar. 1785.
90         Ibid. Q/RI 70 (map I, no. 21); G/GL 8A/3, p. 81.
91         Poor Law Com. 1^st Rep. p. 251.
92                 Census, 1961-71.

 Source: Quoted from the Victoria County History, Gloucestershire, volume 4, page 417, by permission of the General Editor. Submitted by Alan Longbottom

Page updated August 06, 2007 by Rossbret