Churcham is an ancient parish of which Highnam, Linton and Over were a part. Located to the west of Gloucester the parish covered an area of 4,264 acres. With the River Severn to the east, the Ley and Long brooks to the south, the River Leadon to the north-east and north and Bulley parish to the north west. Ecclesiastically Bulley retained links with Churcham from an early period. Churcham parish was formerly made up of two manors, Churcham in the west and Highnam in the east. Highnam was formed from the hamlets of Highnam, Linton and Over.
The western manor, known in 1806 as Ham and Morton, was changed in 1100 to Churcham, as a result of the church having been built there. In the same period, the eastern manor of Ham was changed to Highnam, thought to be a reflection of it’s geographic location. Morton, the western part of Churcham, was used until the 14th century. The two manors were both in the ownership of Gloucester Abbey, but retained their individual identity for agricultural, manorial and parish government reasons. This separation was further reinforced by the establishment of the Ecclesiastical parish of Highnam in 1851.
A new civil parish of Churcham was formed in 1935 and was united with Bulley. At the same time, the civil parish of Highnam was established to include Lassington. The boundary of the two parishes followed the historic boundaries of the original two manors. Both manors are fairly flat and, for the most part don’t exceed 100 feet and much of the land was covered by ancient woodland.
It was agreed in 1086 that the Highnam and Churcham manor had sufficient woodland and the hunting rights in three separate enclosures in the Churcham woodland were held by Gloucester Abbey The Churcham manor wood was located at the western and of Churcham and is the area known today as Birdwood. This name was recorded as early as 1267 when woodward service was one of the tenants liabilities (a woodward in feudal terminology was a forrester). There was an office of Woodward of Birdwood was let on a long lease in 1519 and the 1779 the position was salaried. Birdwood was divided between the manors of Churcham and Highnam following the Dissolution.
The area of woodland to the north of the Ross road was still well wooded in 1649 but, as time passed the area was gradually cleared, settled with cottages and became known as Birdwood Common. In 1803 the common covered 289 acres and was primarily to the north of the Gloucester to Ross road. In 1803 the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester as lords of Churcham manor had 44 a. of woodland in Dean’s Wood adjoining Highnam Woods on the eastern boundary of the manor.
Highnam Woods represented the main wooded area in the north west of the Highnam manor. In 1332 Gloucester Abbey was allowed to impark 80 acres. The imparked areas had few trees but Highnam Woods, to the west of the parks, were thickly wooded. The park to the east of Highnam Woods in the 18th Century and part of the Highnam Estate, became known as the Great Park. The park that was further south and close to the Ross road was known as the Little Park. The parks contained few trees but Highnam Woods remained thickly wooded.
The 18th century saw significant planting of ash in the parks followed by several thousand oaks in the latter part of the 18th century. The start of the 19th century saw further planting of larch, fir, beech and chestnut. Much of the little park was wooded by 1841. A pinetum was established by Thomas Gambier Parry in 1844 and by 1863 contained over 300 species of fir. In 1868 Gambier Parry rebuilt the lodge in the woods that had existed since 1770.
Inclosure of the open fields in the Churcham manor was completed by Act of Parliament in 1803. Inclosure of the fields in Highnam manor was a more gradual process being completed by the mid nineteenth century.
The parish of Churcham has cottages and farmsteads mainly situated on lanes leading north and south fro the Gloucester to Ross road. The parish church was built before 1100 on the south side of the main road. Churcham Court was built some 200 years later very close to the church and the lane accessing both was subsequently known as Church Lane. The lane also gave access to Church Lane Farm. The farm house dates back to the 15th century. In 1812 the farm was called Stone End (Stoning) Farm a name that was later transferred to a farm house at a small settlement on the main road to the east. A few cottages are near the settlement, one with a 17th century timber frame also a number of brick cottages built by Thomas Gambier Parry after he purchased Stone End Farm in 1871.
Further east on the Gloucester to Ross road a house stood on its own. Formerly known as Cursleys Farm its name was changed in the early 19th century to Beauchamp House. It is thought that there was a house on this site by 1516 but it is possible that there could have been a house on this site as early as 1267. It is suggested that William de Corsliche may have lived there and was one of Churcham Manor’s tenants. The current house was built around 1740 and featured the central gabled projection seen on the current house.
Oakle Street runs south fro the main road and in 1803 contained six farm houses and various cottages that were rebuilt in brick during the 19th century. The Oakle Street hotel was built, just north of the railway bridge and next to the entrance to the old railway station, early in the nineteenth century. Cold Comfort Farm, located off lane to the north of the main road which was originally a small brick cottage was developed in the early 19th century with various extensions and was renamed as Churcham House. An area to the south west of the houses called Upper Moat in 1803 was originally, in 1649, called The Moat. It is suggested that it might be the location of the house of an earlier estate held by Ralph Brown c. 1267.
There is evidence that there was some settlement in the Birdwood area to the west of Churcham in 1439. Nine cottages were built in the early to mid part of the eighteenth century. Only one of these remains today. other houses in the area which are mainly of brick construction are thought to have been built in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By 1803 there were a scattering of houses to the east of the lane from Birdwood to Bulley which included Birdwood House, by the cross-roads, a substantial three storey property. Wood Farm and Birdwood Farm were amongst six houses south of the cross-roads. By 1870 at a house on the north side of the main road, was established to serve Birdwood. it had closed by 1891 at which time the ‘Kings Head’ had opened on the south side of the main road.
Highnam Village was the largest settlement in the eastern part of the parish. Highnam Court, the manor-house of Highnam manor, and its grounds could be found within the fork made by two main roads, the Gloucester-Ross road on the south and on the north-east the Newent road, which was recorded as the great road from Gloucester to Newent in 1228. The main village lay along the lane that linked the two roads west of Highnam Court. That lane was known as Buttington’s Lane in 1607, but by 1841 as Two Mile Lane. (It is also listed as Highnam Lane in census records around that time). At the south end of Buttington’s Lane a wayside cross could be found as recorded in 1532 and 1607 and a small chapel to the north west of the junction was apparently a medieval chapel. In 1607 there were 23 houses on or near Two Mile Lane, most of them concentrated on the north west side. Most of the tenants then held two or three houses and some of the redundant houses had apparently been demolished by c. 1710 when the whole of Highnam village was said to contain only 20 houses. The surviving houses in Two Mile Lane include two 17th-century timber-framed cottages, another house with a timber-framed wing, and Home Farm and Highnam Farm, two early-19th century brick farm-houses. In 1607 two houses stood on Slade’s Lane by the pond called Shoell Pool, and there were four cottages in that area in 1843, later demolished. Another part of Highnam village, comprising 7 houses in 1607, was situated at Highnam Green on the Newent road by the Lassington turning, where three 17th-century timber framed cottages survive with some later brick cottages.
Highnam Village took on a new significance in the early 1850s. It was during this period that Thomas Gambier Parry built a church, school and Glebe House on the Newest Road at the junction with Slade’s Lane. Glebe House, a turreted lodge, or sacristan’s house, of stone in the Gothic style. A Council House, or parish hall, was added to the group by Sir Hubert Parry in 1904. In 1849, when the church was being built, the Newent road, which formerly made a westward bend to run near the site of the church, was diverted further east. The old course of the road with its steep banks was still clearly evident in 1970, its northern part being the footpath to the church. Thomas Gambier Parry also built or rebuilt a number of cottages in the village. They are of brick with rustic details such as lattice windows, dormers, tall chimneys, and decorative barge-boards. Beauchamp Lodge on the Ross road, Rodway hill Lodge on the Newent road, and another cottage at the junction of the two roads, have upper stories of mock timber-framing. A group of three by Home Farm in Two Mile Lane was designed by Jacques of Gloucester, and a pair built at Highnam Green c. 1887 were the work of Thomas’s son Sidney Gambier Parry. From the mid 20th century the main concentration of houses at Highnam has been sited east of the Newent road in the large Maidenhall private development. The estate was planned as a garden suburb for Gloucester in the mid 1930s but only a few houses were built before the Second World War, a much greater number being added in the 1950s.
The hamlet of Over grew up in the east end of the parish by the Severn crossing at Over Bridge. There was evidently a number of houses there by the mid 13th century, and a large moated mansion called the Vineyard had been built north of the main road there by the late 14th century. By 1607 Over contained 21 houses scattered along the main road leading from the bridge, with the greater number on the north side of the road. Only 12 houses, however, were recorded in the hamlet c. 1710. The surviving cottages are all brick buildings of the late 18th and the 19th centuries; several, including two pairs with lattice windows on the north side of the road, were built by Thomas Gambier Parry in the middle years of the 19th century. The Dog Inn, on the north side of the road, had opened by 1760 and in the 18th century was known alternatively as the ‘Talbot’. Parts of the building survive from the 18th century, but the inn was largely rebuilt by Gambier Parry who gave it gables with decorative barge-boards. There were gallows at Over in 1754. A hospital, originally the Gloucester hospital for infectious diseases, was built near the site of the Vineyard c. 1896. Over Farm, a brick building some way to the west of the main hamlet, was one of the chief farms on the Highnam estate from the mid 18th century.
There was a small settlement at Linton, the third hamlet of Highnam manor, by c. 1267 and in 1607 the hamlet had about eight houses including five farm-houses. Five houses were recorded at Linton c. 1710, and c. 1755 three of the six largest farms on the manor had farm-houses at the south end of the lane leading from the Gloucester-Ross road towards the Severn. By 1843 only Linton Cottages survived there, a pair of late 18th or early 19th century brick cottages which were empty and derelict in 1970. Linton Farm, a large rectangular brick farmhouse of the early 19th century situated at the north end of the lane, may have been the new house at Linton which was under construction in 1822.
There was evidently a bridge over the western branch of the Severn at Over from ancient times; it formed the end of the causeway and series of bridges which carried the main road from Gloucester to the west over the various branches of the Severn and the intervening low-lying meadows. The bridge at Over, or perhaps the bridge and causeway, was presumably the ‘long bridge’ which gave its name to the hundred in which Highnam manor lay in 1086, and it was probably the bridge west of Gloucester which was given as the north-eastern bound of the Forest of Dean in 1228. Henry ‘of bridge-end’ was a tenant of Highnam manor c. 1267. Over Bridge was apparently being rebuilt c. 1540 when it was described as a bridge of eight arches not yet completed. Repair of the bridge was the responsibility of the county, and a surveyor of the bridge had been appointed by the magistrates by 1672 and he was receiving a salary in 1690. In 1818 the bridge was reported to be in a bad state of repair, having been badly damaged by ice carried down river in the previous hard winter. The smallness of the arches and the many thick piers also made it a hindrance to navigation.
In 1825 the magistrates commissioned Thomas Telford to draw up plans for a new bridge; he submitted plans for structures of both stone and cast-iron, the plan for the stone bridge being adopted. The new bridge was situated about 100 yards above the old one and necessitated the diversion of the main road in Over and the construction of a new section of causeway on the eastern bank. The works were begun in 1826 and completed in 1829. The design for the new bridge was based on a single arch of the bridge built over the Seine at Neuilly by the French engineer Perronet in 1768. Soon after the completion of the bridge subsidence occurred in the eastern abutment causing joints in the masonry to open; Telford, although at the time expressing full confidence in the design and workmanship, later blamed himself for omitting to put piling as a foundation beneath the wing-wall adjoining the eastern abutment. Work to repair the damage was carried out in 1830 and 1832, and it was apparently not until the latter year that the traffic was turned across the new bridge. A contract for the demolition of the old bridge was made in 1834 but it was not completely removed until 1836 or later. The subsidence of the new bridge has continued to give concern; works to arrest it were carried out in 1857 and 1881, and in 1970 it was planned to demolish and replace the bridge within a few years.
A short way west of the old Over Bridge the main road crossed the New Leadon by a small bridge recorded from 1525. The Gloucester-Ross road and the roads branching from it at Highnam northwards to Newent and southwards to Chepstow were turnpiked in 1725-6. The Herefordshire and Gloucestershire canal crossing the east end of the parish was opened from Gloucester to Newent in 1795 and as far as Ledbury in 1798; in 1881 it was closed and converted into a railway which opened in 1885. The railway was closed to passenger traffic in 1959 and closed completely in 1964. The canal had run north and east of the site of the Vineyard and entered the Severn above Over Bridge at the point where a brick lock-keeper’s cottage survives. The railway left its course to run west of the site of the Vineyard to join the main South Wales line. The South Wales line was opened in 1851.
The bridge carrying it over the Severn, designed by I. K. Brunel, was replaced by a new girder bridge in 1953.
References British History on LineÂ