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Wrington

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Village in the Mendips of Somerset, England

Human settlement in England
Wrington
Street scene showing shops and houses with cars.Wrington High Street
Wrington is located in SomersetWringtonWringtonLocation within Somerset
Population2,633 
OS grid referenceST470628
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townBRISTOL
Postcode districtBS40
Dialling code01934
PoliceAvon and Somerset
FireAvon
AmbulanceSouth Western
UK Parliament
List of places
UK
England
Somerset
51°21′40″N 2°45′47″W / 51.361°N 2.763°W / 51.361; -2.763

Wrington is a village and a civil and ecclesiastical parish on the north slopes of the Mendip Hills in North Somerset, England. Both include nearby Redhill. Wrington lies in the valley of the Congresbury Yeo river, about 9 miles (14 km) east of Weston-super-Mare and 3 miles (4.8 km) south-east of Yatton. Its population of 2,633 at the 2011 Census was estimated in 2019 to be 2,759.

History

The village was inhabited in Roman times and there is evidence of Saxon occupation as well. Historically it was part of the hundred of Brent-cum-Wrington.

Wrington Cottage Hospital

Wrington Cottage Hospital opened in 1864, initially for 24 patients. The first surgeon was Horace Swete, author of the Handy Book of Cottage Hospitals, to which Florence Nightingale also referred in 1869.

Wrington had a railway station between 1901 and 1963, on the Wrington Vale Light Railway that ran from Congresbury to Blagdon.

Governance

As a parish council, Wrington's sets an annual precept for operating costs and produces annual accounts for public scrutiny. It maintains and repairs parish facilities, under the unitary authority of North Somerset, created in 1996 separately from today's non-metropolitan county and based at Weston-super-Mare. Before 1974 the parish belonged to Axbridge Rural District, then in 1974–1996 to the Woodspring district of the county of Avon.

An electoral ward bearing the same name includes Butcombe as well as Wrington. The ward population at the 2011 census was 2,851. The parish is represented in Parliament by the North Somerset constituency, which elects one member by the first past the post system, currently Liam Fox of the Conservative Party.

Church

The church of All Saints
The old rectory with the church in the background

The Church of All Saints has 13th-century foundations. It was remodelled with a west tower added about 1450. Restoration occurred in 1859 and restoration of the tower in 1948. Either side of the door stone are busts of John Locke and Hannah More from the early 19th century. The chancel has an 1832 Gothic reredos by Charles Barry. The rood screen is from the 16th century. The tall four-stage tower has set-back buttresses crowned by crocketed pinnacles at the top stage, which displays moulded string courses and a trefoil-pierced triangular parapet with gargoyles and corner pinnacles. The building is Grade I listed as "one of the highest achievements of architectural genius". It dates from 1420 to 1450. The belfry stairs are in the south-east turret. The tower stands 113.5 feet (35 m) to the tip of its pinnacles.

The 17th-century rectory is Grade II listed.

The church's bells ring automatically. Until 2012, they did so every 15 minutes even through the night, but after a noise abatement order was served, it was reduced to hourly at night.

Primary school

Wrington Primary School

The village primary school was opened on 1 May 1857. Its premises are Grade II listed.

Butcombe Brewery

A local institution is the Butcombe microbrewery, set up in nearby Butcombe in 1978 by Simon Whitmore, managing director of Courage Western, made redundant in a restructuring, and his wife Maureen. In 2003 the business was sold to Guy Newell and Paul Horsley and moved to a purpose-built brewery completed in March 2005 on an estate at Wrington.

In the same year the brewery set up a joint venture with Thatchers Cider to produce a keg cider. Its 2008 output was 24,000 barrels a year through about 450 outlets.

Notable residents

In birth order:

  • Samuel Crooke (1575–1649), noted preacher and supporter of the Parliamentary cause in the English Civil War, was rector of Wrington for almost 50 years.
  • Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset (c. 1585/6 – 1645), politician and courtier.
  • Francis Roberts (1607–1675), Puritan, librarian, scholar, and rector of Wrington from 1650 until his death
  • John Locke (1632–1704), philosopher, was born in Wrington.
  • John Rogers (1679–1729), controversialist and cleric, rector of Wrington
  • Samuel Wathen (c. 1720–1787), physician to Charlotte, wife of George III, died in Wrington."
  • Henry Walton Smith (1738–1792), bookseller and newsagent, founder of the business that became W. H. Smith, was brought up in Wrington.
  • Hannah More (1745–1833), who worked to improve conditions for miners and farmworkers in the Mendip Hills, bought a house in Paradise, near Cowslip Green, where she lived with her sister Martha until 1828. She spent her last five years in Clifton. She is buried at All Saints' Church, the family tomb being Grade II listed.
  • William Leeves (1748-1828), poet and composer, friend of Hannah More, was rector from 1779-1828.
  • Samuel Budgett (1794–1851), wholesale grocer, Wesleyan Methodist, philanthropist and subject of a popular biography, was born in Wrington.
  • William Talbot Aveline (1822–1903), geologist and archaeologist, was brought up in Wrington.
  • George Howell (5 October 1833 – 16 September 1911), a prominent trade unionist and reform campaigner, was born in Wrington.
  • Henry Herbert Wills (1856–1922) who resided at Barley Wood, was a member of the WD & HO Wills tobacco family and a board member of the Imperial Tobacco Company, which took it over.
  • Dame Mary Monica Cunliffe Wills (c. 1861–1931) resided at Wrington. She was knighted for her philanthropy.
  • Walford Davies (1869–1941), composer, Master of the King's Musick, died at Wrington.
  • Howard Alexander Bell (1888–1974), pioneer of reservoir fly-fishing nymph techniques and artificial flies, lived in Wrington from 1935 to 1974.
  • Frank Cousins (1904–1986), national trade union leader and Labour politician, lived in Ropers Lane in the 1970s.
  • John Pilkington Hudson (1910–2007), horticultural scientist and bomb disposal expert, retired to the Spinney, Ladywell, Wrington, where he and his wife created a notable garden.

Sports

Wrington Redhill AFC plays at the recreation ground in Wrington. It has a first team, reserve team and A team. The first team plays in the Erra Somerset County League in the premier division, the reserve in Weston super Mare and District League Division 1, and A team in the W&D division 4. The club badge is a gold rampant dragon (wyvern), matching the emblem on the unofficial Flag of Somerset. The club colours are green and black.

Wrington has two senior cricket teams. The first XI is in the North Somerset Cricket League Saturday Division 1, the second in Saturday Division 3. The club's limited overs team finished as runners-up in the league's Butcombe Brewery KO Cup. The club also has youth in the North Somerset Youth Cricket Leagues at the under 17, 15, 13 and 11 levels. The facilities and pitch have been improved in the last few years. Additionally, it now has two nets for training sessions for all ages and levels.

References

  1. ^ "2011 Census Profile". North Somerset Council. Archived from the original (Excel) on 4 January 2014. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
  2. City Population. Retrieved 16 December 2020.
  3. "Roman Wrington". Wrington Website. Archived from the original on 6 June 2007. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
  4. "Militia in the Brent-cum-Wrington Hundred". Wrington Somerset. Archived from the original on 23 March 2012. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
  5. "Wrington village hospital". Wrington Village Records Studies of the history of a Somerset Village. Wrington. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2015.
  6. Swete, Horace (1987). Handy Book of Cottage Hospitals. Hamilton, Adams and Co.
  7. Nightiongale, Florence (2012). McDonald, Lynn (ed.). Florence Nightingale and Hospital Reform: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, volume 16. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 9780889204713.
  8. "Local Environment". Wrington Parish Council. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
  9. "Axbridge RD". A Vision of Britain Through Time. University of Portsmouth. Archived from the original on 13 October 2013. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
  10. "The Avon (Structural Change) Order 1995". HMSO. Archived from the original on 30 January 2008. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  11. "Ward population 2011". Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
  12. Historic England. "Church of All Saints (1129227)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
  13. Brereton, R. P. (1904). "Somerset Church Towers". The Archaeological Journal. lxii. 60 collotypes prepared for a planned monograph are in the British Library, Add MSS 37260-37263, were published by the Society. Somersetshire Archaeological Society at Gillingham.
  14. Wickham, Archdale Kenneth (1965). Churches of Somerset. London: David & Charles.
  15. "Description of the church". All Saints Wrington. Archived from the original on 16 December 2007. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
  16. Historic England. "The Old Rectory (1320920)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
  17. Wrington All Saints Church clock silenced in noise row Archived 13 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News, 25 April 2012.
  18. Somerset church bell to ring again after agreement reached Archived 2 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News, 2 December 2012.
  19. Wrington's Victorian Schools, Mark Bullen 2012
  20. Historic England. "Wrington Primary School (1320923)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
  21. "Timeline". Butcombe Brewery. Archived from the original on 1 October 2008. Retrieved 30 September 2008.
  22. Pints West, No. 79. Autumn 2008, Campaign for Real Ale, Bristol, p. 12.
  23. Hunt, William Samuel Crooke Dictionary of National Biography 1885–1900 Vol. 13, p. 205.
  24. Alastair Bellany, "Carr, Robert, earl of Somerset (1585/6?–1645)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 2 July 2014. Pay-walled.
  25. Nicholas Keene, "Roberts, Francis (1609–1675)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, OUP 2004) Retrieved 2 July 2014. Pay-walled.
  26. "John Locke". Encyclopedia of Philosophy. UC San Diego. Archived from the original on 30 June 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  27. "Rogers, John (1679–1729)". Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885–1900).
  28. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (Yale University, Department of the History of Science and Medicine, Vol. 5, 1950, p. 299.
  29. W. H. Smith history site. Retrieved 2 July 2014. Archived 29 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine
  30. Toulson, Shirley (1984). The Mendip Hills: A Threatened Landscape. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-03453-X.
  31. Historic England. "More Family Monument in churchyard (1311579)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
  32. "Leeves, William". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16334. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  33. William Arthur: The Successful Merchant (London, 1852).
  34. J. Boycott and L. J. Wilson: The Aveline Brothers at Aveline's Hole. Proc. Univ. Bristol Spelaeol. Soc." 201210, 25 (3), pp. 302–312. Retrieved 2 July 2014. Archived 14 July 2014 at the Wayback Machine
  35. "Howell, George (1833–1910) politician and writer". Bishopsgate Institute. Archived from the original on 24 May 2011. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
  36. "Henry Herbert Wills". The Thompsons, Shipbuilders of Sunderland. Archived from the original on 12 January 2010. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
  37. Jeremy Dibble, "Davies, Sir (Henry) Walford (1869–1941)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 3 July 2014. Pay-walled.
  38. The New Encyclopaedia of Fly Fishing by Conrad Voss Bark, Robert Hale Ltd (1992), p. 31.
  39. "Papers of Frank Cousins".
  40. ODNB entry Retrieved 24 July 2011. Subscription required. Archived 16 December 2012 at archive.today

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