Wrington

Wrington is a village and a civil and ecclesiastical parish in North Somerset, England. Both parishes include the nearby village of 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. It has a population of 2,633 according to the 2011 Census.[1]

Wrington
Wrington High Street
Wrington Location within Somerset
Population	2,633 [1]
OS grid reference	ST470628
Unitary authority	North Somerset
Ceremonial county	Somerset
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BRISTOL
Postcode district	BS40
Dialling code	01934
Police	Avon and Somerset
Fire	Avon
Ambulance	South Western
UK Parliament	North Somerset

History

The village dates back to Roman times and there is strong evidence of Saxon occupation as well.[2]

Wrington was historically part of the hundred of Brent-cum-Wrington.[3]

Wrington Cottage Hospital

Wrington Cottage Hospital opened in 1864 and admitted 24 patients in its first year of operation.[4] The first surgeon was Horace Swete, who wrote the Habdy Book of Cottage Hospitals.[5] It was referred to by Florence Nightingale in 1869.[6]

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

Governance

As a parish council, Wrington Council has responsibility for setting an annual precept (local rate) to cover operating costs and producing annual accounts for public scrutiny. Its role includes initiating maintenance and repair of parish facilities.[7] It falls within the unitary authority of North Somerset, which was created in 1996 under the Local Government Act 1992. North Somerset covers some of the ceremonial county of Somerset, but is administered separately from today's non-metropolitan county. Its headquarters are in the town hall of Weston-super-Mare. Between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996, the parish lay in the Woodspring district of the county of Avon.[8] Before 1974, the parish was part of Axbridge Rural District.[9]

An electoral ward exists with the same name. This includes Butcombe as well as Wrington parish. The ward population taken at the 2011 census was 2,851.[10]

The parish is represented in the parliamentary House of Commons as part of the North Somerset constituency. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) 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 the addition of a west tower about 1450. There was a restoration in 1859 and further restoration of the tower in 1948. The church includes on either side of the door stone busts to John Locke and Hannah More dating from the early 19th century. The chancel has an 1832 Gothic reredos by Charles Barry. The rood screen is from the 16th century. It has a tall four-stage tower with set-back buttresses which develop into crocketed pinnacles at the top stage. The top displays moulded string courses and a trefoil-pierced triangular parapet with gargoyles and corner pinnacles. It is Grade I listed.[11] According to Freeman it is "one of the "highest achievements of architectural genius".[12] It dates from the period 1420–1450.[13] The belfry stair is in the south-east turret. The height of the tower is 113.5 feet (35 m) to the top of the pinnacles.[14]

The 17th-century rectory is Grade II listed.[15]

The church's bells ring automatically. Until 2012, this took place every 15 minutes even through the night, but after a noise abatement order was served, it was reduced to hourly during the night.[16][17]

Primary school

Wrington Primary School

The village primary school was opened on 1 May 1857[18] and is Grade II listed.[19]

Butcombe Brewery

A major institution in the local economy is the Butcombe Brewery, a microbrewery set up in the nearby village of Butcombe in 1978 by Simon Whitmore, the 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 an industrial estate at Wrington,[20] to be housed in a purpose-built brewery completed in March 2005. In the same year the brewery set up a joint venture with Thatcher's, the Long Ashton Cider Company, to produce a keg cider. In 2008 output was 24,000 barrels a year and the number of direct outlets was about 450.[21]

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.[22]
• Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset (c. 1585/6 – 1645), politician and courtier.[23]
• Francis Roberts (1607–1675), Puritan, librarian, scholar, and rector of Wrington from 1650 until his death[24]
• John Locke (1632–1704), philosopher, was born in Wrington.[25]
• John Rogers (1679–1729), controversialist and cleric, rector of Wrington[26]
• Samuel Wathen (c. 1720–1787), physician to Charlotte, wife of George III, died in Wrington.[27]"
• Henry Walton Smith (1738–1792), bookseller and newsagent, founder of the business that became W. H. Smith, was brought up in Wrington.[28]
• Hannah More (1745–1833), who worked to improve the conditions of miners and agricultural workers on the Mendip Hills, bought a house in the hamlet of Paradise, near Cowslip Green, where she lived with her sister, Martha, until 1828. She spent the last five years of her life in Clifton. She is buried at All Saints' Church.[29] The More family tomb is a Grade II listed building.[30]
• Samuel Budgett (1794–1851), wholesale grocer, Wesleyan Methodist, philanthropist, and subject of a bestselling biography, was born in Wrington.[31]
• William Talbot Aveline (1822–1903), geologist and archaeologist, was brought up in Wrington.[32]
• George Howell (5 October 1833 – 16 September 1911), a prominent British trade unionist and reform campaigner in the 19th century, was born in Wrington.[33]
• 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.[34] She was knighted for her philanthropy.
• Walford Davies (1869–1941), composer, Master of the King's Musick, died at Wrington.[35]
• Dr Howard Alexander Bell (1888–1974), Pioneer of reservoir fly fishing nymph techniques and artificial flies lived in Wrington from 1935 to 1974.[36]
• Frank Cousins (1904–1986), national trade union leader and Labour politician, lived in Ropers Lane during the 1970s.[37]
• 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.[38]

Football club

Wrington Redhill AFC plays at the recreation ground in Wrington. The club operates a 1st team, a reserve team and an A team. The 1st team plays in the Erra Somerset County League in the premier division. The reserve team plays 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), the same as the emblem on the unofficial Flag of Somerset. The club colours are green and black.

Cricket club

Wrington currently has two senior teams. The 1st XI is currently in the North Somerset Cricket League Saturday Division 1. The 2nd XI is in Saturday Division 3. The club's limited overs team also finished as runners-up in the league's Butcombe Brewery KO Cup. The club also has a youth system, running teams in the North Somerset Youth Cricket Leagues at Under 17, 15, 13 and 11 levels. The club's facilities and pitch have been improved in the last few years, and alongside an improved pitch It now has two nets, used 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. "Roman Wrington". Wrington Website. Archived from the original on 6 June 2007. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
3. "Militia in the Brent-cum-Wrington Hundred". Wrington Somerset. Archived from the original on 23 March 2012. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
4. "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.
5. Swete, Horace (1987). Handy Book of Cottage Hospitals. Hamilton, Adams and Co.
6. Nightiongale, Florence (2012). McDonald, Lynn (ed.). Florence Nightingale and Hospital Reform: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, volume 16. Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press. ISBN 9780889204713.
7. "Local Environment". Wrington Parish Council. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2014.
8. "The Avon (Structural Change) Order 1995". HMSO. Archived from the original on 30 January 2008. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
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. "Ward population 2011". Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 10 March 2015.
11. "Church of All Saints". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
12. Brereton, R. P. (1904). "Somerset Church Towers". The Archaeological Journal. Somersetshire Archaeological Society at Gillingham. lxii. 60 collotypes prepared for a planned monograph are in the British Museum, Add. MSS. 37260-3, were published by the Society.
13. Wickham, Archdale Kenneth (1965). Churches of Somerset. London: David & Charles.
14. "Description of the church". All Saints Wrington. Archived from the original on 16 December 2007. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
15. "The Old Rectory". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
16. Wrington All Saints Church clock silenced in noise row Archived 13 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News, 25 April 2012
17. Somerset church bell to ring again after agreement reached Archived 2 December 2012 at the Wayback Machine, BBC News, 2 December 2012
18. Wrington's Victorian Schools, Mark Bullen 2012
19. "Wrington Primary School". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
20. "Timeline". Butcombe Brewery. Archived from the original on 1 October 2008. Retrieved 30 September 2008.
21. Pints West, No. 79. Autumn 2008, Campaign for Real Ale, Bristol, p. 12.
22. Hunt, William Samuel Crooke Dictionary of National Biography 1885–1900 Vol. 13, p. 205.
23. Alastair Bellany, "Carr , Robert, earl of Somerset (1585/6?–1645)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 2 July 2014. Pay-walled.
24. Nicholas Keene, "Roberts, Francis (1609–1675)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, OUP 2004) Retrieved 2 July 2014. Pay-walled.
25. "John Locke". Encyclopedia of Philosophy. UC San Diego. Archived from the original on 30 June 2010. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
26. "Rogers, John (1679–1729)". Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1885–1900).
27. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (Yale University, Department of the History of Science and Medicine, Vol. 5, 1950, p. 299.
28. W. H. Smith history site. Retrieved 2 July 2014. Archived 29 December 2011 at the Wayback Machine
29. Toulson, Shirley (1984). The Mendip Hills: A Threatened Landscape. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-575-03453-X.
30. "More Family Monument in churchyard". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 26 February 2007.
31. William Arthur: The Successful Merchant (London, 1852).
32. J. Boycott and L. J. Wilson: The Aveline Brothers at Aveline's Hole. Proc. Univ. Bristol Spelaeol. Soc." 201210, 25 (3), 302–312. Retrieved 2 July 2014. Archived 14 July 2014 at the Wayback Machine
33. "Howell, George (1833–1910) politician and writer". Bishopsgate Institute. Archived from the original on 24 May 2011. Retrieved 27 April 2010.
34. "Henry Herbert Wills". The Thompsons, Shipbuilders of Sunderland. Archived from the original on 12 January 2010. Retrieved 13 November 2010.
35. Jeremy Dibble, "Davies, Sir (Henry) Walford (1869–1941)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) Retrieved 3 July 2014. Pay-walled.
36. The New Encyclopaedia of Fly Fishing by Conrad Voss Bark, Robert Hale Ltd (1992) page 31
37. "Papers of Frank Cousins".
38. ODNB entry Retrieved 24 July 2011. Subscription required. Archived 16 December 2012 at Archive.today

External links

• Wrington C of E Primary School
• Wrington village website
• Wrington at Curlie