Local Government

(Victoria History of Gloucestershire XIII, draft text by John Juřica: © University of London 2011)

Manorial Government

Gloucester abbey held a court at Upleadon. Recorded from the later 13th century,[1] it attended in the early 15th century to the repair of river banks to prevent flooding.[2] The court had two main sessions a year in 1515[3] and it evidently also enforced the abbey’s jurisdiction in Highleadon in 1535.[4] There is no record of a manor court at Upleadon after the Dissolution.

PAROCHIAL GOVERNMENT

In 1683 the parish pleaded that, although none of its people had great wealth, it relieved its poor according to its means.[5] It opened a subscription to the Gloucester infirmary in 1765[6]  and spent £34 on poor relief in 1776. In the mid 1780s the cost of relief to the parish was on average £24 a year but in 1803, when a dozen people were supported regularly and an unusually large number (55) occasionally, the cost was £121.[7] The church house in the churchyard was used as a poorhouse in 1807.[8] From £200 in 1814, when seventeen people were being helped regularly and seven occasionally,[9] the cost had fallen to £156 in 1825 and was usually lower than that in following years.[10] From 1835 Upleadon was part of Newent poor-law union.[11]

            Upleadon was included in Newent highway district on its formation in 1863.[12]


[1]           Hist. & Cart. Mon. Glouc. I, 385–6; GA, D 936a/ M 1, rot. 6d.

[2]           GA, D 936a/M 4.

[3]           Glouc. Cath. Libr., Reg. Abb. Malvern, I, ff. 15v.–16.

[4]           Valor Eccl. II, 409.

[5]           GDR, V 5/320T 3.

[6]           GA, HO 19/8/1.

[7]           Poor Law Abstract, 1804, 172–3.

[8]               GDR, V 5/320T 6.

[9]           Poor Law Abstract, 1818, 146–7.

[10]         Poor Law Returns (1830–1), 66; (1835), 65.

[11]         Poor Law Com. 2nd Rep. p. 523.

[12]         London Gazette, 24 Mar. 1863, pp. 1707–8.