Hanley Castle, Worcestershire
Historical Description
Hanley Castle, a village and a parish in Worcestershire. The village stands on the W side of the river Severn, 1½ mile NW of Upton-on-Severn station on the Ashchurch, Tewkesbury, and Malvern branch of the M.R., and 6 miles W of Defford, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Worcester. The parish includes also the village and ecclesiastical parish of Malvern Wells, and the hamlets of Blackmore End, Hanley Quay, and Gilberts End. Acreage, 5923; population, 2274, of which 1154 were in Malvern Wells. A castle here belonged to Brictic who refused the hand of Maud, afterwards the wife of William the Conqueror, passed to the Earls of Warwick, was the deathplace of Henry de Beauchamp, and passed to the Despencers, the Savages, the Aries, the Lechmeres, and the Charltons. Scarcely a trace remains of the ancient castle, and a modern house has been built on its site. Blackmore Park is the seat of the Hornyhold family, in whose possession the manor has been since the time of Queen Elizabeth. The mansion was burnt in 1880, and rebuilt in 1883. A Roman Catholic monastery with school and-chapel, erected jn 1846, stands in the park, and a domestic chapel is adjacent to the mansion. Severn End, the ancient seat of the Lechmere family, is a good specimen of a timber-grained house of the Elizabethan period. Rhydd Court, the present seat of the family, is a modern Italian mansion with a handsome chapel adjacent; it is situated in one of the most beautiful spots of the Severn Valley. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester; net value, £750. The church is partly Decorated English, partly brickwork of 1674, and was re- stored in 1858. It contains monuments of the Lechmere and Hornyhold families, much excellent modern stained glass, and a beautiful alabaster reredos. There is a chapel of ease at Hanley Green, erected in 1874 from designs by Sir Gilbert Scott. There is an endowed grammar school, rebuilt in 1737 and enlarged in 1868.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
Ancient County | Worcestershire | |
Ecclesiastical parish | Hanley-Castle St. Mary | |
Hundred | Pershore | |
Poor Law union | Upton-upon-Severn |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Civil Registration
For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Hanley Castle from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Hanley-Castle (St. Mary))
Land and Property
The full transcript of the Worcestershire section of the Return of Owners of Land, 1873.
Maps
Online maps of Hanley Castle are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Worcestershire papers online:
Visitations Heraldic
The Visitation of Worcestershire 1569 is available on the Heraldry page.