Much Marcle, Herefordshire

Historical Description

Marcle, Much, a township and a parish in Herefordshire. The township lies adjacent to Gloucestershire, 5 miles SW of Ledbury, and 7½ NE by N of Ross, and has a post and money order office under Gloucester; telegraph office, Dymock. Acreage, 4595; population, 756. The parish contains also the township of Yatton, and comprises 6047 acres 5 population of the civil parish, 923; of the ecclesiastical, 930. The manor is now divided into Marcle Audleys and Marcle Mortimers. The Mortimers had a castle, and tradition speaks of an EIlingham Castle, but the site has not been identified. Homme House, originally Elizabethan, and Hellens, built in the time of Henry VII., are chief residences. A remarkable landslip occurred on 17 Feb., 1575, at a place now called the Wonder. Marcle Hill there, on the evening of the 17th, began to move "with a horrible roaring noise;" it kept moving till the 19th, carrying along with it trees, hedges, and cattle, and overthrowing in its progress the chapel of Kinnaston; and it eventually settled in its present position, with an elevation greater than it originally had. A chasm, 40 feet deep and about 30 long, remained where the hill originally stood. The living is a vicarage, united with the chapelry of Yatton, in the diocese of Hereford; gross value, £600 with residence. The church stands on a rising-ground, is chiefly Norman, was restored in 1878, has a castellated tower, and contains monuments of the De Helions and the Mortimers. A small chapel adjoining the chancel was erected in 1628 by Sir John Kyrle; it contains an alabaster tomb of himself and his wife. There are Wesleyan and Primitive Methodist chapels.

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

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 Much Marcle from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Marcle, Much (St. Bartholomew))

Land and Property

The Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Herefordshire is available to browse.

Maps

Online maps of Much Marcle 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 Herefordshire newspapers online:

• Hereford Journal
• Hereford Times