Westbury on Trym, Gloucestershire

Historical Description

Westbury-on-Trym, a village and a parish in Gloucestershire. The village stands 3 miles NNW of Bristol, and has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Bristol, a village reading-room, library, &c., and a police station. The parish includes Stoke Bishop and Shirehampton tithings, and comprises 4922 acres of land and 23 of water with 66 of adjacent tidal water and 317 of foreshore; population of the civil parish, 22,523; of the ecclesiastical, 5472. The parish includes also the ecclesiastical parishes of Shirehampton, Stoke Bishop, Kingsdown, and Woolcot Park, and parts of Bishopston, Redland, and Tyndalls Park. A monastery was founded here in 824, was refounded as a cell to Worcester Priory in 1290, and again as a college in 1443, was given at the dissolution to Sir R. Sadler, and was burnt by the Royalists in the Civil Wars of Charles I. A massive square tower and a small round tower are the only remains of the college standing. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol; gross value, £650 with residence. The church is Early English, and consists of apsidal chancel, clerestoried nave, two aisles, each with a small chapel attached, and a lofty pinnacled tower. It contains the tomb of John Carpenter, a native of the parish, who was Bishop of Worcester, Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, and Chancellor of Oxford University. There are Wesleyan and Free Methodist chapels, and a convent. See BRISTOL, STOKE BISHOP, and SHIREHAMPTON.

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.

Church Records

The parish registers for the Diocese of Bristol are available online at Ancestry, in association with Bristol Archives.

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 Westbury on Trym from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Westbury-upon-Trym (Holy Trinity))

Land and Property

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

Maps

Online maps of Westbury on Trym 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 newspapers covering Gloucestershire online:

• Gloucester Citizen
• Gloucester Journal
• Gloucestershire Chronicle
• Gloucestershire Echo
• Cheltenham Chronicle
• Cheltenham Looker-On

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitation of the county of Gloucester, 1623 is available on the Heraldry page.