Abbots Bromley, Staffordshire
Historical Description
Abbots-Bromley, a large village and a parish in Staffordshire. The village, 5¼ miles from Rugeley station on the L.& N.W.R., and 6 S of Uttoxeter, has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Rugeley. Formerly a market-town, it consists chiefly of a long street, containing some good houses and an ancient canopied market-place. The parish includes also the liberty of Bromley-Hurst and the lordship of Bagots-Bromley. Acreage, 9476; population of the civil parish, 1411; of the ecclesiastical, 1257. The manor anciently belonged to Burton Abbey. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; net value, £220. The church is an ancient structure, in various styles; it was restored in 1855, and contains a small brass. There are chapels for Congregationalists, Wesleyans, and Primitive Methodists. Here also are two middle-class schools for girls in connection with Denstone College, and Ellesmere School for boys, under the Woodard foundation. These schools are fine buildings, and have their own chapel.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Staffordshire | |
| Ecclesiastical parish | Abbots Bromley St. Nicholas | |
| Hundred | Pirehill | |
| Poor Law union | Uttoxeter |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The parish register dates from the year 1558.
Churches
Church of England
St. Nicholas (parish church)
The church of St. Nicholas, standing nearly in the centre of the town, is a large and ancient edifice of stone in the Early Decorated style, consisting of chancel, clerestoried nave, aisles, south porch, and a lofty western tower containing a clock and 5 bells: the tower and spire having fallen in the year 1688, the former was rebuilt in the Italian style: in the north aisle, on a slab of alabaster, is an effigy in brass representing John Draycote, a burgess of Abbots Bromley, ob. 1463, and in the tower are preserved a reindeer's horns and a hobby-horse, still occasionally carried in procession: the hobby-horse dance taking place at the village wake, on the first Monday after Sept. 4th; the church was restored in 1855 at a cost of £4,000, when the floor was lowered two feet, and the bases of the columns, previously buried, again disclosed: there are 650 sittings.
Congregational
Congregational Chapel
Methodist
Primitive Methodist Chapel
Wesleyan Chapel
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 Abbots Bromley from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Bromley, Abbots (St. Nicholas))
Land and Property
A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Staffordshire is online.
Maps
Online maps of Abbots Bromley 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 Staffordshire newspapers online:
- Staffordshire Advertiser
- Tamworth Herald
- Lichfield Mercury
- Staffordshire Sentinel
- Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser