Weobley
Weobley is an ancient settlement and civil parish in Herefordshire, England.
Formerly a market town, the market is long defunct and the settlement is today promoted as one of the county's black and white villages owing to its abundance of old timber-framed buildings. Although it has the historical status of a town and is referred to as such in the sources, it nowadays refers to itself as a village.
Topography
Landscape
Weobley is in an entirely rural location, north-west of Hereford and south-west of Leominster. It occupies the small shallow valley of the little Marl Brook in the northern lower dip slope of Burton Hill, overlooking the valley of the Newbridge Brook which is a sub-tributary of the River Arrow.The surrounding countryside is mostly farmland, with a few small named ancient woods. However, to the south the deer park of Garnstone Castle separates the settlement from the wooded heights of Burton Hill. The “castle” was a castellated mansion, an important design by John Nash 1807, which was demolished in 1959. Ornamental plantings for it survive, notably a row of Sequoiadendron giganteum trees which includes a monumental specimen of girth.
Weobley Marsh is a separate hamlet to the east, grouped around an area of ancient common land and traditionally a haunt of witches.
To the west is the ancient farmstead of The Ley, with a Grade-I listed farmhouse dating to 1589.
The underlying geology comprises the Raglan Mudstone Formation of the Lower Old Red Sandstone. The soils are argillic brown earths, of high fertility.
Layout
The historical layout of the settlement, on which the majority of the old buildings stand, is in the form of an inverted T. The crossbar of the T is the High Street, and the stem is the funnel-shaped mediaeval marketplace comprising a triangular area abutting the High Street and extended to the north by the aptly-named Broad Street. The triangle used to have a row of infill buildings, but these were demolished in the mid 20th century and replaced by a small urban park called the Rose Garden. The west side of the former marketplace is called Portland Street, and the south side is Market Pitch.To the south of the High Street is the site of a mediaeval castle, but this has no civic presence. It abuts the Garnstone deer-park, and is described as a ring and bailey. The track leading to it from the High Street is flanked by an avenue of oaks planted in 1837 to mark the accession of Queen Victoria.
From towards the east end of the High Street, and running to the east of the castle, is the Hereford Road. This was originally a turnpike road to Hereford, but is now just a country lane.
At the north end of Broad Street, Bell Square runs to the west with more old buildings, then turns to the north-west as Meadow Street to become the road to Kington. Bell Square is very wide for a street, and has been suggested as the core of the pre-13th century village arranged around an early marketplace or small village green.
The west end of the High Street turns south then west as Mill Bank, named after an impressive mid 19th century brick corn mill but formerly known as Chamber Walk, and this becomes the B4230 road to Hereford. The mill is Grade II listed.
The ancient parish church of SS Peter and Paul is oddly placed, away from the built-up area to the north and accessed by a country lane called Church Road which is a continuation of Broad Street. More unusually, this lane doubles back on itself after running round the churchyard and ends a short distance west of where it started, forming a dead-end hairpin loop. This has been suggested as the ghost of the pre-13th century village, arranged between the church and an early marketplace or small village green at Bell Square. A small grassy area is due south of the churchyard, and this used to be the town's bowling green.
The B4230 does not enter the old town centre, but runs directly from Mill Bank to Meadow Street via a little bypass called Back Lane which roughly parallels Broad Street to the west. This is an old thoroughfare; the name in other mediaeval boroughs is known to indicate an access route to the back ends of a set of thin land strips called burgage tenements. One of these would comprise a town house with a smallholding at its rear, usually with back access so that farm animals did not have to be taken through the house -hence Back Lane.
The historical core of the settlement is a conservation area.
Two housing estates of the latter half of the 20th century more than doubled the size of the settlement. They are Bearcroft, north of Gadbridge Road which is the eastern continuation of the High Street, and Burtonwood which is east of Hereford Road. A small industrial estate, the Whitehill Business Park, was set up on the Kington Road.
History
Early days
A detailed archaeological survey of the site of the castle in 2002, using ground-penetrating radar, gave indications of an Iron Age settlement here.There are a few Roman surface finds. A coin of Constantine the Great was found in the town in the 17th century. In 2001, two brooches and six coins were found close to The Ley.
Saxons
The settlement existed in Saxon times, as evidenced from its entry in the Domesday Book. In 1066, the village was owned by “Edwy the Noble’’ and had ten villagers, five smallholders, eleven slaves, one priest and two “other”. It was valued at £5, and was in the Hundred of Stretford.In the Domesday Book the village name was transcribed as Wibelai. The name possibly derives from 'Wibba's Ley', a ley from the Old English for a field, and Wibba being a local Saxon landowner. It is still pronounced as "Web-ley".
Whether the Saxon settlement was nucleated and, if so, where it was located, are both uncertain although Bell Square is suggested and possible house platforms identified. Also uncertain is the location of the place of worship served by the priest mentioned in the Domesday Book, as the earliest extant fabric in the present church is Norman.
Two hints exist as regards the status of the Saxon place of worship. One is that the later church had the same dedication as the nearby great minster of Leominster, that of SS Peter and Paul. However, there is no documentation to support the claim that Weobley was a dependent chapel in the original area of the Leominster parochia according to the Minster hypothesis. The other is that the Domesday survey listed a priest but not the church or chapel; since the survey was of landholdings producing an income, this hints that the church had no independent revenue and so was not yet parochial.
Church
The parish church is the oldest surviving building in Weobley.The Domesday book listed the Lord of the Manor in 1086 as Roger de Lacy. The de Lacy family was to become very powerful. Hugh de Lacy became Lord of the Manor in 1091, and he is credited with building the forerunner of the present church early in the next century -the Norman south doorway of this survives, albeit salvaged and re-set in a later wall.
Hugh gave his new church to his family's monastic foundation of Llanthony Priory, which established a cell here. However, it did not last long. The priory retained possession until the Dissolution.
The putative aisleless Norman church was re-built in an extended project which continued through most of the 13th century. This began at the start of this century, when a south aisle was added. The chancel was rebuilt about mid-century, and then the nave was reconstructed -this was only completed in the early 14th century. The work included the addition of a narrow north aisle and a clerestory; the latter involved the replacement of the south aisle arcade, only about seventy years old. The bell-tower was added to the north-west corner around 1330–40, with a spire that is the second-tallest in the county. This tower is at an angle, which is unusual, and is thought to have doubled up as a fortified peel tower against Welsh raids. Finally, the north aisle was widened in the mid 15th century in the Perpendicular style, and a large east window provided for the chancel.
Castle
The castle ruins comprise a ring and bailey – there is no motte, and no surviving stonework. However, the Garnstone deer-park contains a large flat-topped mound that has been identified as a motte -although there is doubt about this. If the identification is correct, then the first castle was not on the present site.Weobley Castle is only first documented as existing during The Anarchy, when it was seized in person by King Stephen from Geoffrey Talbot in 1140, although it was still the property of the de Lacy family. Later, that family's involvement with the rebellion against King John by William de Braose, 4th Lord of Bramber led to the castle being in royal possession again from 1208 to 1213. A surviving depiction by Silas Taylor, executed in 1655, shows the ruin of a rectangular keep with round corner towers, and the style suggests that the castle was rebuilt by Walter II de Lacy after the de Lacy family regained ownership. However, there was no further active history and John Leland described it in 1535 as “a goodly castell, but somewhat in decay”.
A geophysical survey in 2003 revealed that the bailey had fallen out of use in the 12th century, when or soon after the stone keep had been built, and had been subdivided into burgage tenements as part of the town. However, all these had been replaced by ridge and furrow cultivation by the 17th century as the town underwent redevelopment and the smallholding portions of burgage tenements were hived off. The final removal of all stonework from the site is undocumented, but was thorough as even the foundations were dug out.
Mediaeval borough
The 2003 geophysical survey mentioned above demonstrated archaeologically that the town existed by the 13th century, and was experiencing growth. However, it never had a royal market charter which indicates that the market right was already of time immemorial in the Middle Ages. The first market was possibly at Bell Square, and if so was moved when Walter II de Lacy laid out Broad Street as a borough with flanking burgage tenements on both sides, also a single set of tenements on the west side of the present Hereford Road which took over the old castle bailey. The market day was Thursday. The new settlement was also provided with defences which were, at best, a timber palisade on a bank and ditch. This did not last long, and did not morph into a proper town wall.Walter II did obtain a charter for an annual fair in 1231, but this was to transfer the date from the Feast of the Ascension to that of the Invention of the Holy Cross so the origin of the fair is also unknown.
At this period there was a stack of two watermills exploiting the limited power of the little Marl Brook, one on the site of the 19th century steam mill and the other upstream. Later, windmill was built on a little hill now called “Windmill Knapp”, just west of Back Lane, by the start of the 15th century. The same location had been occupied by a pottery in the 13th century, and the site is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The 1255 eyre roll for Herefordshire listed Weobley as having its own jury for legal trials at the circuit court.
There was a small Jewish community here in the late 13th century, which meant that the town was prospering commercially. It was noted for trade in particularly high-quality wool known as “Leominster Ore”. It also developed a fine leather glove industry, which was flourishing by the end of the 16th century. However, in the late Middle Ages the town was most famous for its ale -as distinct from beer, as it was not hopped. A local proverb, “Leominster bread and Weobley beer, none can come near” was first recorded in Camden's Britannia in 1610. The Welsh were very fond of ‘’cwrw Weble’’ or Weobley ale, and it features in late mediaeval Welsh poetry.
The triangular marketplace was infilled in the 14th century owing to building pressure, as the range of buildings that used to be in the surviving one between Broad Street and Portland Street allegedly contained some fabric of that age. However, the original infill consisted of two parallel rows separated by three narrow streets. The easternmost street and the eastern row were both lost in 17th century redevelopment, but the step in the eastern Broad Street frontage is the ghost of the latter. Six high-quality timber-framed buildings of the 14th century in the town survived to be listed in the 20th century.