Abbots Leigh
Stone building with prominent three stage square tower. In the foreground is a grass area and road separated from the church by a stone wall.
The Priory
Abbots Leigh is located in Somerset
Abbots Leigh
Abbots Leigh
Location within Somerset
Population799 (2011)[1]
OS grid referenceST545735
Civil parish
  • Abbot's Leigh
Unitary authority
Ceremonial county
Region
CountryEngland
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post townBristol
Postcode districtBS8
Dialling code01275
PoliceAvon and Somerset
FireAvon
AmbulanceSouth Western
UK Parliament
WebsiteAbbots Leigh web site

Abbots Leigh is a village and civil parish in North Somerset, England, about 3 miles (5 km) west of the centre of Bristol.

History

The original Middle English name was Lega, and the village became Abbots Leigh in the mid-12th century when Robert Fitzharding (1st Earl of Berkeley) purchased the manor, having been rewarded as Lord of the Manor of Portbury by the king. He also purchased Bedminster, Hareclive and Billeswick manors. He went on to found the Abbey of St Augustine at what was Billeswick, and bequeathed the income from the parish to support the abbey. Because of this connection to the abbey, when the Diocese of Bristol was carved out of the Bath and Wells, Gloucester and Worcester diocesan territories (Patent Roll, Henry VIII, Art. 9, June 1542) the new diocese's boundary was drawn to include the parish, including the Saxon enclosure at Hamgreen which had been part of Portbury manor lands until then. All the surrounding parishes in Somerset are in Bath and Wells diocese. The parish map shows this meandering historic boundary which puts St Katherine's School and Chapel Pill Farm both within the parish.

The parish of Abbots Leigh was part of the Portbury Hundred.[2]

The manor house here, also named Abbot's Leigh or Leigh Court, was a resting place of Charles II during his escape to France in 1651. He arrived on the evening of 12 September, and stayed at the home of Mr and Mrs George Norton, who were friends of the King's travelling companion, Jane Lane. The Nortons were unaware of the King's identity during his three-day stay.[3]

A description of the house appears in the book The Escape of Charles II, After the Battle of Worcester by Richard Ollard:[4] Watercolour images of Abbot's Leigh House [5][6][7]

"Abbots Leigh was the most magnificent of all the houses in which Charles was sheltered during his escape. A drawing made in 1788, only twenty years before it was pulled down, shows a main front of twelve gables, surmounting three storeys of cowled windows; a comfortable, solid west country Elizabethan house."

While staying at Abbots Leigh, Charles deflected suspicion by asking a trooper, who had been in the King's personal guard, to describe the King's appearance and clothing at the Battle of Worcester. The man looked at Charles and said, "The King was at least three inches taller than you."[8]

The King's escape route is commemorated in the Monarch's Way long-distance footpath which passes through the village.[9]

Hymn tune

In 1942, during World War II, Rev. Cyril Vincent Taylor (1907–1991), then a producer of Religious Broadcasting at the BBC and stationed in the village, wrote a hymn tune which he named after it. The tune was originally written for the hymn "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken". This hymn had usually been sung to the tune "Austrian Hymn", or Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, but since the national anthem of then-enemy Germany was also sung to that tune, new music was needed in wartime Britain. Other hymn texts now commonly sung to the same tune include "Father Lord of All Creation", "God is Here", "Go My Children, With my Blessing" and "Lord, You Give the Great Commission".[10][11][12]

Governance

The parish is in the unitary authority of North Somerset which was created in 1996, under the Local Government Act 1992. It provides a single tier of local government with responsibility for almost all local government functions within its area, including local planning and building control, local roads, council housing, environmental health, markets and fairs, refuse collection, recycling, cemeteries, crematoria, leisure services, parks, and tourism. It is also responsible for education, social services, libraries, main roads, public transport, Trading Standards, waste disposal and strategic planning, although fire, police and ambulance services are provided jointly with other authorities through the Avon Fire and Rescue Service, Avon and Somerset Constabulary and the South Western Ambulance Service.

North Somerset's area covers part of the ceremonial county of Somerset but it is administered independently of the non-metropolitan county. Its administrative headquarters is in the town hall in Weston-super-Mare. Between 1 April 1974 and 1 April 1996, it was the Woodspring district of the county of Avon.[13] Before 1974 that the parish was part of the Long Ashton Rural District.[14]

The parish is represented in the House of Commons as part of the North Somerset county constituency, which elects one MP, currently Liam Fox of the Conservative Party.

Parish church

The Church of England parish church of the Holy Trinity is a 15th-century Perpendicular Gothic building, restored and partially rebuilt in 1847–48 after a fire. The tower has six bells, three of which were cast in 1781 by William Bilbie of the Bilbie family.[15] English Heritage has designated Holy Trinity a Grade II* listed building.[16]

References

  1. ↑ "2011 Census Profile". North Somerset Council. Archived from the original (Excel) on 4 January 2014. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
  2. ↑ "Somerset Hundreds". GENUKI. Retrieved 19 October 2011.
  3. ↑ Count Grammont. Memoirs of the Court of Charles the Second and the Boscobel Narratives, edited by Sir Walter Scott, Publisher: Henry G Bohn, York Street, London, 1846. Chapter: King Charles's escape from Worcester: (The King's own account of his escape and preservation after the Battle of Worcester as dictated to Samuel Pepys at Newmarket on Sunday, October 3d, and Tuesday, 5 October 1680). p.466
  4. ↑ Ollard, Richard (1966). The Escape of Charles II, After the Battle of Worcester. Hodder and Stoughton.
  5. ↑ "Side view of Abbots' Leigh House, where Charles II took refuge after the Battle of Worcester". 19 February 2020.
  6. ↑ "The Gateway to Abbots' Leigh House, where Charles II took refuge after the Battle of Worcester". 19 February 2020.
  7. ↑ "Abbots Leigh House near Bristol".
  8. ↑ J. Hughes (ed.) (1857). The Boscobel Tracts: Relating to the Escape of Charles the Second After the Battle of Worcester and his subsequent adventures, William Blackwood and Sons. p.166
  9. ↑ "The Monarch's Way". The Quinton Oracle. 2005. Archived from the original on 28 August 2008. Retrieved 30 August 2008.
  10. ↑ "Cyril Vincent Taylor". Hymn Time. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  11. ↑ "Abbot's Leigh". Hymnary. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  12. ↑ "Composer: Cyril Vincent Taylor". Hymns Without Words. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  13. ↑ "The Avon (Structural Change) Order 1995". HMSO. Archived from the original on 30 January 2008. Retrieved 9 December 2007.
  14. ↑ "Long Ashton RD". A vision of Britain Through Time. University of Portsmouth. Retrieved 4 January 2014.
  15. ↑ Moore, James; Rice, Roy; Hucker, Ernest (1995). Bilbie and the Chew Valley clock makers. The authors. ISBN 0-9526702-0-8.
  16. ↑ "Holy Trinity Church". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 5 October 2007.
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