Bromyard

The name Bromyard derives from the Old English brōmgeard meaning 'broom yard'. Bromyard is mentioned in Bishop Cuthwulf's charter of c. 840. Cudwulf established a monasterium at Bromgeard behind a 'thorny enclosure' with the permission of King Behrtwulf, King of the Mercians. Ealdorman Aelfstan, the local magnate, was granted between 500 and 600 acres of land for a villa beside the River Frome. The settlement in the Plegelgate Hundred was allocated 30 hides for 'the gap [in the forest] where the deer play.' The county court assembly was on Flaggoner's Green, now a hill in the modern borough and where the cricket club is situated. 42 villani (villeins, villagers), 9 bordars (smallholders),…

The civil parish of Winslow was a total 2854 acre in the original township devolved from the Saxon parochia. To the west stands two outstanding Georgian properties. The Green Estate is a large farm on which a big house was built in 1770 for Thomas Colley who, by 1771, had taken ownership of the new three-storey house with its brick facade which was two miles west of Winslow Township. The Georgian mansion was built on land - 114 acre - of which nearly half was meadow. It consisted of 5 bays with a pedimnented centre and doorways of tripartite Doric columns. Typical of the Decorated Style, the blank sections on the wall offset the elaborations. Colley also installed Venetian windows and a…