A document was produced recently to provide background to possible conservation work on "green and blue corridors" within the city by a newly forming City branch of the Wildlife Trust. This may be of interest in Bartonsham, especially to those residents who have been following the development of our walks and research on the area mills.

Download a pdf of the document on the link below. There is still wide scope for document research - other than maps - to add details to the brief suggested outline. If anyone is interested, please contact BHG and we will put you in touch with the author.

As a result of exhaustive research in a range of records, and from knowledge built up over the years of living in Foley Street, Win Morgan-Brewer gives a thorough history of each house in the street in terms of when it was built, who was living there at any one time and their occupations.

A picture emerges of a number of families settled in the street for the long term – 110 years and counting in one case – and of a number of lodgers, often taken in to help cover bills, who pass through. Many interesting themes emerge – the number of residents who worked on the railways or in the tile industry; how many families adopted children; the widespread place of birth across the British Isles of those who lived in the street at any one time; the age at which many of the boys, especially, began working.

In addition, a chronological list of events that have shaped Hereford is provided, giving some interesting details about life and times in the city as a whole.

Win Morgan-Brewer came to live in Foley Street in 1977 and by the early 1980s she had started researching the family history of both her paternal and maternal relatives. In 2007, with retirement not too far away, she decided to start writing, which resulted in published articles in newspapers and magazines. Around 2010 she started to delve into the history of her house and the people who occupied it, research which snowballed into this history of Foley Street.
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Paperback, 160 pages, over 25 colour and 120 black and white illustrations, mainly photographs ISBN 978-1-910839-14-0 Price £10

A planning application to demolish historic cottages built by John Venn on Kyrle Street has been turned down by Herefordshire Council. The Masonic Housing Trust had applied to demolish the two existing dwellings to facilitate redevelopment of 9 residential apartments with associated car parking, cycles and refuse stores.

We are pleased to publish a fascinating article by local historian and author Jean O'Donnell MBE on the history of these buildings.

You may already know that The Friends of Castle Green is delighted to have been awarded a grant by The Big Lottery Fund Awards for All to carry out a year long city-wide consultation process to determine the future of Castle Green and the surrounding area.
 
The Friends would like to invite members of the History Group and a friend to a World Cafe Event to have their say on 'Planning the Future: Castle Green in the 21st Century'. They hope to bring together a good cross section of people to facilitate a discussion on what people want to happen to the area and how we go about achieving these objectives.

There will be a series of events throughout the year, and there are currently spaces on the evenings of 8th March and 22nd March. The evening will begin at 7.30pm at The Pavilion on Castle Green with food provided, but please bring your own drinks.

The Friends are limited on numbers so if interested you need to RSVP using the attached form as soon as possible and no later than 24th February. The only stipulation is an open mind and plenty of ideas!

For more information contact: - 

Katie Bott
Operations Manager
Friends of Castle Green
07939 261640
operations@friendsofcastlegreen.org.uk

A planning application to demolish historic cottages built by John Venn on Kyrle Street will be turned down by Herefordshire Council, officers say.

The Masonic Housing Trust had applied to demolish the two existing dwellings to facilitate redevelopment of 9 residential apartments with associated car parking, cycles and refuse stores.

A number of objections had been received, including from the City Council and Civic Society, on grounds of historical and architectural merit, the purpose of the original buildings, and environmental considerations around the density of the new development.

We hope to publish information on the history of these buildings shortly.

There were many historic mills in the Bartonsham area, and traces of some of them still remain in street names and buildings.

Discover more in a fascinating illustrated article which follows on from our guided history walk over New Year. You may be surprised!

On the World War 2 memorial just to the north of the main entrance to St James’ church in Green Street is an intriguing inscription to the help given to the rebuilding of All Saints Church Chilvers Coton following its destruction in the blitz.  It reads as follows:

Members of this parish have also furnished the chancel of the Chapel of the Three Kings in the rebuilt Parish Church of Chilvers Coton in the Diocese of Coventry destroyed by enemy action in May 1941.

Why did St James Hereford parishioners help with this specific church near Coventry? What was the link? Read a new article by local resident Naomi Bell explaining what she has found out.

Rotherwas Chapel is listed by Trip Advisor as the 29th most popular place to visit in Herefordshire. Closer reading of the website found that none of the reviewers had actually been inside this historic chapel.  This is an interesting omission by these intrepid explorers as the beautiful interior tells the story of the Bodenham Family who owned the chapel, together with the nearby house and its estate from the 15th to the beginning of the 20th century.

Last Saturday a group of us set off by bike, foot, bus and car to explore this gem which lies unpromisingly between the recycling site and the sprawling Rotherwas Industrial Estate. Having collected the key from the Hereford Archive and Records Centre* we congregated in the newly mown churchyard. Consulting Pevsner we learnt that he considered the spire “weird” which seemed rather unkind as this small but perfectly formed ornament, intermittently visible through the trees from the Wye side path, is an intriguing foil to the lower wooded slope of Dinedor Hill.  Open opening the door we found ourselves in a small room formed by the walls of the tower through the ceiling of which swung, in Poe style, an ancient looking pendulum. Some of us climbed the fragile looking wooden staircase to examine the electro-mechanical device powering the pendulum (this presumed clock is definitely weird, Professor Pevsner) while the more circumspect among us sought the serenity of the chapel itself. Without pews or pulpit the nave under a splendid timber roof draws one to the chancel where an elaborate altar is the sole furnishing. Have caught our breath and, assisted by the informative information board and the ever dry Pevsner, we began to take in the details. The roof, dated to the late 16th century, consists of hammerbeams with pendants supported by ties and queen posts. The floor, paved in tombstones, recovered from the churchyard, record the birth and passing of generations of Bodenhams who worshipped here for nearly 500 years. The altar, elaborately carved and richly gilded, is the work of E W Pugin, son of Augustus Welby Pugin, the Gothic revivalist. The stained glass in the side chapel on the south east tells the story of the cure at Holywell in Flintshire of “gross tumour” on the leg of one Roger Bodenham in 1606, which convinced him to convert to Catholicism. The Bodenham family kept faith with the Church in Rome throughout the centuries and maintained the chapel for their private use in true Brideshead style.

Primed by the excellent talk the previous Tuesday by Liz Pitman** where we, or at least some of us, were introduced to the term Recusancy, we then discussed the travails of people such as Roger and his kin who stuck to their faith risking heavy fines, imprisonment and death under the Recusancy Act of 1593. This law, and the not so obscurely titled Popery Act of 1698, legalised oppression of the Catholic religion was not fully repealed until the Catholic Relief and Emancipation Act of 1829. The survival strategies of Recusant families such as the Bodenhams, the Shakespeares and the Howards as well as individuals such as John Donne and Alexander Pope were also discussed. We also heard about the Kemble cup, named in memory of a St Weonards born Catholic priest who was executed on Widemarsh Common after having a valedictory glass of wine. If Wikipedia is to be believed, one hand of this local martyr is preserved in St Francis Xavier Church.

At this point it was decided to call a halt to the proceedings and our group, plus 2 curious passers-by, were ushered from the chapel and we dispersed by foot, bike and car. Final thoughts were that the Trip Advisor ranking, was like Pevsner’s judgement, a little harsh. Why not see for yourselves?

Notes.
 * The Chapel is curated by the Friends of Rotherwas Chapel who together with English Heritage conserve this beautiful building. The building is usually locked and the key can be borrowed from the Hereford Archive & Records Centre nearby. Please do visit and support the work of the Friends and English Heritage.
** Liz Pitman gave a talk “The Parish that disappeared” at a BHG Meeting on 4th October 2016. Her book on the subject is published by Logaston Press.

An active local history group has called on Herefordshire Council to halt the demolition of the Old Army Barracks on Harold Street by Hereford Cathedral School to clear space for new build student accommodation. The group believes that the existing building is important to the area and could be adapted.

Writing to the Council on behalf of the group, Tony Taylor said: 'The Old Barracks are of important local historical and cultural significance. We strongly support the views of the Planning Officers  that the applicant should be encouraged to accommodate the proposed end use without the need for wholesale demolition.'

'It will always be the case that incorporating and adapting existing buildings for new purposes is challenging and may involve additional expense. However, we feel that the local significance of this building fully justifies the effort required. We do not accept the applicant has fully explored the possibilities but has chosen to take the easy option to go for complete demolition.

The planning application can be viewed here and although general consultation ended on September 1st, comments directly to the Case Officer can still be made.
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Further details about the building and local concerns can be found in our Topics Section.