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Cirencester History

The Roman  Period

Cirencester’s recorded history begins soon after the invasion of  Britain by the Emperor Claudius in AD 43. In the following years the victorious  army over-ran the West Country, after a stern campaign led by the future Emperor  Vespasian at the head of the 2nd Augustan Legion. In order to link up this army  group with the forces fighting further north, a road known as the Fosse Way was  constructed about AD 47 linking the Exeter area with Lincoln in a military zone  which passed through the Cotswolds

Graphical interpretation of the  amphitheatre.

 

The future site of Cirencester was selected for one of the forts  for patrolling troops and there is some evidence of a larger fort built nearby  soon after. Tombstones of two auxiliary cavalrymen, Genialis of the Thracian and  Dannicus of the Indus Horse, have been found in Watermoor.

Later, about AD 75 after the frontier had moved forward to Wales  and the North, a town was established beside the River Churn as the chief city  and administrative centre for the British tribe known as the Dobunni. Their  tribal centre was at Bagendon, some four miles north of Cirencester, where some  earthworks survive today and excavations have revealed coin-mints and many  pre-Roman artefacts. These together with coins of kings of the tribe are in the  Corinium Museum
in Cirencester.

However, the arrival of the Romans and the growth of the new  town of Corinium seems to correspond with decline at Bagendon. The new centre,  now known as Cirencester, was originally called Corinium Dobunnorum. When the  defences were constructed in the 2nd century, it was the second largest town in  Britain, covering 240 acres, compared with the 330 of London.

Most of these defences have disappeared, but their line on the  eastern side can be traced in the form of an earthen bank alongside the river in  the Abbey Grounds (where a section is exposed to view) and along Beeches Road to  the City Bank Playing Field in Watermoor, where a footpath runs along the top of  the bank. The rampart, at first built only of earth, was later faced by an  external wall of stone, which for the most part was progressively removed in  succeeding centuries as building stone or for road repairs in the  district.

There were at least four gates in the encircling walls of  Corinium through which the great Roman highway routes crossed in the centre of  the Roman town, now indicated by the crossing from South Way to Tower Street  where it cuts Lewis Lane. Ermin Street on the NW-SE axis passed through the  gates leading to Gloucester and Wales and extended south to Silchester and the  south coast. The Fosse Way and Akeman Street, from Lincoln and Colchester  respectively, converged at the north-east gate and continued as one road to Bath  and the south-west. There were no doubt other more local routes.

Within the town, very little of the rectangular street system  has survived, although a great deal of information has been revealed by  excavation. The focal point of the street system and nucleus of the towns life  was the Forum, a large open market place surrounded by colonnaded shops. The  area is roughly indicated by the line of the modern streets of Lewis Lane, Tower  Street and The Avenue.

On its south side stood a huge public building, the Basilica.  This building was 102 metres long and 29 metres wide and served as the town hall  and the courts of justice. Nothing survives above ground although the apsidal  western end of the Basilica, where the seat of judgment was placed, is marked  out in the roadway at the junction of The Avenue and Tower Street and a plaque  is mounted nearby.
 

Corinium must have contained many shrines dedicated to Roman and  native deities. During the construction of Ashcroft Road, a representation of  the three Celtic Mother Goddesses, the Deae Matres, was uncovered and this and  other fine religious sculptures can be seen in the Museum.
 

The most important cult, however, seems to have been that of  Jupiter, but in a native form in which a column was set up crowned by a group of  statuary. The fine capital of such a sacred column was found in 1838 near the  museum.
 

There is also an inscription recording the restoration of a  similar column by Septimius, a governor of one of the four provinces into which  Britain was divided during the 4th century AD. It was in the 4th century that  Corinium seems to have been the centre of the general wealth of the Cotswolds  and on the evidence available was probably the capital of the Province of  Britannia Prima. At the peak of its prosperity it must indeed have been a  splendid city and excavation has shown the presence of wide colonnaded streets,  imposing public buildings and richly furnished private houses, many decorated  with fine mosaics and painted wall plaster - the typical trappings in fact of  Roman urban civilisation to be found in one of the largest and most important  towns of the Empire. The amphitheatre, to the west of the town, still stands as  a monument to Roman engineering and can be visited.

When in the 5th century Roman rule officially came to an end,  urban life probably lingered on inside the wall. Some Saxons came to settle in  nearby Fairford in the upper Thames valley, but not until Cuthwin and Ceawlin  took the offensive in AD 577 and defeated three British kings at the Battle of  Dyrham did Cirencester fall into Saxon hands.

The Saxon and Medieval  Town
 

Cirencester was an important centre in the Saxon period, but  little tangible evidence survives. Burials and the site of the minster church  are all that remain to reflect its former status.
 

The burials were discovered in 1909 at The Barton, on the edge  of Cirencester Park, and included that of a warrior buried with his spear and  shield. His grave had been dug through the fourth-century Orpheus mosaic which  is now on display in the Corinium Museum.

The Saxon settlement itself was probably sited in the vicinity  of the present Cecily Hill, to the north-west of the abandoned Roman city.  Vestiges of the principal Roman streets survived but the later Saxon and  medieval urban development adopted a quite different alignment from that of the  Roman town.
 

The minster church, founded in the 9th or 10th century, was  probably a royal foundation. It survived into the 12th century, to be replaced  by the Augustinian abbey of St Mary. Both Anglo-Saxon church and medieval abbey  lay to the north of the parish church, and the site is now marked out in the  Abbey Grounds with an explanatory plaque.
 

At the Norman Conquest the royal manor of Cirencester was  granted to the Earl of Hereford, William Fitz-Osbern, but by 1075 it had  reverted back to the Crown. The Domesday Survey of 1086 records ‘the new market’  of Cirencester, which paid an annual toll of 20s and attracted trade from the  surrounding area. It is difficult to imagine now, but throughout the medieval  period the townscape would have been dominated by the bulk of the great abbey  church with its central tower, overshadowing the parish church and houses  clustered around its precinct.
 

Cirencester Abbey was founded by Henry I in 1117, and following  half a century of building work during which the Saxon minster was demolished,  the great abbey church was finally dedicated in 1176. Building work was  interrupted by the civil war between Matilda and Stephen when another of  Cirencester’s landmarks was destroyed without trace: the castle. Documentary  records show that this was a wooden structure, fortified by Matilda, but  attacked and burnt by Stephen in 1142. Its probable site is somewhere in the  area of the present mansion house.Fenestration - The Church Porch/Old Town Hall

Thus for more than four centuries the great Augustinian Abbey of  St Mary and the parish church of St John the Baptist stood side by side, to the  north of the busy market place. As lord of the manor, the abbot had jurisdiction  over the market rights and drew rates from all the transactions. His power was  absolute in matters of law and order, and at times abbot and citizens were in  fierce dispute.

The Norman  Arch

At the dissolution of the monasteries in 1539, Henry VIII  ordered the total demolition of the buildings so that today the Norman Arch and  parts of the precinct wall are all that remain above ground of the old abbey.
 

The town had a grammar school founded in 1458. There were many  charities founded by townsmen and women for the benefit of the poor and sick,  many of which survive to this day. The Hospital of St John in Spitalgate was  originally founded by Henry II, and the St Thomass Hospital in Thomas Street  was founded by Sir William Nottingham, for four poor weavers, in 1483.
 

Sheep rearing, wool sales, weaving and cloth-making were the  main strengths of Englands trade in the Middle Ages, and many Cirencester  merchants and clothiers took advantage of the wealth and prosperity to be gained  from national and international trade.

Their tombs survive in the parish church, while their fine  houses of Cotswold stone still stand in and around Coxwell Street and Dollar  Street. Their wealth funded the rebuilding of the nave of the parish church in  1515-30, to create the largest parish church in Gloucestershire, often referred  to as the Cathedral of the Cotswolds.

17th and 18th  Centuries
 

Peace was shattered in February 1643 when Royalists and  Parliamentarians fought in the streets of Cirencester during the first Civil  War. Over 300 were killed and 1200 prisoners were held captive in the church.  The townsfolk supported the Parliamentarians but gentry and clergy were for the  old order, so much so that when Charles I was executed in 1649 the minister,  Alexander Gregory, wrote in the parish register, O England what didst thou do,  the 30th of this month.

The restoration of the monarchy was welcomed by many and the  17th century saw the development of the two private estates which came to  encircle the town. Following the dissolution of the monasteries the abbeys  property had been redistributed amongst favoured courtiers. The Oakley manor was  given to Sir Thomas Parry, treasurer to Elizabeth I, and in 1564 he sold the  site of the abbey to the Queens personal physician, Dr Richard Master. Both  began to build fine Elizabethan houses, set within landscaped grounds and  parkland.

Parry sold the Oakley estate to Sir John Danvers in 1563, who in  turn sold to Sir Benjamin Bathurst in 1695. His son, the first Earl Bathurst,  was responsible for the extensive landscaping of Cirencester Park, with its  broad avenues and follies dotted amongst an extensive wooded park. The Abbey  House of the Chester-Masters was demolished in 1964 and the grounds were given  to the town, and now provide a pleasant parkland oasis behind the parish church.  At the end of the 18th century Cirencester was a thriving market town, at the  centre of a network of turnpike roads with easy access to markets for its  produce of grain and wool. In 1789 the opening of a branch of the Thames and  Severn Canal provided a transport link to markets further afield including via  the river Thames to London.

19th Century to the  Present Day
 

The population had expanded but the town was still confined to  an area half the size of the Roman town. As elsewhere, overcrowding and poor  sanitation were rife. The next generation took the first big step towards  serious change. The lord of the manor, the Earl Bathurst, and Miss Jane Master,  owner of the Abbey Estate, combined with others to promote an Act of Parliament  to set up a Commission for improving the town.

As major landowners they gave up their private rights in certain  common land, the commoners were compensated and land at Kingsmeadow was sold to  fund the work. From its beginnings in 1825 until its role was taken over by the  Cirencester Local Board in 1876 (itself later replaced by the Urban District  Council), the Commissioners worked to improve the living and working conditions  of the town’s rapidly expanding population.

Over the centuries temporary market stalls had gradually been  replaced by more permanent structures and buildings until by the early 19th  century the area in front of the church porch was tightly packed with groups of  houses and shops in Shoe Lane, Butter Row, Botcher Row and The Shambles. These  were swept away about 1830 and the area opened up to give the wide market place  which exists today. Drains and sewers were dug, open watercourses were  culverted, paving stones were laid, street cleaners were employed, and regular  policemen were appointed to control law and order. A gasometer was built in  Watermoor in 1833 and gas lights replaced oil lights in the streets, with the  lamplighter taking up his duties as dusk fell.

In 1841 a branch railway line was opened to Kemble to provide a  link to the Great Western Railway at Swindon. The station building, designed by  Brunel, still stands, opposite the original Corinium Museum building in Tetbury  Road. The Midland and South Western Junction Railway also had a station and  extensive locomotive works at Watermoor, opened in 1883. In this way from then  until the 1960s, Cirencester was served by two railway lines, providing  passenger and freight links to all points of the compass. By 1847 the town  centre improvements had removed the cattle market from the centre of the town to  a purpose-built market adjacent to the GWR station.

The cultural life of the town expanded and a number of clubs and  institutions were started. A public subscription library was opened in 1835. The  Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard newspaper, which had started life in  Malmesbury in 1837, moved to Cirencester in 1840 and soon developed a wide  circulation. The writer Richard Jefferies was once a local reporter here, and  vigorous campaigns to extend the franchise and improve the town’s facilities  were fully reported in its pages.
 

Private benefactors included most notably Daniel George Bingham  who funded the building of the Bingham Library, opened in 1905 and the Bingham  Hall which was opened in 1908. By the mid-19th century, cloth making and edge  tool making in the town had almost ceased, but trade in corn and cheese  continued and a new covered market hall, the Corn Hall, was built in the Market  Place, opening in 1863.

The Corn  Hall

 

The growing population of the town necessitated the building of  a second church, and in 1850 Sir Gilbert Scott built Holy Trinity Church at  Watermoor. A similar increase in people attending non-conformist chapels led to  new places of worship for Baptists, Methodists and Congregationalists, and the  Roman Catholic Church in Ashcroft was built in 1896.

In 1894 the passing of the Local Government Act brought into  existence Cirencesters first independent elected body, the Urban District  Council. For three years meetings were held in the former town hall above the  church porch, but in 1897 the Council moved to premises in Castle Street before  transferring to Gosditch Street in1932. Local government reorganisation in 1974  led to the demise of the Urban District Council, replaced by the present  two-tier system of Cotswold District Council and Cirencester Town Council. The  District Council occupies the former Union Workhouse in Trinity Road, while the  Town Council has its offices in Dyer House in Dyer Street.
 

The history of Cirencester in the 20th century has yet to be  written; as with so many market towns, there were many changes and considerable  town expansion. Housing development has extended the towns boundaries, with  residential areas on almost all approaches to the town. Only from the west does  the extensive area of Cirencester Park (itself a grade one parkland) provide a  buffer.

Early development of land at The Whiteway was followed by The  Mead and Bowling Green areas in 1933, and the Chesterton estate in 1938.

After the Second World War, building on the Beeches Estate  began, and in the early 1970s redevelopment of land at Watermoor and the former  Abbey Estate extended the housing provision within the town.

More recently estates on the periphery have extended the towns  limits even further. Commercial development is centred on designated land at  Love Lane, which was an early example of a business park, while within the town  a real attempt has been made to provide sympathetic office space within listed  buildings.
 

Public services and facilities both within and around the town  centre include a Police Station and Magistrates Court in South Way, a Leisure  Centre off the Tetbury Road, a refurbished Museum in Park Street and a  single-site Hospital at The Querns. Edge-of-town shopping and college and school  facilities also serve the needs of the community.

Transport links have changed dramatically in recent years. The  loss of canal and rail links has led to a total dependence on road transport. An  inner ring road system was completed in 1975 in an attempt to reduce town-centre  congestion, and has now been augmented by an outer bypass with the dualling of  the A417. Within the town centre car parks at The Forum, Brewery, Town Station,  Beeches Road, and The Waterloo provide access to the town centre shops, pubs and  restaurants. Traffic-calming measures are currently under consideration to  improve the safety and environment for both pedestrians and  motorists.

But it is not all tarmac and concrete. Cirencester residents and  visitors can enjoy the green lungs provided by the open spaces and parks which  survive within the town in the Abbey Grounds, St Michaels Field, and  Cirencester Park. These are reminders not only of the towns interesting history  but also of individuals and benefactors who over the years have added to its  public amenities.

View of the Church - Abbey  Grounds

A last word on street names, which are as fascinating in  Cirencester as in many historic towns. Shoe Lane may have gone, but there is  still Dollar Street (Dole Hall Street after the almshouse gate of the medieval  abbey) and Coxwell Street, named after the Coxwell family, 17th century  clothiers who lived there (and formerly Abbot Street). Round the corner is Black  Jack Street, the origins of which are still in dispute. A favourite explanation  is the alignment of the street with the former statue of St John which,  soot-blackened (hence Black Jack), was removed from its niche high up in the  church tower many years ago. There are plenty more such stories to be unearthed  in a wander around the town.