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MARKET TOWNS OF GLOUCESTERSHIRE (from SDUK Penny Cyclopedia)

Minchinhampton in 1838

Minchinhampton, 12 miles south-south-east of Gloucester, is an irregularly built market-town, pleasantly situated on a gentle declivity. It consists of four streets, lying at right angles to each other, and contained, in 1831, 1,116 houses. There are three market-houses, two of which were erected in 1700, by Mr. P. Sheppard, with the design of establishing a wool-market, but the attempt was unsuccessful. The cloth manufacture is carried on to a considerable extent along the banks of the numerous brooks and rivulets in the vicinity. This town is in the Stroud or great clothing district, about four miles south-east of the town of Stroud. The church, founded about the reign of Henry III, by the nuns of Caen, is built in the form of a cross, with side aisles, &c. The south transept was rebuilt in 1382, by Sir John de la Mere. There are numerous monuments in the interior of the church.

Minchinhampton contains a tolerably well endowed free-school, and two other charitable schools. Amberley, a large tract of common land on the west side of the town, containing about 1000 acres, was given for the use of the poor resident inhabitants of the parish by dame Alice Hampton, in the reign of Henry VIII. This common is the site of a remarkable encampment, supposed to have been made by the Danes during their occupation of Cirencester in 879. Commencing at Littleworth, the traces of the encampment extend nearly three miles to Woeful Dane Bottom, a name no doubt given to the spot in commemoration of some disastrous defeat of the Danes, but no other record of the event is left. A smaller encampment, skirting the brow of Nailsworth Hill, meets this at its eastern extremity. The population of the parish of Minchinhampton in 1831 was 7,255.