Adlestrop

About 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of the village is a tumulus about 26 metres (85 ft) long and 16 metres (52 ft) wide. The tumulus is low, only 2 feet 6 inches (0.8 m) high at one end and 5 feet (1.5 m) at the other. It is near the Iron Age hill fort in the adjoining Oxfordshire parish of Chastleton.

Romano-British pottery and a coin of the usurper-emperor Allectus (died 296) have been found at the tumulus.[2] The tumulus is a Scheduled Monument.[3]

The Domesday Book of 1086 records the place-name as Tedestrop. A Charter Roll of 1251 records it as Tatletrop and the Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici records it as Tatlestrop. The name is derived from the Old English þrop for a village, combined with the name of a person called Tātel or Tǣtel.[4]

King Coenred of Mercia is said to have granted the manor of Adlestrop to Evesham Abbey in AD 708. In the 10th century the manor was assessed at seven hides. The Abbey continued to hold the manor until 1540 when it surrendered all its estates to the Crown in the Dissolution of the Monasteries.[5]

In 1553 the Crown sold Adlestrop manor to Sir Thomas Leigh, who in 1558 was elected Lord Mayor of London. The manor descended in the Leigh family to Chandos Leigh (1791–1850), who in 1839 was created Baron Leigh. Adlestrop remained in the Leigh family in 1960.[5]

Adlestrop Park in 1818

In 1632 Sir William Leigh, grandson of Sir Thomas, died and left the manor to his son, also called William. The younger William chose to live at Adlestrop, and had a barn near the parish church converted into a manor house.

In 1759–62 much of the house was demolished and rebuilt on a larger scale to designs by the Gothic Revival architect Sanderson Miller. Later Humphry Repton (1752–1818) remodelled the gardens. The house and garden are Grade II* listed.[6]

Inside the parish church of St Mary Magdalene, looking east

The Church of England parish church of St Mary Magdalene is cruciform, with a chancel, nave, west tower and north and south transepts. The tower arch may be early 13th-century. The chancel arch is 13th-century but has been rebuilt. The tower is 14th-century. The church was rebuilt in about 1750, but the work was re-done in 1765, possibly by Sanderson Miller. The south transept is 18th-century Gothic Revival. The building was restored again in the early 1860s.[7][8]

Adlestrop House, formerly the rectory

Adlestrop House was built in the 17th century as the Rectory. It was altered in the 18th century and extended in the 19th and 20th centuries.[12]

Thomas Leigh, a member of the manorial family, was Rector of Adlestrop from 1762 until his death in 1813. One of his cousins was the mother of novelist Jane Austen, who visited the rectory three times between 1794 and 1806. Her novel Mansfield Park may have been inspired by the village.[13]

Adlestrop has a post office and village shop that sells groceries and in the summer months serves teas.[14] There is a village hall.[15] Adlestrop Cricket Club plays at Adlestrop Park.[16]

Adlestrop bus shelter with the station sign

In 1853 the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton Railway was built along the Evenlode valley. A station was opened about 1⁄2 mile (800 m) southwest of Adlestrop village where the main road (now the A436) crosses the river. The station was called "Addlestrop" and Stow Road (note the double "D") until 1862, when it was shortened to "Addlestrop". The Great Western Railway took over the line in 1863 and changed the spelling to "Adlestrop" with a single "D" in 1883.

British Railways closed the station in 1966 but the railway remains open. The nearest station is now at Kingham, about 3 miles (5 km) south of the Adlestrop.

Adlestrop was immortalised by Edward Thomas's poem "Adlestrop", which was published in 1917. The poem describes an uneventful journey that Thomas took on 24 June 1914 on the Oxford to Worcester express. The train made a scheduled[17] stop at Adlestrop railway station, which the poet thought was unscheduled. He did not alight from the train, but describes a moment of calm pause in which "a blackbird sang close by, and... all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire".

One of the station signs and one of the benches that used to be on the station platform are now in the village bus shelter. A plaque on the bench quotes Thomas's poem. These are all that remain of the former station.[18]

Site of Adlestrop railway station

Adlestrop

The Millom poet Norman Nicholson wrote a poem,'Do You Remember Adlestrop?' (1981, in the collection 'Sea to the West'). It includes the line,'And Willows, willow-herb and grass'.

• Cecil Fiennes (1831–1870), cricketer
• Wingfield Fiennes (1834–1923), cricketer

• Ekwall, Eilert (1960) [1936]. Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (4th ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Adlestrop. ISBN 0198691033.
• Elrington, CR, ed. (1965). A History of the County of Gloucester. Victoria County History. Vol. VI. London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research. pp. 8–16.
• Harvey, Anne, ed. (1999). Adlestrop Revisited: an Anthology Inspired by Edward Thomas's Poem. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-2289-3.
• Huxley, Victoria (2013). Jane Austen & Adlestrop: Her Other Family. Adlestrop: Windrush Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9575150-2-4.
• RCHME, ed. (1976). "Adlestrop". Ancient and Historical Monuments in the County of Gloucester Iron Age and Romano-British Monuments in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds. London: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England. p. 1.
• Verey, David (1970). Gloucestershire: The Cotswolds. The Buildings of England. Vol. 1. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. pp. 79–81. ISBN 0-14-071040-X.

Wikivoyage has a travel guide for Adlestrop.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Adlestrop.

• Adlestrop – community website
• St Mary Magdalene Church, Adlestrop
• Gelfer, Joseph. "I Remember Adlestrop".
• Adlestrop: historical and genealogical information at GENUKI.
• Adlestrop in the Domesday Book

51.944333°N 1.65°W / 51.944333; -1.65