| Ledbury | |
|---|---|
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  Ledbury Location withinHerefordshire | |
| Population | 9,290 (2011)[1] |
| OS grid reference | SO710373 |
| Civil parish |
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| Unitary authority | |
| Ceremonial county | |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | LEDBURY |
| Postcode district | HR8 |
| Dialling code | 01531 |
| Police | West Mercia |
| Fire | Hereford and Worcester |
| Ambulance | West Midlands |
| UK Parliament | |
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Ledbury is amarket town andcivil parish in the county ofHerefordshire, England, lying east ofHereford, and west of theMalvern Hills.
It has a significant number of Tudor-styletimber-framed structures, in particular along Church Lane and High Street. One of the most outstanding isLedbury Market Hall,[2] built in 1617, located in the town centre. Other notable buildings include theparish church of St. Michael and All Angels,[3] the Painted Room[4] (containing sixteenth-centuryfrescoes), the Old Grammar School, the Barrett-Browning memorial clock tower[5] (designed byBrightwen Binyon and opened in 1896 to house the library until 2015), nearbyEastnor Castle and the St. Katherine's Hospital site.[6] Foundedc. 1231, this is a rare surviving example of a hospital complex, with hall, chapel, a Master's House (fully restored and opened in March 2015 to house the Library),[7] almshouses and a timber-framed barn.
Ledbury is aborough whose origins date to around AD 690. In theDomesday Book of 1086 it was recorded as Liedeberge. It may take its name from theRiver Leadon on which it stands.Old Englishburg (fortified or defended site) has been added to theriver name.
As a town it was created on a bishop's manor, probably, likeLeominster,Bromyard andRoss-on-Wye, in the episcopate of BishopRichard de Capella (1121–1127).[8][page needed] It returned members toParliament in the reign ofEdward I. TheFeathers Hotel was a famous 16th-centurydrovers' inn.[9] It was not until the reign ofQueen Elizabeth I that this 'poor town' became prosperous thanks mainly to three families of clothier merchants, Skynner, Skyppe, and Elton. No less than four battles were fought during the English civil wars, during which it was a bastion of royalism. Thereafter the arrival of the Martin and Biddulph during the age of aristocracy and into the Victorian signalled a financial sea-change for the town from these banker landowners; Biddulph was later ennobled.[10]
In April1645, during theEnglish Civil War, a battle was fought at Ledbury betweenRoyalist forces underPrince Rupert andRoundhead forces under ColEdward Massey, a veteran parliamentarian leader during theSiege of Gloucester. AsPrince Rupert’s forces advanced north, towardsLeicester, Massey’s forces barricaded the town, but were subsequently routed from Ledbury and pursued for many miles, losing 520 men. It was one of the last royalist victories of the First Civil War, Rupert’s army would later be comprehensively defeated at theBattle of Naseby.
Lord Biddulph lived in the Regency mansion Underdown, built in Ledbury Park byAnthony Keck in about 1780.
Ledbury was home topoetElizabeth Barrett Browning, who spent her childhood atHope End. It is also the birthplace ofpoet laureateJohn Masefield, after whom the localsecondary school is named.William Wordsworth's 1835sonnetSt. Catherine of Ledbury, concerning a local anchoress calledKatherine, begins "When ... Ledbury bells broke forth in concert".[11] In 1901 St. Katharine's priest was Charles Madison Green, whose wife, Ella, was the eldest sister of authorH. Rider Haggard. During the twentieth century the population stabilised, hardly growing at all to the Census of 1971. Becoming a prosperous town of small and independent traders, it relied heavily on agricultural industries. With the addition of the by-pass in 1989, the population rapidly expanded to nearly 10,000 in Census 2011.[12]
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TheHerefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal, which opened from Gloucester as far as Ledbury in 1798, passed through the lower part of the town with wharves at Bye Street and at what is now the Ross Road near the Full Pitcher public house. After closing in 1885, part of the Ledbury-to-Gloucester section of the canal was used by theGreat Western Railway for theLedbury and Gloucester Railway. The original line of the canal northwards towards Hereford can still be seen, where it went underneath the Ledbury-to-Hereford railway. When the Gloucester railway closed in 1964 as a result of theBeeching cuts it became overgrown, but the route through Ledbury became a footpath. In 1997 a 1.6-mile (2.6 km) section from the bypass/Ross Road roundabout to the railway station was upgraded to a 2-metre (7 ft) wide path with a surface of compacted limestone chippings that could be utilised by cyclists and wheelchair users. Several access points were created, trees thinned out but retained, and theHereford Road Skew Bridge across the A438 was reopened. The proposed bridge to take the Town Trail (as it is now known) across the B4214 Bromyard Road into the station yard was not built. The Trail ends at the Hereford/Bromyard road junction.
Ledbury Town Halt railway station opened in 1885 and closed in 1959.
Ledbury forms part of threeelectoral wards ofHerefordshire Council.[13] It has atown council,[14] a town clerk, a mayor and atown crier. The town crier, Bill Turberfield (locally known as 'Bill the Bell') opens events such as the annual Christmas Lights Switch-On.[15] The mayor is Helen I'Anson. Ledbury is one of four market towns (the others beingLeominster,Bromyard andKington) in theNorth Herefordshire parliamentary constituency. Prior to 2010, it was part of the predecessor constituency,Leominster.
The main roads through the town are theA449 and theA417; theM50 motorway runs to the south.
Ledbury railway station is near the western end of theCotswold line and offers direct services toHereford,Worcester,Birmingham,Oxford andLondon Paddington. Services are operated byWest Midlands Railway andGreat Western Railway.[16][17]
Bus services are operated primarily byFirst Worcester and DRM Bus; routes connect the town with Hereford, Ross-on-Wye and Worcester.[18]
Local news and television programmes are provided byBBC West Midlands andITV Central. Television signals are received from theRidge Hill TV transmitter.[19] Local radio stations areBBC Hereford and Worcester,Hits Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire,Greatest Hits Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire andSunshine Radio. The town is served by the local newspaper,Ledbury Reporter which publishes on Fridays.[20]
For many years theRobertson's factory, a subsidiary ofRank Hovis McDougall, producedjam. Production was moved toHiston inCambridgeshire in September 2007 following the parent company's acquisition byPremier Foods.[21] The site is now used by Universal Beverages to process fruit forcider producers such asBulmer's and includes two giantfermentation tanks, each capable of holding 800,000 litres.[22][23]
Ledbury is home toAmcor's flexible-packaging manufacturing plant. This has been awarded both the 'Carbon Reduction Cost-Saving Award - over 250 employees' and 'Most Promising New Low-Carbon Product / Service Award - over 250 employees' in the West Midlands Low-Carbon-Economy 2010 awards.[24]
Ledbury has an income from tourism, being steeped in history in a rural area, withpubs for visitors and locals alike.
The town is the venue for various events including theLedbury Poetry Festival.[25] The annual Community Day[26] takes place in June each year. The first such event was an Ox Roast on 2 June 2013 to commemorate the diamond jubilee ofQueen Elizabeth II's coronation, exactly 60 years after an ox roast that was held in 1953 in Ledbury on Coronation Day.
The Big Chill at nearbyEastnor Castle, which brought thousands of people to the area each year closed after the August 2011 event. Eastnor Castle has provided the backdrop to a number of films, including 1970'sOne More Time, starringJerry Lewis andSammy Davis Jr.[27] BBC television filmed some scenes forThe Prince and the Pauper starringNicholas Lyndhurst in 1976.[28]
The Market Theatre,[29] reputed to be the first in the world to open in the new millennium, is situated near the town centre. It has been built on the site of the former Church Room (a typical 'tin tabernacle' constructed in 1910, which became a theatre in 1956, with a change of name to the Market Theatre in the 1970s). From 1963 (following the demolition of the Kemble Theatre inHereford, which was named after theatre managerRoger Kemble) until 1979, this little building was the only theatre in Herefordshire.[30][31] Ledbury Amateur Dramatic Society (LADS) runs the Theatre, mounting several of its own productions a year. They show films and live screenings on a regular basis, and play host to small and mid-scale professional touring shows, including events in the Poetry Festival.[32] There are a number of singing groups, including the Choral Society and the Community Choir the latter with over 60 members.[33]In 2000, Ledbury formed a twinning association with theSwedish[34][33][28] town ofStrömstad. Since then, several cultural and sporting exchanges have taken place between the two: the junior football club, Ledbury Swifts makes an annual trip there.[35]The hunts (Ledbury,[36] which dates from 1846, and North Ledbury,established in 1905) used to be well supported.[37] The Hunting with Dogs Act 2004 banned the country pursuit, which angered local people, a few of whom joined the Countryside Alliance to register their protest.[38]
The town is home to the Silurian Border Morrismen.[39]
AtTedstone Delamere the Sapey Brook runs its course toUpper Sapey. A story is told of a stolen mare and colt whose hoofprints stopped at the bank of the brook. The owner was Saint Catherine of Ledbury who prayed for their safe return and, upon examining the bed of the brook, saw hoofprints clearly visible in the rocky bottom. These were followed and the thief caught, the horses being safely recovered. A local pastime was once the creation of fake hoofprints for visitors; the originalpetrosomatoglyphs are visible in the brook to this day, attributed by experts to archaeology.[40]
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