A Potted History of Poulton
Poulton Timeline
Bronze Age: 1200 BCE
Period given to the artefacts found in the Poulton Hoard (see below).
Iron Age: 800 BCE
Ranbury Ring hillfort settlement created between 500 BCE and 100 BCE (see below).
Roman Period: 43 to 410
Cirencester (Corinium) occupied by the Roman Army in 44 CE. Roman coins and pottery have been unearthed in Poulton.
Saxon Period: 410 to 1066
Saxon settlement of Pulton (a settlement around pools) established and first documented in a monastic charter of 855 CE.
Norman Period: 1066 to 1154
In 1086 Poltone is listed in the Domesday Book as being in the holding of Roger de Montgomery and having 23, mostly “unfree”, inhabitants.
Poulton Estate comes into the Meysey family, on the death of Roger in 1094. He had married a Meysey heiress.
Plantagenet Period: 1154 to 1399
Henry III grants ownership of Poulton Manor to Nicholas de Sancto Mauro in 1256. On the death of Nicholas in 1317, the Manors of Poulton and Castle Eaton are left to his son Thomas.
Plantagenet Period: 1154 to 1399
Poulton Priory founded in mid-1300 by Sir Thomas St. Maur. The war with France causes his name to be anglicised to Seymour.
Plantagenet Period: 1154 to 1399
It is thought that, during the Black Death in 1348, the village relocated from around the Priory to its present position.
Tudor Period: 1485 to 1603
In 1539 the Priory was surrendered to the Crown during the Dissolution and the assets split up.
Stuart Period: 1603 to 1714
This was a period of expansion, when many properties, including Poulton Manor, were constructed.
Hanoverian Period: 1714 to 1819
Over the 17th & 18th centuries, the village became a self-sufficient rural community, with stock farms, small businesses (baker, tailor, farrier) and several pubs.
Victorian Period: 1819 to 1901
A school was built in 1872, the current church in 1873 and a mansion on the site of Poulton Priory, for James Jocey, in 1897.
Windsor Period: 1901 to Present Day
14 villagers, out of a total of 95 serving, died during the Great War. Major Mitchell, who bought Poulton Priory in 1927, acquired a barn to be used as a village hall.
Present Day
After the Second World War, Poulton gradually lost its shops, its school in 1980, and its petrol station. In more recent years the number of stock farms has declined and the buildings replaced by business units and housing.
People and Places
Ranbury Ring
Ranbury Ring, a scheduled monument to the west of the village, is the remains of a bivallate (meaning it has two defensive ditches and banks surrounding the perimeter) hillfort. It covers 11.5 acres and is encircled by a 30ft wide ditch and a 35ft wide rampart standing 12ft tall. It was most likely built during the middle to the latter part of the Iron Age and probably survived as a village until the military occupation of the South Cotswolds by the Romans.
The Poulton Hoard
The hoard, which can be viewed at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester, was unearthed by a metal detectorist in 2004. It consists of sixty-seven gold and bronze pieces, finger rings, torc (a neck ornament consisting of a band of twisted metal) fragments and open rings as well as bronze tools. These could have been used to shape and decorate the gold. Some of the pieces have been deliberately broken. The hoard dates to around 1300 to 1100 BCE.
Poulton Priory
All that remains of Poulton Priory is the later graveyard which contains five Grade 2 listed chest tombs and a number of complete tabletop tombs. The Priory was founded as a chantry chapel in 1337 and Sir Thomas Seymour (a forebear of Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane) established the Gilbertine Priory of St Mary in 1350. From 1539 the chapel was used as the parish church for Poulton. It was demolished in 1873.
Poulton Manor
Poulton Manor is a William and Mary Grade 1 listed building whose design is influenced by seventeenth century Dutch houses. Built in 1680, it was the home of Thomas Bedwell, a prosperous wool-stapler (dealer). There is a memorial tablet to the family in St Michael’s, which was moved there when the old church was demolished. The house has a classical box shape with a hipped roof and is very different in style from traditional Cotswold stone properties.
Dr Edgar Hope-Simpson
Dr Edgar Hope-Simpson lived in the Packhorse House for thirty years, from 1947. A pioneer of epidemiology he studied familiar infections such as influenza, shingles and the common cold. He was recognised as the foremost authority in his field. A man of good humour, after a major operation, he said, “I went into hospital with a colon and came out with a semi-colon, but that’s still a lot better than a full stop.”
Lady Elizabeth Clarke
Lady Elizabeth Clarke lived at The Old Forge until her death at the age of 73. In 1940, when twenty-two, she took the family’s small power boat across the Channel to help in the rescue of troops from Dunkirk. During the war she worked as an undercover agent with the Resistance in German-occupied France. She was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Legion d’honneur. A critic described her book “I Looked Right” (referring to how a German officer arrested her as she crossed the road) as one of the most moving stories she had ever read.