Poulton Timeline
Bronze Age: 1200 BCE
Period given to the artefacts found in the Poulton Hoard (see People & Places).
Iron Age: 800 BCE
Ranbury Ring hillfort settlement created between 500 BCE and 100 BCE (see People & Places).
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.