Beckford, Gloucestershire

Description
Beckford, a village and a parish in Gloucestershire. The village stands on the river Carrant, 6 miles NE of Tewkes-bury, and 7 SW of Evesham, and has a station on the Ash-church and Evesham branch of the M.R., and a post office under Tewkesbury, with telegraph office at the railway station. The parish includes also the hamlets of Bangrove, Didcote, and Grafton. Acreage, 2778 ; population of the civil parish, 433; of the ecclesiastical, with Ashton-under-Hill, 794. Beckford Hall, an Elizabethan mansion, restored in 1863, was formerly the seat of the Wakeman family. The manor was given, in the time of Henry I., to the abbey of St Martin in Normandy; and passed after the suppression first to Eton College, next to Fotheringhay, next to Sir Richard Lee. The living is a vicarage, with the chapelry of Ashton-under-Hill annexed, in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol; gross value, £500 with residence. The church is Norman, and has a lofty central Perpendicular tower crowned with pinnacles.