Description
Chipping-Campden, a small market town and a parish in Gloucestershire, The town stands in a fertile valley, surrounded by cultivated hills and hanging woods, 6 miles NNW of Moreton-m-the-Marsh, and 7 W of Shipston-on-Stour. It consists chiefly of one street, nearly a mile long; and has about the centre a court-house and & market-house, the former a structure of the beginning of the 15th century or earlier, the latter erected in 1624 by Sir Baptist Hicks. It was the meeting-place of the Saxon Kings in 687, for consultation in the war against the Britons; and it became in the 14th century a principal mart for wool, and the residence of many opulent merchants; but it has lost all its manufacturing consequence. A large extant mansion, of nearly the same age as the court-house, is believed to have been the dwelling of one of the wool merchants. The town has a post, money order, and telegraph office (S.O.), and a station (called Campden) on the G.W.R.; a grammar-school, founded in 1487, rebuilt in 1864, with an endowment and an exhibition at Pembroke College, Oxford, and suites of alms-houses founded by Sir Baptist Hicks. The town-hall is a modern building. The town was incorporated by James I., and is governed by a steward, 2 bailiffs, and 24 burgesses. It is a seat of petty sessions. A weekly market is held on Wednesday and a cattle sale on the last Wednesday of every month. The Cotswold games, instituted in the time of James I., and sung by Ben Jonson, Drayton, and other poets, were held on Dover Hill, about half a mile from the town.
The parish includes also the hamlets of Berrington
The parish includes also the hamlets of Berrington, Broad-Campden, and Westington. Acreage, 4699; population, 1736. The manor belonged at Domesday to Hugh Lupus, Earl of Chester; was purchased, in the time of James I., by Sir Baptist Hicks, who was created Viscount Campden, and passed to the family of Noel. A magnificent mansion was built on the manor by Sir Baptist Hicks, and was burned by Lord Noel, grandson of Sir Baptist, to prevent its falling into the hands of the Parliamentary forces. Campden House, now the seat of the Earl of Gainsborough, who is lord of the 'manor, is a large modern mansion, 1 1/2 mile W of the town. A great battle was fought between the Mercians and the West Saxons at Berrington; and the " barrows" over the bodies of the slain are supposed to have given rise to its name. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol; net value, £386 with residence. The church is a large handsome edifice of the Decorated period, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles, two chapels, and pinnacled tower, 110 feet high; it contains an altar-tomb of the first Viscount 'Campden and his wife and other monuments of the Noel family; a brass to William Greville, a wool merchant (died 1401), and other brasses. There is a chapel of ease at Broad Campden, erected in 1868 to the memory of the first Earl of Gainsborough; a Roman Catholic chapel at Campden House, and Wesleyan and Baptist chapels.
Villages, Hamlets, &c.
Berrington, a hamlet in the parish of Chipping- Campden, Gloucestershire, near Chipping-Campden.
