Broadwell, Warwickshire
Encyclopedia
Broadwell is a village
in Warwickshire
, England
in the civil parish of Leamington Hastings
at roughly midway between Dunchurch
and Southam
on the A426 road
.
In 1086, the Domesday Book
records that the chief estate of Leamington was held by Hasculf Musard.
Broadwell (like the neighbouring villages of Leamington Hastings, Hill
and Kites Hardwick
) was once a manor
in its own right. Joan Hastang (of the family whose name is borne by Leamington Hastings) was allotted
Broadwell in 1375. According to Prof. Louis Salzman
's History of the County of Warwick, the ...last mention of Bradwell (sic) as a separate manor is in the inquisition post mortem on Humphrey Stafford in 1545.
Broadwell is one of three villages of that name in central England
. The other two are in Gloucestershire
- one between the towns of Moreton-in-Marsh
and Stow-on-the-Wold
, the other a few miles west of Lechlade
on the upper River Thames
.
The villages in Leamington Hasting parish are farming
settlements. Today, there is a mix of sheep and arable
. However, Salzman records that much of arable land had once been pasture. This is also borne out in Mr Sponges's Sporting Tour written in 1853
by R.S. Surtees
which refers to: ... the wide-stretching grazing grounds of Southam and Dunchurch.
Today, Broadwell compromises roughly 70 household
s. There are three farms in the village itself (Home Farm, Broadwell House Farm and Hospital Farm) and several smallholdings. Other farms border the village.
Broadwell is in the broad flat valley
of the River Leam
. The valley is bounded to the north by the Rugby ridge and Lawford Heath, to the south by a low range of upland which forms part of the Northamptonshire
/Warwickshire ironstone
hills. The village sits on fossil
-rich Blue Lias
clay
, hence the proximity of several cement works, all now closed (see Stockton article
for details).
Architecturally
, Broadwell is very unprepossessing. The Green
is surrounded by a mix of 18th and 19th century cottage
s, post-war
local authority houses, 1970s bungalows and 1990s large detached houses. The mix on Main Street and Back Lane (also known as Hayway Lane) is similar. Since 1990, two bungalows and about half-a-dozen detached houses have been built.
Historically, farming has always been the principal activity, although in the 20th century some residents worked in the Charles Nelson Company's cement works in neighbouring Stockton
. Today, many residents are retired: the rest work away from the village and at least one commutes
over 80 miles to London
every day.
Until the 1960s, there was a railway station (Stockton & Napton on the Leamington to Weedon line) a mile from the village. Today, there is a bus
service to neighbouring towns. However, most families in Broadwell have a car.
There is no shop or public house
in Broadwell. In part, the lack of a pub is due to the village's nonconformist tradition; Broadwell has a substantial Methodist chapel
. The village also has a small Church of England
chapel, the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is in the ecclesiastical parish
of Leamington Hastings. Services are held monthly in the Church of the Good Shepherd.
Communal life centres around the village hall. Until December 2007, this was a corrugated iron sheet
building. However, this structure was dismantled and a larger brick-built hall was erected during January and February 2008. Principal users of the hall are the Trustees of the village green, the Flower Show Committee and local art groups.
Demographically, Broadwell is home to a fairly typical rural
Midlands
population. There is little ethnic diversity or multiculturalism
and the age range is weighted towards the late middle-aged. However, there are also about a dozen families with school-age children.
Village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet with the population ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand , Though often located in rural areas, the term urban village is also applied to certain urban neighbourhoods, such as the West Village in Manhattan, New...
in Warwickshire
Warwickshire
Warwickshire is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
in the civil parish of Leamington Hastings
Leamington Hastings
Leamington Hastings is a small village and larger civil parish in Warwickshire, England.-The village:The village is about 7 miles south-west of Rugby and west of the A426 road between Rugby and Southam. To the north of the village is the Draycote Water reservoir...
at roughly midway between Dunchurch
Dunchurch
Dunchurch is a civil parish and village on the south-western outskirts of Rugby in Warwickshire, England. The 2001 census recorded a population of 2,842 in the village.- History :...
and Southam
Southam
Southam is a small market town in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England. The 2001 census recorded a population of 6,509 in the town.The nearest sizeable town to Southam is Leamington Spa, located roughly 7 miles to the west...
on the A426 road
A426 road
The A426 road is a road in England which runs from the city of Leicester to the market town of Southam in Warwickshire via the towns of Lutterworth and Rugby.-History:...
.
In 1086, the Domesday Book
Domesday Book
Domesday Book , now held at The National Archives, Kew, Richmond upon Thames in South West London, is the record of the great survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086...
records that the chief estate of Leamington was held by Hasculf Musard.
Broadwell (like the neighbouring villages of Leamington Hastings, Hill
Hill, Warwickshire
Hill is a hamlet in the English county of Warwickshire.Administratively it is in the civil parish of Leamington Hastings that, in turn, forms part of the borough of Rugby. It lies between Leamington Hastings and the A426 road from Rugby to Southam....
and Kites Hardwick
Kites Hardwick
Kites Hardwick is a hamlet in east Warwickshire, England, in the Leam Valley ward of Rugby Borough and in the civil parish of Leamington Hastings...
) was once a manor
Manorialism
Manorialism, an essential element of feudal society, was the organizing principle of rural economy that originated in the villa system of the Late Roman Empire, was widely practiced in medieval western and parts of central Europe, and was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market...
in its own right. Joan Hastang (of the family whose name is borne by Leamington Hastings) was allotted
Lord of the Manor
The Lordship of a Manor is recognised today in England and Wales as a form of property and one of three elements of a manor that may exist separately or be combined and may be held in moieties...
Broadwell in 1375. According to Prof. Louis Salzman
Louis Francis Salzman
Louis Francis Salzman was a British economic historian who specialised in the medieval period.He was born in Brighton in 1878, the son of Dr. F.W. Salzmann, and educated at Haileybury College and Pembroke College, Cambridge...
's History of the County of Warwick, the ...last mention of Bradwell (sic) as a separate manor is in the inquisition post mortem on Humphrey Stafford in 1545.
Broadwell is one of three villages of that name in central England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The other two are in Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire
Gloucestershire is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn, and the entire Forest of Dean....
- one between the towns of Moreton-in-Marsh
Moreton-in-Marsh
Moreton-in-Marsh is a town and civil parish in northeastern Gloucestershire, England. The town is at the crossroads of the Fosse Way Roman road and the A44. The parish and environs are relatively flat and low-lying compared with the surrounding Cotswold Hills...
and Stow-on-the-Wold
Stow-on-the-Wold
Stow-on-the-Wold is a market town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It is situated on top of an 800 ft hill, at the convergence of a number of major roads through the Cotswolds, including the Fosse Way . The town was founded as a planned market place by Norman lords to take...
, the other a few miles west of Lechlade
Lechlade
Lechlade, or Lechlade-on-Thames, is a town at the southern edge of the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire, England. It is the highest point at which the River Thames is navigable. The town is named after the River Leach that joins the Thames near here....
on the upper River Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...
.
The villages in Leamington Hasting parish are farming
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
settlements. Today, there is a mix of sheep and arable
Agronomy
Agronomy is the science and technology of producing and using plants for food, fuel, feed, fiber, and reclamation. Agronomy encompasses work in the areas of plant genetics, plant physiology, meteorology, and soil science. Agronomy is the application of a combination of sciences like biology,...
. However, Salzman records that much of arable land had once been pasture. This is also borne out in Mr Sponges's Sporting Tour written in 1853
1853 in literature
The year 1853 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:*Charles Dickens writes Bleak House, the first English novel to feature a detective.*William Wells Brown becomes the first African American novelist to be published.-New books:...
by R.S. Surtees
Robert Smith Surtees
Robert Smith Surtees was an English editor, novelist and sporting writer. He was the second son of Anthony Surtees of Hamsterley Hall, a member of an old County Durham family.-Early life:...
which refers to: ... the wide-stretching grazing grounds of Southam and Dunchurch.
Today, Broadwell compromises roughly 70 household
Household
The household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family"....
s. There are three farms in the village itself (Home Farm, Broadwell House Farm and Hospital Farm) and several smallholdings. Other farms border the village.
Broadwell is in the broad flat valley
Valley
In geology, a valley or dale is a depression with predominant extent in one direction. A very deep river valley may be called a canyon or gorge.The terms U-shaped and V-shaped are descriptive terms of geography to characterize the form of valleys...
of the River Leam
River Leam
The River Leam is a river which flows through eastern and southern Warwickshire. It is a small river about 25–30 miles long. The town of Leamington Spa lies on, and is named after, the River Leam....
. The valley is bounded to the north by the Rugby ridge and Lawford Heath, to the south by a low range of upland which forms part of the Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire
Northamptonshire is a landlocked county in the English East Midlands, with a population of 629,676 as at the 2001 census. It has boundaries with the ceremonial counties of Warwickshire to the west, Leicestershire and Rutland to the north, Cambridgeshire to the east, Bedfordshire to the south-east,...
/Warwickshire ironstone
Ironstone
Ironstone is a sedimentary rock, either deposited directly as a ferruginous sediment or created by chemical repacement, that contains a substantial proportion of an iron compound from which iron either can be or once was smelted commercially. This term is customarily restricted to hard coarsely...
hills. The village sits on fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
-rich Blue Lias
Blue Lias
The Blue Lias is a geologic formation in southern, eastern and western England and parts of South Wales, part of the Lias Group. The Blue Lias consists of a sequence of limestone and shale layers, laid down in latest Triassic and early Jurassic times, between 195 and 200 million years ago...
clay
Soil type
In terms of soil texture, soil type usually refers to the different sizes of mineral particles in a particular sample. Soil is made up in part of finely ground rock particles, grouped according to size as sand, silt and clay...
, hence the proximity of several cement works, all now closed (see Stockton article
Stockton, Warwickshire
Stockton is a village and civil parish, in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England. In the 2001 census it had a population of 1,391. The village is located just to the east of the A426 road two miles north-east of Southam, and eight miles south-west of Rugby.Stockton's name was...
for details).
Architecturally
Architecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
, Broadwell is very unprepossessing. The Green
Village green
A village green is a common open area which is a part of a settlement. Traditionally, such an area was often common grass land at the centre of a small agricultural settlement, used for grazing and sometimes for community events...
is surrounded by a mix of 18th and 19th century cottage
Cottage
__toc__In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cozy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location. However there are cottage-style dwellings in cities, and in places such as Canada the term exists with no connotations of size at all...
s, post-war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
local authority houses, 1970s bungalows and 1990s large detached houses. The mix on Main Street and Back Lane (also known as Hayway Lane) is similar. Since 1990, two bungalows and about half-a-dozen detached houses have been built.
Historically, farming has always been the principal activity, although in the 20th century some residents worked in the Charles Nelson Company's cement works in neighbouring Stockton
Stockton, Warwickshire
Stockton is a village and civil parish, in the Stratford-on-Avon district of Warwickshire, England. In the 2001 census it had a population of 1,391. The village is located just to the east of the A426 road two miles north-east of Southam, and eight miles south-west of Rugby.Stockton's name was...
. Today, many residents are retired: the rest work away from the village and at least one commutes
Commuting
Commuting is regular travel between one's place of residence and place of work or full time study. It sometimes refers to any regular or often repeated traveling between locations when not work related.- History :...
over 80 miles to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
every day.
Until the 1960s, there was a railway station (Stockton & Napton on the Leamington to Weedon line) a mile from the village. Today, there is a bus
Bus
A bus is a road vehicle designed to carry passengers. Buses can have a capacity as high as 300 passengers. The most common type of bus is the single-decker bus, with larger loads carried by double-decker buses and articulated buses, and smaller loads carried by midibuses and minibuses; coaches are...
service to neighbouring towns. However, most families in Broadwell have a car.
There is no shop or public house
Public house
A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...
in Broadwell. In part, the lack of a pub is due to the village's nonconformist tradition; Broadwell has a substantial Methodist chapel
Chapel
A chapel is a building used by Christians as a place of fellowship and worship. It may be part of a larger structure or complex, such as a church, college, hospital, palace, prison or funeral home, located on board a military or commercial ship, or it may be an entirely free-standing building,...
. The village also has a small Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
chapel, the Church of the Good Shepherd, which is in the ecclesiastical parish
Parish
A parish is a territorial unit historically under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of one parish priest, who might be assisted in his pastoral duties by a curate or curates - also priests but not the parish priest - from a more or less central parish church with its associated organization...
of Leamington Hastings. Services are held monthly in the Church of the Good Shepherd.
Communal life centres around the village hall. Until December 2007, this was a corrugated iron sheet
Corrugated galvanised iron
Corrugated galvanised iron is a building material composed of sheets of hot-dip galvanised mild steel, cold-rolled to produce a linear corrugated pattern in them...
building. However, this structure was dismantled and a larger brick-built hall was erected during January and February 2008. Principal users of the hall are the Trustees of the village green, the Flower Show Committee and local art groups.
Demographically, Broadwell is home to a fairly typical rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
Midlands
English Midlands
The Midlands, or the English Midlands, is the traditional name for the area comprising central England that broadly corresponds to the early medieval Kingdom of Mercia. It borders Southern England, Northern England, East Anglia and Wales. Its largest city is Birmingham, and it was an important...
population. There is little ethnic diversity or multiculturalism
Multiculturalism
Multiculturalism is the appreciation, acceptance or promotion of multiple cultures, applied to the demographic make-up of a specific place, usually at the organizational level, e.g...
and the age range is weighted towards the late middle-aged. However, there are also about a dozen families with school-age children.