MARSHFIELD, a market-town and parish in the
upper division of the hundred of THORNBURY, county
of GLOUCESTER, 11 miles (E.) from Bristol, and 102
(W. by S.) from London, containing 1569 inhabitants.
The town consists chiefly of a single street of old-buildings,
nearly a mile in length. The trade is principally
in malt, a great part of which is the produce of the vicinity.
The market is on Tuesday; and fairs are held
on the 24th of May and 24th of October, the former
chiefly for horned cattle, and the latter for sheep, horses,
and cheese. A bailiff is annually elected at the manorial
court, and is assisted by a serjeant at mace; his
jurisdiction extends to a considerable distance round
the town. The living is a discharged vicarage, in the
archdeaconry and diocese of Gloucester, rated in the
king's books at £29. 4. 9., endowed with £200 private
benefaction, and £200 royal bounty, and in the patronage
of the Warden and Fellows of New College,
Oxford. The church, which is dedicated to St. Mary, is
a handsome and spacious fabric, in the later style of
English architecture, with a fine square tower at the
west end. There is a place of worship for Unitarians.
A free school was founded, about 1722, by John Harrington,
Esq., who gave the school-house; it was subsequently
endowed with messuages and lands for the support
of a schoolmaster, in 1731, by Dionysia Long: the
annual income, arising from this and other benefactions,
is £ 62. 5., and twenty children are instructed: the present
school-room was built in 1793. Almshouses for
eight poor persons were founded and endowed by
Nicholas Crispe, in 1625; and there are benefactions
for apprenticing poor boys, and other charitable purposes.
In this parish are some barrows and intrenchments,
supposed to have been raised by the Britons,
or Saxons, about 561, when the battle of Dirham took
place in this neighbourhood. Leland mentions the existence
of a nunnery also, but there are no vestiges of
it. In the vicinity are three stones, which mark the
limits of the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, and
Wilts.