Kingswood in 1843
Kingswood is in a portion of Chippenham hundred insulated in Gloucestershire, about a mile south by west of Wootton-under-Edge. There was formerly a Cistertian abbey here, founded A.D. 1139 : it was almost forsaken soon afterwards by the removal of the monks to Haselden, and afterwards to Tetbury, Kingswood becoming a cell with only a monk or two to say mass ; but about A.D. 1170 the abbot and monks returned to a place called Merewood, in Kingswood parish, where the village now is, near the site of their former seat. The revenues of the abbey at the dissolution were estimated at £254, 11 shillings, 2 pence gross, or £244, 11 shillings 2 pence clear, according to Speed and Dugdale. The statement of a MS. Valor, quoted by Tanner, differs a little from this account. Part of the conventual buildings, consisting of the gate-house of the abbey and a range of buildings on each side, lately occupied as separate dwellings, but now in ruins, are still standing. The area of Kingswood parish is 2,320 acres; the population, in 1831, was 1,447, of whom 123 men were employed in the woollen cloth manufacture. |