page_title: Tutshill
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Tutshill / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Tutshill Tower
context_page_description: Tutshill is a village within the parish of Tidenham in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England. It is located on the eastern bank of the River Wye, which forms the boundary with Monmouthshire at this point and which separates the village from the town of Chepstow. The village of Woodcroft adjoins Tutshill to the north, and across the A48 road to the south is the village of Sedbury. A short walk over the river is Chepstow railway station on the Nottingham to Cardiff Line.
context_section_description: The name derives from the ruined "tut", a local term for watchtower, on top of the hill overlooking the River Wye and its ancient crossing point at Castleford. and also having a distant view of the River Severn and estuary. The tower is of uncertain date, and has been suggested as either an Anglo-Norman watchtower linked to Chepstow Castle, or a later windmill. A windmill overlooking the Wye above Chapelhouse Wood is recorded in 1584. It may have been later adapted as a folly, leading to a local tradition that the ruined mill had been a look-out tower.
  Tutshill was once common land in "Bishton tithing" to the south of Tidenham Chase. The only house near the crossroads at Tutshill before the 19th century was apparently Tutshill Farm recorded from 1655.
  After the town of Chepstow developed and a bridge was built over the Wye, the main road between Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire followed the steep hill directly up the river bank between the bridge and Tutshill – now a footpath linking Chepstow to the Offa's Dyke Path – until a new road looping around Castleford Hill was opened in 1808.  This road carried traffic between the two counties until a new bridge was built at Chepstow in 1988, whereupon Tutshill was bypassed.
  The expansion of Tutshill had begun by 1828 when building-plots north-east of the crossroads were sold, and by 1843 there were houses extending along the roads to the north and east with the Cross Keys Inn at the corner. By 1856 Tutshill was already a minor centre with two public-houses, a shop, a post office, a solicitor's office, and a private school. By this time the growing population of the Tutshill and Woodcroft area of the parish was recognized by the building of a church and a school on the road between the two hamlets. The church, dedicated to St. Luke, is a Gothic stone building comprising a nave with a bellcot at the south-eastern corner, a chancel, and a north aisle added in 1872. There was another period of expansion in the late 19th century and early years of the 20th, and there was a major increase in the population in the middle years of the 20th century when new housing-estates were built.
  There was a railway station, Tutshill Halt, near Tutshill which was closed in 1959.
  Today many of the residents commute to nearby cities such as Bristol, Cardiff or Gloucester.
caption: The ruined tower at Tutshill
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