page_title: Ledbury
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Ledbury / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Tomb monument of Edward and Elizabeth Skynner of Ledbury Park, Herefordshire. Edward Skynner died in 1631, three years after his wife Elizabeth. Their daughter, a baby girl, who lies between the couple, was reputedly killed by the last wolf in the district. The couple's other five sons and five daughters kneel below English: Skynner tomb
context_page_description: Ledbury is a market town and civil parish in the county of Herefordshire, England, lying east of Hereford, and west of the Malvern Hills.
  It has a significant number of timber-framed structures, in particular along Church Lane and High Street. One of the most outstanding is the Market House, built in 1617, located in the town centre. Other notable buildings include the parish church of St. Michael and All Angels, the Painted Room, the Old Grammar School, the Barrett-Browning memorial clock tower, nearby Eastnor Castle and the St. Katherine's Hospital site. Founded c. 1231, this is a rare surviving example of a hospital complex, with hall, chapel, a Master's House, almshouses and a timber-framed barn.
context_section_description: Ledbury is a borough whose origins date to around 690 AD. In the Domesday Book it was recorded as Liedeberge. It may take its name from the River Leadon on which it stands. Old English burg (fortified or defended site) has been added to the river name.
  As a town it was created on a bishop's manor, probably, like Leominster, Bromyard and Ross-on-Wye, in the episcopate of Bishop Richard de Capella (1121-1127). It returned members to Parliament in the reign of Edward I. The Feathers Hotel was a famous 16th century drovers' inn. It was not until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that this 'poor town' became prosperous thanks mainly to three families of clothier merchants, Skynner, Skyppe, and Elton.  No less than four battles were fought during the English civil wars, during which it was a bastion of royalism.  Thereafter the arrival of the Martin and Biddulph during the age of aristocracy and into the Victorian signalled a financial sea-change for the town from these banker landowners; Biddulph was later ennobled.
  Lord Biddulph lived in the Regency mansion Underdown, built in Ledbury Park by Anthony Keck in about 1780.
  Ledbury was home to poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who spent her childhood at Hope End. It is also the birthplace of poet laureate John Masefield, after whom the local secondary school is named. William Wordsworth's 1835 sonnet St. Catherine of Ledbury, concerning a local anchoress called Katherine, begins "When ... Ledbury bells broke forth in concert". In 1901 St. Katharine's priest was Charles Madison Green, whose wife, Ella, was the eldest sister of author H. Rider Haggard.  During the twentieth century the population stabilised, hardly growing at all to the Census of 1971.  Becoming a prosperous town of small and independent traders, it relied heavily on agricultural industries.  With the addition of the by-pass in 1989, the population rapidly expanded to nearly 10,000 in Census 2011.
  The Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal, which opened from Gloucester as far as Ledbury in 1798, passed through the lower part of the town with wharves at Bye Street and at what is now the Ross Road near the Full Pitcher public house.  After closing in 1885, part of the Ledbury-to-Gloucester section of the canal was used by the Great Western Railway for the Ledbury and Gloucester Railway. The original line of the canal northwards towards Hereford can still be seen, where it went underneath the Ledbury-to-Hereford railway. When the Gloucester railway closed in 1964 as a result of the Beeching cuts it became overgrown, but the route through Ledbury became a footpath.  In 1997 a 1.6-mile (2.6 km) section from the bypass/Ross Road roundabout to the railway station was upgraded to a 2-metre (7 ft) wide path with a surface of compacted limestone chippings that could be utilised by cyclists and wheelchair users. Several access points were created, trees thinned out but retained, and the Hereford Road Skew Bridge across the A438 was reopened. The proposed bridge to take the Town Trail (as it is now known) across the B4214 Bromyard Road into the station yard was not built.  The Trail ends at the Hereford/Bromyard road junction.
  Ledbury Town Halt railway station opened in 1885 and closed in 1959.
caption: Funerary monument in St Michael and All Angels Church, Ledbury
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