Bromyard

Bromyard is a town in Herefordshire, England, in the valley of the River Frome. It lies near the county border with Worcestershire on the A44 between Leominster and Worcester. Bromyard has a number of traditional half-timbered buildings, including some of the pubs, and the parish church is Norman. For centuries, there was a thriving livestock market. Bromyard is mentioned in Bishop Cuthwulf's charter of c. 840. Cudwulf established a monasterium at Bromgeard behind a 'thorny enclosure' with the permission of King Behrtwulf, King of the Mercians. Ealdorman Aelfstan, the local magnate, was granted between 500 and 600 acres of land for a villa beside the River Frome. The settlement in the Plegelgate Hundred was allocated 30 hides for 'the gap [in the forest] where the deer play.' The county court assembly was on Flaggoner's Green, now a hill in the modern borough and where the cricket club is situated. 42 villani (villeins, villagers), 9 bordars (smallholders), and 8 slaves were recorded in the Domesday Book entry in 1086, one of the largest communities in Herefordshire. The first mention of the spelling "Bromyard" was in Edward I's Taxatio Ecclesiasticus on the occasion of a perambulation of the forest boundaries to set up a model for Parlements in 1291. It began to appear regularly in the church and court records of the 14th century. Like Leominster, Ledbury, and Ross-on-Wye, the town and fair at the manor of Bromyard was probably founded in c1125 during the episcopate of Richard de Capella (1121–1127). As with those other three towns, the bishops of Hereford had had a manor and minster there since Anglo-Saxon times. As at Ledbury the church was collegiate, with an establishment of clergy known as "portioners", but without a master and common seal. Surveys for the bishop made c. 1285 and 1575-80 give valuable information about the town's first few centuries. Bromyard contained 255 burgage and landowner tenancies in the 1280s which paid a total rent of £23 10s 7 1/2d to the bishop.