Bishop's Cleeve

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bishop's Cleeve is a large village in the Local Authority District of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, England, near Cheltenham. The village lies at the foot of Cleeve Hill, the highest point in the Cotswolds.

Village viewed from Cleeve Hill

It dates back at least to the 8th century, though Iron Age and Roman remains have also been found. At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, there were approximately 100 people living there. The oldest houses still standing are from the 12th and 13th centuries. The centrepiece of the village is the church, St Michael's & All Angels, which has many Norman features. The tower and the nave arches were rebuilt in the 17th century when other features were enlarged.

St Michael's & All Angels Church, Bishop's Cleeve.

At the beginning of the 20th century Bishop's Cleeve had a population of barely 400, but at the 2001 census the figure was 9,944. Yet this increase has been mainly due not to close proximity to Cheltenham, but to the arrival of major employers in Bishop's Cleeve itself. The village expanded first in the 1950s with the opening of the nearby Smith's Industries factory, many new houses being built for the workers. Bishop's Cleeve secondary school was opened in 1956. The village expanded again in the mid 1980s. A long-awaited bypass for the main A435 road was constructed in the late 1980s, and further housing was constructed around the new road. At around the same time a large office building for Eagle Star Insurance (now Zurich Financial Services) was constructed alongside the old Priory building.

Bishop's Cleeve was once served by a railway line, a relative latecomer in British railway history, opened in the early 1900s by the Great Western Railway and running from Stratford-upon-Avon to Cheltenham, part of a main line from Birmingham to the South West and South Wales. Bishop's Cleeve station along with almost all others on this section closed in 1960, but the nearby Cheltenham Racecourse station remained in operation for royal visits to the Racecourse until 1965; through passenger services continued until 1968, and freight until 1976 when a derailment at Broadway damaged the line. It was decided not to bring the section back into use and by the early 1980s it had been dismantled. The stretch between Toddington and Cheltenham Racecourse has since been reconstructed and reopened as a heritage railway called the Gloucestershire Warwickshire Railway.

Bishop's Cleeve was also served, though less well, by a station called Cleeve on the present Birmingham to Bristol main line about 1.5 miles to the west, but this station closed in 1950.

Bishop's Cleeve is bordered by the village of Woodmancote to the east, the former Great Western railway line dividing the two parishes.