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Uley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Map sources for Uley at grid reference ST790984
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Uley (IPA pronunciation: [ 'juːlɪ ] and also rhymes with Julie) is a village in the county of Gloucestershire, England. It is situated in a wooded valley in the Cotswold escarpment, on the road between Dursley and Stroud. The population is around 1,100, but was much greater during the early years of the industrial revolution, when the village was renowned for producing blue cloth. The placename (recorded as Euuelege in the Domesday Book) probably derives from a yew wood nearby.
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North of the village is a Neolithic burial ground known as Hetty Pegler's Tump or Uley Long Barrow.
The Romans built a temple at West Hill, near Uley, on the site of an earlier prehistoric shrine. Following the laying of a water main pipe there in 1976, many discoveries were made including numerous Roman writing tablets or lead curse tablet from the temple area. These writing tablets appear often to relate to theft, and here the mention of animals and and farm implements is a regular theme. There is an ongoing project to catalogue all those found at West Hill online. [1]. Other remains from this temple, including a fine stone head of Mercury, can now be seen in the British Museum. There were significant Roman villas nearby at Frocester, Kingscote, and Woodchester, and there is a little known Roman villa beneath Cam Peak on the road into Dursley.
In 1837, Moses Bendle Garlick, a weaver from Uley, migrated to Australia and settled just north of what is currently Adelaide; he named the settlement Uleybury.
St Giles' Church near the village green was designed by the 19th-century architect Samuel Sanders Teulon. His building replaced an earlier church dating back to Norman times, which had in its turn replaced a Saxon church. The nearby church of the Holy Cross at Owlpen also has Saxon origins: the church there was rebuilt in 1828 by Samuel Manning and enlarged and decorated in 1876 by James Piers St Aubyn. There were also non-conformist chapels at South St and Whitecourt until the early 1970s.
The village was once famous for its large number of pubs (around 14), lately reduced to a single hostelry (The Old Crown). Until the 1970s there was also a butcher's shop and a petrol station, these were subsequently replaced by antique shops and occasional restaurants, and now only a small village shop remains.
The area surrounding Whitecourt appears to have some considerable historical significance, with long associations to the Osborne family and a possible Roman road transecting from Kingscote to the East via Bencombe, crossing the Ewelme brook close to the previous mill buildings opposite Stoutshill and then transiting what is now Lampern View before exiting W towards Cam/Coaley;[citation needed] elements clearly visible just uphill of Bencombe (as the road veers 90 degrees to the north) and to the West opposite the entrance to Angeston Grainge/Nursery (where it enters the wood as a paved and walled causeway.
The increased mechanisation of agriculture in the area (arable on top of the escarpment, sheep on it and cattle in the valleys) led to a gradual decline during the inter-war periods and this led to the construction of three local authority housing estates (South St, Lampern View and Raglan Way). However, increased mobility following the construction of the M4 and the Severn Bridge in the mid-1960s, together with an influx of skilled/managerial/professional migrants following e.g. the establishment of Berkeley power station, led to a steady middle-class gentrification fo the village, witnessed by the construction of substantial detached homes at e.g Court Gardens, South St and Green Close. Although the cultural shift was seismic, this change perhaps "saved" the village from ongoing decline which has hamstrung e.g. Dursley, Cam and Wotton Under Edge.
There is a brewery called Uley Brewery which opened in the 1980s adjacent to the old blacksmiths near The Cut. Uley Bitter and other ales are brewed there.
The Prema Arts Centre is located in the village which offers music evenings, workshops and evening classes.
The village primary school is small with just above 100 pupils. Uley Primary School can be found in Woodstock Terrace. There used to be a preparatory school (Stouts Hill), just outside the village. It closed in the latter part of the twentieth century and included amongst its alumni Mark Phillips, Stephen Fry and Rik Mayall.
A Reading Room (Library) burned down in the mid-1960s and has not been replaced.
An ancient Iron Age hill fort called Uley Bury lies just above the village. The Cotswold Way, a popular trail path, runs close by.
Downham Hill lies just to the west: it is known locally as 'Smallpox Hill' because of the smallpox isolation facility that stood on the top of the hill many years ago (masonry still visible). The Jenner Museum is in the nearby village of Berkeley.
To the east is Owlpen Manor, a Tudor manor house connected with the arts and crafts movement, mainly built from the mid-fifteenth to early seventeenth centuries, but dating back to Saxon times. It was repaired by Norman Jewson in 1925-6, after one hundred years of neglect. Today it is a home of the Mander family.
A brief shot of Uley is featured in episode 6 of series 3 of the Channel 4 comedy Peep Show. This is despite the fact the episode is set in the Quantocks which are, in fact, a considerable distance from the village.
- Ann Woodward and Peter Leach, The Uley Shrines: Excavation of a ritual complex on West Hill, Uley 1977-79 (1993), English Heritage, ISBN 1-85074-303-7
- Alan Saville, Uley Bury and Norbury Hillforts (1983), Western Archaeological Trust, ISBN 0-904918-20-3
- Ed. Alan Bebbington, A History of Uley, Gloucestershire (2003), The Uley Society, ISBN 0-9544525-0-X
- Eilart Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-names 4th edition. Oxford University Press, 1960, ISBN 0-19-869103-3