Wormington Village
Wormington is a small village bordering the Isbourne to the south of the Vale of Evesham, situated midway between Evesham and Winchcombe. The parish is about 5 miles in compass, comprising around 500 acres; now predominantly arable.
For much of its history, Wormington comprised two villages known as Great and Little Wormington. Great Wormington was in the locality of the current Wormington Grange and Little Wormington comprised the church and surrounding houses. Towards the end of the 18th century Nathaniel Jeffreys acquired sizable proportions of both villages and effectively united them. It was only after this that a road was built connecting them.
Great care has to be taken to differentiate the two villages in historical references since the full names are frequently not given even though they were separately owned (or at least tenanted) between the 13th and late 18th centuries.
In the Domesday Survey in the late 11th century there is an entry for Wormington that reads:
“In Gretestan Hundred Wurmetune contained 5 Hides taxed. Culture 2 curacates in demesne and 2 in Villenage, two serfs, a Mill worth 8s. 10 acres of meadow.”
“It was worth 100s., but then (at the survey) 4£ Roger de Laci held, and Watler Ercoldson of him, and Edwy had held (in Saxon times).”
In the 13th century (1297?) Wormington passed to the Knights Templar by gift of King Henry III (but it is not clear that this includes Little Wormington).
On the suppression of the order in 1312 it was granted to Westbury College near Bristol. After the religious houses were dissolved by Henry VIII, Great Wormington was granted to Sir Ralph Sadler and his wife Ellen in 1544 to hold by annual rent of 14s 10d.
At some point Little Wormington had come into the possession of the priory of St Gushte Hereford, a cell of St Peters monastery, Gloucester. In 1544, after the dissolution it was granted to John ap Price of London.
In the 1327 Subsidy Roll, Robert Dastyn appears as the largest contributor of taxes, paying six shillings and ten pence to the King’s Commissioners. The Dastyn or Daston family were important people in the village until the middle of the seventeenth century to the extent that some documents contain references to Dastyn’s Wormington.
The incised alabaster slab let into the south wall of the Chancel is in memory of John Daston who died in 1532. The unique brass of 1605 is to the memory of Anne Savage daughter of Richard Daston,.
In 1608 John Newton became lord of the manor of Little Wormington. It then passed to Mr Gwinneth who married a daughter of the Newtons. After this it was sold first to Mr. Dobbins and then to Mr. George Townsend, whose Will, dated the 14th December 1682, gave a great part of Little Wormington to charitable purposes.
Mr Townsend devised a capital messuage and scite of Manor of Wormington which he left with 59 acres of land to his cousin Robert Kenrick, but the bulk of his estate was given to Trustees to provide exhibitions, at Pembroke College, Oxford, for scholars from the Grammar Schools of Campden, Cheltenham, Northleach and Winchcombe.
He further declared that “a portion of Tithes and the Rest and Residue of the Lands and Tenements of the Said Manor of Wormington be employed for the teaching of poor children to Read and for buying of them books, in each of the Towns of Winchcomb, Northleach, Campden and Cheltenham, to be taught both forenoons and afternoons, to avoid their being offensive at home or elsewhere. And I will and appoint that Twenty Five Pounds yearly be laid forth for the binding and putting forth of five poor boys able to read to be apprentices, whereof I appoint one to be of each of the towns Winchcomb, Northleach, Campden, Cheltenham and Nether Guyting or Blockley.”
In the latter part of the 18th century, Great and Little Wormington were united by Nathaniel Jeffreys. A map from 1777 shows two villages; one called ‘Warmington or Wormington’ and the other ‘Wormington Grange’ much as the current day, but there is no direct road between them.
The Act for the closure of the open fields and meadows commonable and intermixed lands of Wormington parish 1815 states that Samuel Gist was Lord of the Manor and Patron of the Church, and John Duddell, Clerk, was Rector, and entitled to the glebe land and tithes. The award and the map thereof show that the place to be enclosed was Church Wormington. The total area of old Closes and Allotments was 510 acres. The award sets out two new roads; one to Aston Somerville, and the other to Laverton, and makes provision for improving certain water-courses.