Hucclecot, Noke, Wood Hucclecote, Elmbridge
Gloucester was untouched by the monastic revival in the reign of King Edgar. In 1022 Wulfstan II, who held the sees of both Worcester and York, changed the community of secular priests into a convent of Benedictine monks and put them under the rule of Abbot Edric. Lands at Badgeworth and Hatherley were sold and the monastic buildings were destroyed by fire. In 1058 Edric, Abbot of Gloucester was succeeded by Wilstan, Abbot of Gloucester, a monk of Worcester. Aldred, then bishop of Worcester, rebuilt the church from the foundations; to recoup the expense he took possession of the lands of the monks at Leach, Oddington, Standish, and Barton, and annexed them to the see of York, to which he succeeded in 1061. At the time of the Norman Conquest monastic life languished at Gloucester, as in many other houses, the Benedictine abbeys. In 1072 the convent consisted only of two monks and eight novices, and Abbot Wilstan had gone on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. After his death in that year, Serlo, Abbot of Gloucester, a Norman monk of Mont St. Michel, was appointed by William the Conqueror. The monastery prospered exceedingly under his vigorous rule, and before 1087 he recovered the manors of Frocester and Coln St. Aldwyn, which had been alienated by his predecessor.
In 1066 Hucclecote and Churchdown were distinct manors belonging to St. Oswald's church, Gloucester, and later they were part of the archbishop of York's barony of Churchdown. The existence of separate rectory estates for Hucclecote and Churchdown is that the churches or chapels in both places were once equal in status after Churchdown church, which was in Hucclecote on the top of Churchdown Hill, became the parish church and Hucclecote chapel was abandoned after 1289. Elmbridge, which was another manor of the Churchdown barony, evidently paid its tithes to the Churchdown rectory estate.
An estate of 4 hides in Hucclecote was among the lands of the minster of St. Oswald, Gloucester, that were held in 1066 by Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury, and in 1086 by the archbishop of York. Known as HUCCLECOTE manor, the estate was retained by the archbishop of York as a member of the barony of Churchdown until 1545 when the manors of the barony were exchanged with the Crown. In the south-cast the settlement of Wood Hucclecote, where four people were assessed for the subsidy in 1327, was perhaps that called Little Hucclecote in 1243.
Noke, where four people were assessed for the subsidy in 1327 and was a loose collection of farmsteads and cottages at the foot of Churchdown Hill on lanes leading from the village to Churchdown and the hilltop church. One house, presumably that occupied before 1318 by Richard of the hall, was called Hall Place in 1453. In 1552 the barony was granted to Sir Thomas Chamberlayne (d. 1580), whose eldest son John succeeded to the manors of Churchdown and Hucclecote. In 1327 John Browning held 2 ploughlands and 20 a. of meadow at Noke from the archbishop of York by knight service. The estate was probably that called NOKE manor, part of which was held by Thomas Kemyll (fl. 1434) and by Thomas Feld (d. c. 1511). The latter's son and heir Giles was a minor and the estate has not been traced after 1515.
There were several estates at Elmbridge in the 13th century, including one belonging in the 1230s to John of Elmbridge, described as lord of Elmbridge, and his wife Alice. Land at Elmbridge and Brickhampton in Churchdown, held c. 1270 by Geoffrey de Longchamp from Churchdown barony as ? knight's fee, formed the estate later known as the manor of ELBRIDGE or ELMBRIDGE, which also included land in DOWN HATHERLEY and INNSWORTH. That estate probably passed to William de Gardinis (fl. 1299), a landowner at Matson, from whom land at Elmbridge was held by St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Gloucester, and by Walter of Gloucester (d. c. 1311). Walter's estate, comprising a capital messuage and 35 a., was held by the yearly service of ˝ mark and passed to his son Walter, a minor. The hospital acquired land there piecemeal in the 13th century and the early 14th and exchanged some of it with Thomas de la Mare in 1347. St. Margaret's Hospital at Wotton acquired land in Hucclecote and Elmbridge in the 13th century and the early 14th. There were several mills on the Horsbere brook. That from which Mill bridge, on the road between Hucclecote and Churchdown, was named apparently belonged in 1320 to St. Margaret's Hospital at Wotton. It probably stood downstream from the bridge. The millward living at Noke in 1327 may have worked it or Pitt Mill, recorded from 1399 on a site downstream and north of the village and presumably the mill belonging to the archbishop of York in 1086 and 1340, was always a corn mill. It may have been burnt in 1634, allegedly in divine punishment on the miller for sabbath breaking.
There was a chapel at Hucclecote in 1289 under the jurisdiction of the archbishop of York and evidently originated as a chapel of the minster (later priory) of St. Oswald, Gloucester and served the settlements at Hucclecote, Wood Hucclecote, and Noke, the tithes of which belonged to the priory's Hucclecote rectory estate and granted in 1542 to the dean and chapter of Bristol cathedral. No record of the chapel has been found after 1289 and Hucclecote probably became part of Churchdown parish soon afterwards. A chapel at Elmbridge, one of several built in the priory's liberty in the mid 12th century, has not been traced. Homages or frankplesges of Elmbridge other than churchwardens and hospices built tithes to the rectory of Churchdown. The church, which was dedicated in 1851 to ST. PHILIP AND ST. JAMES.