The old Roman road from Chester to Manchester: from the North to Bristol, Plymouth, Melrose
Holy Trinity vicar instituted in 1618 received personal offerings and tithes of house rents and occasionally of pigs, presumably by the grant of the dean and chapter of Gloucester who had acquired the advowson in 1541. An augmentation by lot of £200 in 1743 was laid out on 19 a. in Down Hatherley in 1748, and further augmentations in 1750, 1752, 1787, and 1789 were used to buy 17 a. at Epney, in Moreton Valence, in 1794. The chantries had presumably been separated or had lapsed by 1392 when Thomas Pope and six other men were licensed to give the chaplain of a chantry of St. Mary in Holy Trinity 6 messuages, 2 shops, a toft, and a rent of 22s. 8d. in Gloucester and its suburbs for his support. It was demolished in the mid 18th century under the improvement Act of 1750, and the stone was used in rebuilding the church of Upton upon Severn (Worcs.) The parish registers, which survive from 1557, contain few entries after 1645.
Tewkesbury Abbey acquired a small estate in Longford, including a yardland confirmed to it by Henry I in 1106 and a messuage and 7 a. quitclaimed to it by Cecily, countess of Hereford, in 1201. At the Dissolution the abbey's land was called the Plocks. Deerhurst Priory may have had land in Longford and Twigworth. The Carmelite friars of Gloucester acquired land in Twigworth and, by the grant of Llanthony Priory, in Barton Street. The Knights Hospitallers apparently had land in Twigworth, Down Hatherley, and Sandhurst attached to their preceptory at Quenington.
St. Aldate advowson of the rectory belonged to Deerhurst Priory in 1275. By 1481 it had passed to Tewkesbury Abbey. After the Dissolution the patronage was retained by the Crown. In 1768, at the first vacancy in St. John following the building of the new church, the bishop nominated to St. Aldate. The bishop remained patron until 1931. After the Dissolution the patronage was retained by the Crown. In 1768, at the first vacancy in St. John following the building of the new church, the bishop nominated to St. Aldate. The bishop remained patron until 1931. After the Dissolution the patronage was retained by the Crown. In 1768, at the first vacancy in St. John following the building of the new church, the bishop nominated to St. Aldate. The bishop remained patron until 1931.
In 1455 a guild of St. John, holding eight tenements in the town, supported a chantry in the church. A chantry of St. Mary had been founded in the church by the mid 13th century when Llanthony Priory undertook to support it with 6d. a yeare in return for a gift of lands from Richard of Hatherley. The anchoress recorded at Gloucester in 1479 may have been she who lived in St. Aldate's churchyard in the early 16th century. St. Aldate's church comprised chancel, nave, and tower and short spire in the later Middle Ages. In 1653 the city corporation agreed that the churchwardens of St. Michael's could demolish the church, use the fabric in repairing their church, and inclose the churchyard. Of three bells in the church in the late 16th century one was recast at the Purdues' foundry c. 1640. A chalice with cover was sent to St. Michael's church in 1652 and sold the following year. The surviving parish registers cover the periods 1572–1646 and 1756–1931.
The estates of Sir William Nottingham included land in Twigworth, called Twigworth manor in 1480, and Wotton. Richard Poole, who married Sir William's widow Elizabeth and bought the estates from trustees in 1487, was later said to hold an estate called Wotton manor. The descent of an estate known sometimes as Down Hatherley and Twigworth manor. A small freehold estate based on the MAYHOUSE in Twigworth was settled in 1631 on Robert Herbert and in 1639 the reversion was bought by James Clent. Thomas sold it in 1750 to Samuel Hayward, formerly a London linen draper, who under his marriage settlement was enlarging an estate centred on Sandhurst. He purchased other land at Twigworth and Longford.
St. Oswald's Priory took the tithes of St. Oswald's (later St. Catherine's) parish. The hamlets, which were in the county of the city from 1483 until 1662, Kingsholm, relief rated with the inhamlets, or city parts, of St. Catherine and St. Mary de Lode by the late 17th century, was treated as part of Gloucester. In 1542 the impropriate rectory and tithes in Longford, Twigworth, and Wotton were granted to the dean and chapter of Bristol cathedral. The bishop of Gloucester acquired corn and hay tithes from 51 a. near Longford. In the later 16th century the Crown sold tithes in Wotton which had belonged to St. Oswald's Priory. Those bought in 1577 by Peter Grey and his son Edmund passed to Benjamin Burroughs, who owned tithes from 120 a. in the mid 1780s. Outside the hamlets St. Oswald's Priory's tithes in Meanham were granted in 1540 to John Jennings. In 1720 they were held under lease by Charles Hyett and at inclosure were commuted for 9 a. In the late 18th century the dean and chapter and John Pitt, the lessee in 1771, claimed for the rectory the Tulwell tithes which had been included in leases of that estate from the mid 16th century. The dean and chapter's tithes in the hamlets were commuted at inclosure in 1799 when Pitt received 45 a. and corn rent charges and William Jackson, lessee of tithes in Twigworth, 24 a. Pitt bought the rectory except for its tithes in Sandhurst from the dean and chapter in 1801. James Laurence, William Cother, Robert Hopton, and the rector of St. John the Baptist owned St. Oswald's tithes at inclosure in 1799 when those tithes were commuted for 13 a. in Barton St. Mary and Wotton and for corn rent charges, one of which was claimed by a lessee of the bishop of Bristol. Tithes in Longford, apparently acquired by St. Augustine's Abbey, Bristol, were granted to the bishop of Bristol in 1542. St. Mary Magdalen's Hospital acquired tithes, including by 1265 hay tithes from Sud Meadow. At inclosure in 1799 the tithes, which were held under Gloucester corporation as the hospital's trustee, were commuted for small plots of land and corn.
In 1648 St. Catherine's parish was included in the parish served from St. John the Baptist. The surviving parish registers record baptisms in the period 1684–1762 and from 1777 with gaps between 1837 and 1867, marriages in the period 1695–1737 and from 1868, and burials from 1695. A St. Mary de Lode register includes baptisms and burials for St. Catherine's parish in the mid 18th century.
St. John's church Northgate was described as a chapel in the late 12th and early 13th century but by 1205 the living was a rectory. Plans in 1299 to ordain a vicarage came to nothing. Gloucester Abbey, which presented to the rectory in 1279, held the patronage until the Dissolution; in 1539 a presentation was made by patrons under a grant from the abbey. The church had a number of chantries and obits. Two chantries were probably established in the mid 13th century. In 1100 the bishop settled a portion of 20s. in the church, in Northgate Street, on Gloucester Abbey. The chantry of St. Mary, which received several benefactions, had an income from lands and tenements of £13 0s. 8d. in 1548. One of its many messuages and gardens in Gloucester was sold that yeare to Sir Michael Stanhope and John Bellow. A chantry of St. Clement had been founded in St. John's church by 1473, presumably by the tanners' company, whose members attended an annual mass in the chantry's chapel in 1542.
The medieval church of St. John the Baptist comprised chancel, nave with north porch and south aisle, and west tower and spire. The aisle was built for an altar c. 1234. The tower dates from the 15th century and an altar of St. John was mentioned in 1485. In the later Middle Ages the church had many side altars, and among the lights established by 1368 were those of St. Catherine and St. Nicholas. In 1635 the four bells were recast as five, of which three were recast in 1639 until 1860. The communion plate, given by Thomas Rich in 1660, comprises two chalices and paten covers, two flagons, a credence paten, and an almsdish. The registers survive from 1558.
St. Mary de Crypt the church, in Southgate Street, was recorded from the early 1140s. It was usually known as St. Mary in the south until the mid 16th century when a crypt served to distinguish it by name. Between the 15th and 17th centuries it was also called Christ Church. The Bishop of Exeter held the church in the mid 12th century when he granted a pension of 20s. from it to Godstow Abbey (Oxon.). Soon after he granted the church with its chapel of All Saints to Llanthony Priory, and in 1241 he quitclaimed the advowson of the church to the priory, which retained it until the Dissolution. By 1302 the abbey had appropriated the rent from the houses and the chantry was served in the abbey church.
Of the endowments, including messuages, gardens, stables, and rents in Gloucester and land in Elmore, Sir Michael Stanhope and John Bellow bought a messuage in 1548. The church of St. Mary de Crypt comprises chancel with north and south chapels, central tower, transepts, and aisled nave with a south porch with an upper room. The only fragment of the 12th-century church to survive is the hoodmould of the west doorway. By the end of the 13th century the chancel had at least a south chapel, there was presumably a central tower with transepts, and the nave was aisled. During the earlier 14th century new windows were put into the aisles and the east wall of the chapel. Extensive reconstruction took place in the late 14th century when the nave and chancel arcades, the tower, and the east end of the chancel were rebuilt (the north chapel being a possible enlargement of that time), new windows were put into the transepts and west front, and the south porch was added. In 1401 the church was described as new. The registers survive from 1653 and contain entries for Littleworth.
Llanthony Priory acquired corn and hay tithes in Longford valued as a portion of St. Mary de Lode church at £1 6s. 8d. in 1291. By the Dissolution, when those tithes were held with Hempsted rectory, the priory paid part to the inmates of St. Mary Magdalen's Hospital. Wotton took in much land north-east of Gloucester in an area extending to Longlevens and Innsworth and had detached pieces around the city, within Barnwood to the south-east, and within Upton, Churchdown, and Sandhurst. Wotton St. Mary, the part of the hamlet in St. Mary de Lode parish, covered 826 a. (334.5 ha.), while Wotton St. Catherine, the part in St. Catherine's parish, had only a few houses at Wotton. The tithes of Tuffley manor belonged to Gloucester Abbey, which in 1536 granted a lease of them to Thomas Hale.
St. Mary de Lode parish originally represented the lands of Gloucester Abbey but the intricate boundary in Kingsholm, Longford, and Twigworth between it and St. Catherine's, confirmed in a mid 16th-century perambulation, was achieved by a division between the land belonging to houses respectively east and west of the main road leading northwards from Gloucester.
Gloucester Abbey, which appropriated St. Mary de Lode rectory, took the tithes of Abbot's Barton by the later 12th century.
St. Mary de Lode, the church, standing just to the west of Gloucester Abbey's precinct, in the later St. Mary's Square, was pre-Conquest in origin. The present name of the church, recorded from 1523, was taken from a passage of the nearby Old Severn, a channel of the Severn; in the Middle Ages it was usually called St. Mary before the abbey gate and in the 16th century it was also known as St. Mary Broadgate. The abbey, which by 1394 paid the bishop a pension of 6s. 8d. for the church, retained the advowson of the vicarage until the Dissolution, and in 1541 advowson and impropriate rectory passed to the dean and chapter of Gloucester cathedral. The remaining profits of St. Mary's church were divided between the Franciscan Llanthony Priory, which took £1 6s. 8d. in tithes, and Gloucester Abbey, which received a portion of £3 6s. 8d.; that portion had been confirmed to the abbey between 1164 and 1179. The church of St. Mary de Lode comprises chancel, central tower, and aisled nave with south-east vestry and north and south porches. The chancel and tower survive from the medieval church and the body of the church from a rebuilding of 1825. The chancel was said to have fallen down by 1576. In the late 11th or early 12th century the church was rebuilt with chancel, central tower, and nave. In the mid 12th century aisles of three bays were added to the nave, which had a west doorway. Later the tower, which probably fell during a fire in 1190 then rebuilt. There are six old bells:
- (i–iii) 1705 by Abraham Rudhall;
- (iv–v) 1636 by Roger Purdue;
- (vi) 1710 by Abraham Rudhall.
The church plate includes a paten given in 1724 by Margaret Cartwright, a chalice and paten given in 1736 by Anne Walter, and a chalice of 1756. There is a register for the period 1656–61, and the parish registers, which survive from 1695, contain transcripts of entries for the period 1675–93.
In Barton Street the boundary between St. Mary de Lode and St. Michael's parishes, said in the early 18th century to follow the main road leading south-eastwards from the city. Barton St. Mary, the part of Barton Street in St. Mary's parish, contained c. 700 a. (c. 283 ha.) and took in much of the land on both sides of the road in an area extending from Gloucester to the Sud brook. It also had detached pieces at Saintbridge and elsewhere around the city, including some within Churchdown to the north-east, and part of Oxlease on Alney Island, west of Gloucester, belonged to it.
St. Michael the church, at the Cross on the south side of Eastgate Street, had been built by the mid 12th century and anciently served a parish which included part of Barton Street. By 1789 St. Mary de Grace was considered annexed to it. The chapel of St. Martin, at the Cross on the north side of Eastgate Street, was recorded in the mid 12th century and was a chapel to St. Michael in the mid 13th. Barton St. Michael, the part of Barton Street in St. Michael's parish, comprised c. 500 a. (c. 202 ha.). It intermingled with Barton St. Mary and had detached pieces within Upton St. Leonards to the south-east.
In the mid 13th century the advowson of St. Michael's church and its dependent chapel of St. Martin belonged to the bishop of Exeter. In the early 1270s Gloucester Abbey claimed that he had deprived it of tithes there, and in 1280 the rector relinquished corn tithes from two strips of land to the abbey. Gloucester Abbey, which in the 1270s was in dispute with the rector over tithes and claimed the patronage, purchased the advowson from the bishop in 1285. In the 18th century and the early 19th the rector received a rent charge of 40s. from an estate in Down Hatherley and Twigworth manor; it derived from a bequest to the corporation by William Drinkwater to support a public lecturer in the city and had been applied to a weekly lectureship in St. Michael's church. The church included several side altars in the later Middle Ages when among the lights and images recorded were those of St. Catherine, St. James, and the Holy Rood. The medieval church of St. Michael comprised chancel with south chapel, nave with south aisle, and west tower and porch; the porch had an upper room. The chancel was reconstructed in 1392 and repaired 1561. chancel roof without the rector's consent, in 1670, when the church was ceiled, and in 1680, when the aisle was repaired. The endowments were sold in 1549, a small part being acquired by Anthony Bourchier. The 'common' or 'curfew bell' was tolled at St. Michael's church at the borough's expense in 1393, and in 1550 the corporation paid for a bell to be rung at 4 a.m. and 8 p.m. In 1611 St. Michael's church had a ring of six bells, which was recast in 1667 by Richard Keene of Woodstock (Oxon.).
A gallery had been built by 1648, and in 1678 the seats in the south aisle were set facing the pulpit, in the fashion of a gallery. The chancel and chapel, called the parish chancel in 1704, had ceased to be separate features by then and were described as the pine end, probably from the wainscotting and other fittings, in 1736. Two bells were added in 1887, and the corporation gave the fire bell and the mayor, Albert Estcourt, a new bell in 1898 for an enlarged peal. The chantry's goods presumably included the small bell called Pendock in 1611 and sold by the churchwardens in the mid 17th century. The church was closed in 1940 as a result of the outbreak of the Second World War, and its parish was united with that of St. Mary de Crypt in 1952. bells were taken down in 1956, and the treble and second were given to the cathedral and the others sold. Of the fittings some glass was taken for a church in Bath and the reredos for Saul church. The remains of one memorial were placed in St. Mary de Crypt church and several monuments were moved to St. John's church. The registers of St. Michael's parish survive from 1553.
In the early 19th century part of Castle Meads on Alney Island and the tithes of Meanham north of Gloucester paid land tax as parts of North Hamlet, but Castle Meads belonged to St. Nicholas's parish and Meanham to St. Catherine's. North Hamlet, recorded from the early 18th century, comprised miscellaneous parts, namely Gloucester castle (later the county prison) on the south-west side of Gloucester, a small island called the Naight in the Severn's eastern channel just below the castle, part of Pool Meadow on Alney Island, pieces at Wotton including the hospitals of St. Margaret and St. Mary Magdalen, and a piece near Over Mill. In 1311, St. Bartholomew's Hospital it was said to have a manor at Kingsholm from Tewkesbury Abbey and St. Mary Magdalen's Hospital at Wotton was granted a yardland there by Henry III.
Wotton was an early settlement on Ermin Street. In 1327 fourteen people were assessed for the subsidy in Wotton. Wotton Pitch, where Ermin Street is joined by the Kingsholm and Cheltenham roads, was originally called Dudstone and was evidently the ancient meeting place of that hundred. The hospital of St. Mary Magdalen stood to the south and that of St. Margaret lower down towards Gloucester. Eighteenth century houses formed a brick terrace north of the Cirencester road; later in the century the east part was replaced by a grander house and the west part was used as a tollhouse until 1792.
Wotton in the mid 16th century included a great messuage called Seger's Lane or Place, expanded eastwards along Ermin Street towards Barnwood at an early date. The Old Rectory, in the east end of Wotton, occupies the site of a farmhouse called Colliers, which belonged in the early 17th century to the Capel family and was acquired for St. Aldate's rectory in 1759. The Plough alehouse recorded in 1750 was probably in Wotton. The Swan at Wotton, which by 1750 occupied a building west of Colliers belonging to Barnwood, closed in the late 1780s.
On the Cheltenham road north-east of Wotton there was a farmhouse at Wellsprings in 1722. There Puckstool in the mid 1780s when the farmhouse, which had been rebuilt, was an inn. Early settlement at Innsworth north-east of Gloucester may have included the Norman's house recorded in 1126; it presumably stood near the Horsbere brook, which was called Norman's brook in the early 16th century. There were two early farmsteads at Innsworth. Drymeadow Farm was called Wicks Hay in 1640 when it belonged to Edward Capel, a Bristol merchant. Field Farm, east of Longford, had been built by the early 1880s.
Above Gloucester the easternmost of the Severn's three channels, flowing near Kingsholm, was allowed to silt up at an early date and in 1799 was represented east of Walham by a strip of land called Tween Dyke and west of Kingsholm by a brook called the Old Severn; Tween Dyke was in 1607 described as a highway but later was a common meadow, sometimes called Queen Dyke. Just below Gloucester the Naight ceased to be an island during the building of a canal basin in the late 18th century. The hamlets were drained by streams and ditches falling into the Severn. The river Twyver, the principal stream, divided into two channels east of Gloucester, one emerging from the town near Alvin gate before joining the Old Severn near Kingsholm. The Sud brook, which ran south of Gloucester, was called Mare brook at Saintbridge in 1290. The course of the Wotton brook north-east of Gloucester was known as the Winter ditch in the early 14th century.
The vill of Wotton, which may once have been part of Wotton hamlet, had been formed by 1776 from small fragments of land belonging to St. Bartholomew's Hospital; most were at Wotton and some within Barnwood and Sandhurst. At inclosure in 1799 small pieces, mostly allotted for tithes belonging to St. Mary Magdalen's Hospital, were assigned to the vill, which in the early 19th century had 59 a. (24 ha.). Littleworth and parts of Barton St. Mary, Barton St. Michael, Wotton St. Mary, and South Hamlet came within the city in 1835 when its boundary was extended on the south and south-east.
Main roads radiating from Gloucester ran through the hamlets. The Roman Ermin Street to Cirencester ran eastwards from the outer north gate to Wotton Pitch where it joined the route from Kingsholm; the latter was known in 1799 as Gallows Road or Lane and later as Denmark Road. Ermin Street has remained an important thoroughfare, linking Gloucester with London and Oxford, and in the mid 13th century. Wotton and Barnwood were responsible for, and travellers contributed to, the repair of a bridge over the Wotton brook. Under an Act of 1698 the section between Gloucester and Birdlip together with the Oxford road climbing Crickley Hill in Badgeworth was a turnpike for 20 years, tolls being collected by the county justices to supplement parish highway rates. Gloucester was linked with Cheltenham and Winchcombe by a road leading north-eastwards from Ermin Street at Wotton Pitch. The road, which in the mid 16th century provided an alternative route to Tewkesbury, was called Gallows Lane in the late 17th century, a gallows standing near Cole bridge. The Tewkesbury road ran northwards from Alvin gate through the settlements of Kingsholm, Longford, and Twigworth.
In the mid 13th century Longford was responsible for repairing a bridge and the lord of Kingsholm manor one near Twigworth. Bridges and a causeway carried the Tewkesbury road over water courses and low-lying meadows in Longford, which took its name from the crossing. There was possibly a medieval chapel at the south end of the crossing, where a close east of the road was called Chapel Hay. Offerings at a wayside cross, recorded nearby from 1501, belonged to St. Mary de Lode rectory. The Twigworth bridge, for the repair of which Henry III, after crossing it, authorized the levying of tolls in 1251, presumably spanned the Hatherley brook at the site of Broadboard bridge, recorded in 1824. A road which leaves it at Twigworth was part of a lower road to Tewkesbury through Bishop's Norton until the 19th century.
St. Nicholas the church, in lower Westgate Street, had parochial rights by the end of the 12th century and was described as a minster (monasterium) in the early 13th. In 1203 the church, which was in the gift of the Crown, was called St. Nicholas of the bridge of Gloucester, and in 1221, when the burgesses claimed it, it was said to have custody of the later Westgate bridge. In 1229 Henry III gave the church to St. Bartholomew's Hospital to support the poor there. The hospital, which was later included in St. Nicholas's parish, appropriated the rectory and served the church through chaplains or stipendiary curates. The hospital, which until 1278 appointed one of its own chaplains to serve the chantry, used land in Gloucester, given for a chantry in 1338 by the executors of Owen of Windsor, to augment the chantry priest's stipend. In 1535 he received 100s. and served daily at the altar of St. Thomas of Canterbury. The church of St. Nicholas, which is built of oolitic limestone, comprises a chancel with north chapel, a nave with north aisle, south aisle with porch, and south porch with upper room, and a west tower and spire. Two bays of the north arcade and a carved tympanum in the south wall of the nave survive from the 12th-century church, which was rebuilt and enlarged in the 13th century. The 13th-century south aisle was a chapel of St. Mary in 1347. In 1440 St. Bartholomew's Hospital, which had contested the parishioners' title to the room above the porch and the building to the west. There were many side altars and lights in the church in the later Middle Ages, including those of St. Catherine, St. John the Baptist, Holy Trinity, and the morning mass. The right of nomination passed with the governorship of the hospital under a royal grant of 1564 to the city corporation.
In the 16th century squints were inserted in the north and south walls of the chancel and a small porch and doorway were made on the south side of the south aisle. The north chapel was rebuilt in the 16th or 17th century, apparently as a vestry. A west gallery was erected c. 1621, and in 1622 the city corporation appointed a committee to allot seats in the church to its members. The church has six bells: (i) 1608 probably by John Baker; (ii–iii) 1636 by Roger Purdue; (iv) 15th century by Robert Hendley; (v) 15th century from a Bristol foundry; (vi) 1725 by Abraham Rudhall the younger, being received from him in exchange for the old tenor in 1726. The church plate included a paten cover dated 1573, which may have belonged to a chalice given away in 1716 in an exchange. The church was sometimes described in the 18th and 19th centuries as a free chapel annexed to the hospital. In 1415 the chaplain lived in the church. In 1607 the curate had lodgings in St. Bartholomew's Hospital and after its rebuilding in 1790 he was paid £3 for the loss of his rooms. The parish registers, which contain entries for the castle, survive from 1558.
At the latter date Barton St. Michael, North Hamlet, and the vill of Wotton were dismembered and Kingsholm St. Mary, which had anciently been attached to St. Mary de Lode, and Longford St. Catherine and Longford St. Mary, into which Longford had been divided for civil purposes, also disappeared; Barton St. Mary, St. Catherine with Kingsholm St. Catherine, South Hamlet, and Wotton St. Mary were re-formed as civil parishes within the municipal boundary, with Wotton St. Mary being designated Wotton St. Mary (Within); the areas north and north-east of the city were included in the new civil parishes of Longford and Wotton St. Mary (Without); and Tuffley and Twigworth formed civil parishes. Walham and Sud Meadow, the principal meadows in which several hamlets had shared, were included in Longford and Hempsted respectively, and that part of Oxlease outside the city in Maisemore.
Both Littleworth and Southgate may once have belonged to St. Owen's parish. St. Owen, the church, outside the south gate, was probably founded in the late 11th century by Roger of Gloucester who appointed two chaplains to serve it. His son Walter greatly increased the endowments, including St. Kyneburgh's chapel and several chapels outside Gloucester, and the church was dedicated at his request. Its parish on both sides of the town wall may have included one served earlier from St. Kyneburgh. The church, its graveyard, and dependent chapels, including Elmore, Hempsted, and Quedgeley, were part of the endowment of Llanthony Priory made by Walter's son Miles of Gloucester in 1137. Then St. Owen's rectory to Lire Abbey (Eure) for tithes and land, and at the dispossession of the alien houses in 1414 it passed to Sheen Priory (Surr.) the late 12th century St. Owen's church had a parson who received the living's revenues and paid Llanthony 2 marks.
In the mid 13th century Llanthony Priory assigned the vicarage a portion comprising the small tithes and offerings of the church, a house once occupied by a chaplain serving the church, and tithes and other property in Elmore, Hempsted, Quedgeley, and Woolstrop. A chantry of St. Mary, founded in the church by 1356, had an income of £8 9s. in 1548, when the chantry priest assisted the vicar. Of its endowments, all in Gloucester, part was sold to Sir Thomas Bell and Richard Duke in 1548. In the early 16th century the church had several side altars and lights, including those of the rood, All Souls, and St. Catherine. The chancel roof was in decay in 1547, and by 1552 the church had been repaired and provided with new seats. A bell was sold in 1551, leaving three bells and a sanctus bell in the church tower. The demolition in 1643 was carried out by the city corporation, which used part of the fabric and fittings for repairs at the Crypt school. St. Owen's church was pulled down just before the siege in 1643 when the area outside the south gate was fired, and in 1648 its parish was included in that served from St. Mary de Crypt church.
Littleworth, recorded from 1665, covered 12˝ a. (4.25 ha.) south of Gloucester in and east of the Bristol road. The vill of Southgate Street mentioned c. 1500 was probably the area called Southgate which by 1558 formed a separate tithing with Woolstrop, a hamlet of Quedgeley.