With contributions from Cirencester Archaeological & Historical Society, Cirencester Civic Society, members & friends
‘Know your place!’ The clues are all around us, but maps provide a wonderful additional resource for interpreting the past. In 1987 The Map Collector published ‘The Map as Biography’, an article by J.B. Harley, the late, great historian of cartography. Harley drew attention to the map as biography in four senses.
Firstly, the map’s own story as a physical object. Secondly, its link to its surveyors and makers (see Snapshots September 2024 issue of Ciren Scene). Thirdly, and here it becomes relevant to Cirencester’s story, as a biography of the landscape it portrays. And finally, it resonates with our own personal engagements with place.
Harley wrote specifically about the six-inch Ordnance Survey (OS) map of his home town, Newton Abbott in Devon. He addressed both the socio-economic history of the town through, for example, reference to the spaces that divided the classes, from Victorian villas to the Workhouse. His own history of place included the church where his wife and son’s ashes are buried, and his daughter was married.
We are lucky in Cirencester in having access to detailed OS Town Plans at 1:500 scale, via both the Know Your Place Gloucestershire and the National Library of Scotland websites – twelve sheets, surveyed in 1875. These provide intimate details of our town in the mid-nineteenth century and here we can focus particularly on the amazing detail available for individual buildings. These plans, and maps at smaller scales, also provide ample information of the roads, railways and canals that were such an important part of Cirencester’s economy in the Victorian period.
The social sphere is illustrated by the range and size of places of worship. The seating capacity of each church and chapel is listed. The parish church of St. John Baptist for example seated 1498, while Holy Trinity in Watermoor had seating for a further 430. Holy Trinity is labelled as a ‘Chapel of ease,’ a church building within the parish, commissioned when the capacity of the parish church had been exceeded.
The curious among you might tot up the capacity of the non-conformist chapels and compare with the 1861 census figure of 6,336 for the town. Built by Sir George Gilbert Scott between 1847-52, Holy Trinity was a response to a rapidly growing population; it was only 4,130 in 1801.
Large institutional buildings also provide an insight into social life. The Union Workhouse (now home to Cotswold District Council) was designed to “discourage the indolent … entering the workhouse was not to be an easyoption.” Those able to work were required to do so and activity varied with gender: women attended to domestic chores while men laboured, such as stone breaking or bone crushing.
In Cirencester the ‘stonebreaking sheds’ were an annex leading directly off the ‘Ablebodied Men’s Ward’ and next to the ‘Boy’s School’ (a very audible lesson?) The town ‘lock-up’ (originally erected in Gloucester Street in 1804) was re-built on the Workhouse site in 1837; labelled as the ‘Refractory Ward’ it was used as a punishment block.
In Cecily Hill, the Barracks, built in 1857, were also represented in great detail, from the two ‘Latrines’ at the foot of the ‘Drill Ground’ to a wonderful bird’s-eye drawing of a ‘Gun’ (cannon) sited to the left of the main entrance and still visible in various photographs, including one taken in 1903 and now in the Historic England Archive (ref: CC57/00098).
As well as the Victorian townscape, the plans revealed other historic layers, some now buried or lost. The OS took great pains to map the sites of archaeological finds, including Roman villas (e.g. Dyer Street), ‘tessellated pavements’ and even ‘coins, pottery and vases.’ There are other historic locations, for example several as ‘Site of Cross’. The town had six, including one in front of the Fleece in Dyer Street, another close to Oxford House in London Road, plus the original site of the ‘High Cross’, since moved into Cirencester Park and now in West Market Place.
This article has barely touched on the riches of these maps. These two useful on-line map sites are listed below as a good starting point for your own exploration of our town.
Peter Vujakovic
Cirencester Civic Society
Websites
‘Know Your Place, Gloucestershire – https://maps.bristol.gov.uk/kyp/?edition=glos
National Library of Scotland OS maps – https://maps.nls.uk/os/townplans-england/
Support Cirencester’s principal heritage societies and their event programmes: Archaeological & Historical Society (www.cirenhistory.org.uk) and Civic Society (www.ccsoc.org.uk), which runs a programme of Town Walks in the season plus pre-booked for small groups. See the Society’s website or phone William Cooper on 01285 88 55 90.
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