History
Chew Magna is the largest village in the district, and can trace its importance back to Saxon times. It was a thriving woollen centre in the Middle Ages. The manor of Chew was held by the Bishops of Bath and Wells from 1062 to 1548, and therefore was called Chew Episcopi or Bishop's Chew. The bishops built a palace near the church of St Andrews, which was visited by Henry III in 1250. Chew Court is a surviving part of the palace. More recently, since about 1600, the name has been Chew Magna because this has been the most important of the several villages along the banks of the River Chew. According to Robinson it was an episcopal property held by Giso, the last Saxon bishop and the name Magna comes from the Latin meaning 'the greater'.
The parish was part of the hundred of Chew.
Around 1700 the Lord of the Manor was Sir William Jones, the Attorney General of England and in the 1820s it was the seat of Lord Lyttelton. Until about 1880 the village had toll roads and a toll house to collect the fees. During the 19th and 20th centuries the importance of the wool trade in the village declined and it became largely a dormitory area for the cities of Bristol and Bath, although it has continued to be the commercial centre of the valley.
Read more about this topic: Chew Magna
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)