History
The placename was recorded in 915 as Cyricbyrig in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and as Cireberie in the Domesday Book of 1086, and means "the fort with a church". It's Welsh name, Llanffynhonwen, means "the church of the white well" or "...of the holy well".
The 8th century Offa's Dyke runs to the west of the village, and marked the frontier of the Mercian kingdom, and even today a lengthy section of the dyke to the southwest of the village forms the English border with Wales. An Anglo-Saxon fort, built in 915 by Ethelfleda, Lady of the Mercians, was located just outside the village on what is now the Montgomery Road; the field the earthworks are in has long been called Castle Field or King's Orchard.
Chirbury was once a hundred, formed out of an earlier, and larger, hundred (of which Chirbury was the chief settlement) called Witentreu or Wittery (a placename that continues to this day in Whittery Wood, near to the village) which included places now in Wales. Later Chirbury was a rural district (from 1894 to 1934) — the Chirbury Rural District. The hundred included a detached township near Clun — Guilden Down. In 1987 the parishes of Chirbury and Brompton and Rhiston merged to form the present-day civil parish of Chirbury with Brompton. Historically Cherbury was the more usual spelling of Chirbury.
Mitchell's Fold and Hoarstones stone circles lie within the parish.
Read more about this topic: Chirbury
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“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
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