John Parsons The Elder

  General Notes:

The Parsons family had lived at Chalkford, one of nine tythings in the Parish of Bisley, Gloucestershire (about 90 miles west of London), for many centuries. The name Parsons (and Gardiner, Holliday and Matthews) occur frequently in the
earliest Parish register which commenced in 1558.



The Gloucestershire Parish of Chalford covers two square miles of some of the most beautiful countryside in the whole range of the Cotswolds. It lies four miles south-east of Stroud on the north side of the River Frome, eight miles west of
Cirencester, and in and above the Golden Valley. In this part of Gloucestershire the Cotswolds are cut by deep gorge-like valleys opening out westward into the Severn plain, and having characteristics strikingly different from the shallower
combes watered by Cotswold streams feeding the Thames. At Chalford the valleys are Alpine in character, deep, narrow and well wooded.





The remains, and known sites, of many long and round barrows within the confines of the ancient Parish of Bisley indicate that the plateau area of Chalford Hill, France Lynch and Bussage has been an area of continuous settlement for probably at
least 5000 years. Stone Age flints have been found in the area, as well as remains of a Roman Villa. Several of the place names in the area are clues to its Saxon and Danish ancestry.



The name Chalford may be derived from Calf(Way) Ford, or possibly from the Saxon ‘cealj’ or ‘Chalk’ and the Norman ‘Ford’, both having the same meaning. Chalford Hill is a quite recent title for the western end of the hill villages above
Chalford Valley, its old title being Chalford Lynch. Lynch from the Anglo-Saxon ‘hline’ means a cultivated terrace following the contours of a hill. ‘France’ is much more difficult to explain. Some say it is derived from Frams-eye (island) or
–ea(stream) from the Fram (Frome) river in the valley, thence, perhaps via ‘Francey’ to ‘France’. Others say it is derived from the 17th century Huguenot refugees who settled here to make woollen cloth and silk.



Cloth has been made in the Cotswolds since early medieval times, and Chalford was one of the centres for the manufacture of broadcloth. Its wealthy clothiers built many of the fine houses on the hill, while much of the actual spinning and
weaving was carried out in the cottages dotted along the hillside.



On the southern boundary of the parish the growth of the village of Chalford, based on mills on the Frome, had begun by the late 12th century. (Footnote 15) By the mid 13th century a mill and probably also the house called Chalford Place had
been built at the ford from which the village was named, (Footnote 16) and the establishment of other mills along the valley bottom produced a long straggling settlement. Although the chapel built to serve Chalford in the 1720s (Footnote 17)
was sited near the old ford, most of the cottages were concentrated along the valley road in the east part of the settlement, the area called Rack Hill from the common rack-hills which lay along the hillside above until 1869. (Footnote 18) The
valley road there was mainly developed in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and from the later 18th century, when the valley bottom offered no further sites, cottages were built on the hillsides above, on such steep gradients that, as was
noted in the 1770s, 'you ascend to the lowest storey, and descend to the highest'. (Footnote 19) The distinctive character thus given to the village appealed to the taste of a slightly later generation of visitors, one of whom described it as
'a very Alpine hamlet'.



The more ancient houses at Chalford, built by the clothiers among the mills on the valley floor, are described below. Other large houses built or rebuilt by millowners in the early 19th century stand along the lower slopes. Grove House, at the
bottom of the steep lane up Marle hill, was rebuilt as a Regencystyle villa in the early 19th century. It was owned in the 18th century by the Blackwell family of clothiers, (Footnote 21) of whom Archer Blackwell was recorded in 1715 (Footnote
22) and John Blackwell died c. 1772; John's son Archer (Footnote 23) sold the house, then known as the Blackhouse, to William Toghill in 1803, and it later passed to a silk-throwster John William Jones (d. 1860). (Footnote 24) Wickham Grange,
further west, was called Beaumont House in the late 19th century when it was the home of the stick-maker William Dangerfield (d. 1894). (Footnote 25) It is a substantial late-18thcentury house to which a semicircular bay was added on one side
of the main front in the 19th century; in the 20th century an extension was made to the east to house a printing-works. Skaiteshill House, a tall early-19th-century house on the road from Chalford to Brown's Hill, belonged to Charles Ballinger
in 1842 but was occupied by John Ballinger (Footnote 26) (d. 1848), his brother; it was later the home of John's eldest son Charles (d. 1884). (Footnote 27) Millswood by the Chalford-Bisley road was occupied by the clothier John Trotman (d.
1802) and in the 1840s by a silk-throwster Samuel Hook. (Footnote 28) Springfield House, at the foot of Cowcombe hill by the Stroud-Cirencester road, belonged to the clothiers Handy and Jesse Davis in 1838 when it was described as newly
erected. (Footnote 29)



There was a small disturbance at Chalford in the depressed year of 1795 when some of the inhabitants stopped a barge-load of wheat on the canal, demanding that it should be sold locally at a reduced price; (Footnote 16) and there were more
serious incidents when riotous mobs assembled at some of the Chalford mills during the weavers' strike of 1825.

John married Elizabeth Young on 17 Jul 1708 in Bisley, Gloucestershire England. (Elizabeth Young was born circa 1680 in Gloucester, Gloucestershire England ?.)