Abbotswood Estate & House, Crawshay Family, Cinderford area (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Thursday, April 10, 2014, 19:54 (3690 days ago) @ slowhands

Recently I wondered why the Garage at the Lower Bilson end of Cinderford is called Abbotswood, despite it being located below a large forest inclosure called Haywood/Heywood ?.

It seems that in the past moreorless the whole woodland across what is now Cinderford was Abbots Wood, I guess named due to it's proximity to far-older Flaxley Abbey ?

"Encroachment and building also occurred in Abbots wood, an estate on the east side of the Forest acquired by William Crawshay from the Crawley-Boeveys in 1836, and titles to property there were not secured until 1872 when commoning rights on the estate were extinguished. The Crown, which had released its remaining rights in the estate to Henry Crawshay in 1869, purchased back most of the land in 1899.
With the expansion of the mining and ironworking industries in the early 19th century many new cottages were built in the Forest. By 1841 there were 1,873 dwellings there, 1,770 being on Crown land and the remainder on the Abbots wood estate in the Cinderford bridge, Ruspidge, and Soudley areas."

"In 1811 the population of the extraparochial area, presumably including Abbots wood but not extraparochial land on Littledean hill later forming the parish of Hinder's Lane and Dockham, was 4,073. Between 1811 and 1881 the extraparochial area saw a more than fivefold increase in its population and, whereas in the later 18th century the north-west side of the Forest had been more heavily populated than other places, new villages and hamlets sprang up elsewhere and Cinderford, on the east side, became a town."

"William Crawshay, who worked mines there from the late 1820s and purchased the Abbots wood estate in 1836, owned two rows of cottages near Buckshaft mine in 1838. The Crawshays provided other dwellings, including c.1864 Forest Lodge, a large house off St. White's Road. Abbotswood, the principal house in Ruspidge, stood in grounds higher up to the east and dated from a rebuilding of the 1840s for the Crawshays. Henry Crawshay lived there in 1851 and his son Edwin until the late 1870s. A chapel was added soon after the house became a Church of England temperance home in 1907 and the house was remodelled after 1917 for A. J. Morgan(d.1936), a partner in the Crawshays' mining business. Abbotswood, which became a convent and nursing home in 1939, was demolished after 1960 but an entrance lodge dating from the 1870s survived as part of a housing estate in 1992."

Much more here
From: 'Forest of Dean: Settlement', A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5: Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, The Forest of Dean (1996), pp. 300-325.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23266
Date accessed: 10 April 2014.

Also see this post for photos etc of the House http://forum.forest-of-dean.net/index.php?id=43763

UPDATE: Just found this mini-history of Abbot's Wood, the rest of the website is strongly recommended too !
http://deanforestmiscellany.info/myContents/FODM_AbbotsWood.shtml