Broom, Warwickshire
History
Broom is known as one of the Shakespeare villages. William Shakespeare is said to have joined a party of Stratford folk which set itself to outdrink a drinking club at Bidford-on-Avon, and as a result of his labours in that regard to have fallen asleep under the crab tree of which a descendant is still called Shakespeare's tree. When morning dawned his friends wished to renew the encounter but he wisely said "No I have drunk with "Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, Haunted Hillboro', Hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom and Drunken Bidford" and so, presumably, I will drink no more." The story is said to date from the 17th century but of its truth or of any connection of the story or the verse to Shakespeare there is no evidence.
The village is first mentioned in the grant of Ceolred of Mercia to Evesham Abbey of 710 and was included in the list of manors acquired by Abbot Ethelwig, who died 1077, and seized by Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half brother to William the Conqueror. By 1086, it is recorded in the Domesday Book as part of the lands of the Bishop of Bayeaux, where it reads, "In Ferncombe Hundred, in Brome 4½ hides. Stephen holds from him. 5 men held it freely before 1066. Land for 4 ploughs. In lordship 2; 4 villagers and 10 smallholders with 2 ploughs. Meadow, 14 acres. The value before 1066 40s; later 30s; now 60s."
Governance
Broom is part of the Bidford and Salford ward of Stratford-on-Avon District Council and represented by Councillor Jonathan Spence, Conservative Party. [1] Nationally it is part of Stratford-on-Avon parliamentary constituency, whose current MP is Manuela Perteghella of the Liberal Democrats. Prior to Brexit in 2020 it was part of the West Midlands electoral region of the European Parliament.
Transport links
Broom is located near the A46 road giving access southbound to Evesham and junction 9 of the M5 motorway at Tewkesbury and northbound to junction 3 of the M42 motorway at Portway.
See also
References
- ^ 'Parishes: Bidford', A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 3: Barlichway hundred (1945), pp. 49-57. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=56980 Date accessed: 8 February 2013.
- ^ William Dugdale, The Antiquities of Warwickshire, 1656 p729
- ^ Highways and Byways in Shakspeares Country, Hutton 1914
- ^ Domesday Book for Warwickshire, Phillimore edited by John Morris ISBN 0-85033-141-2