HAILES, Gloucestershire - Extract from National Gazetteer, 1868

"HAILES, a parish in the lower division of the hundred of Kiftsgate, county Gloucester, 2 miles N.E. of Winchcombe, its post town. It anciently belonged to Osgod the Saxon, and has the remains of a Cistercian abbey founded in 1246 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, afterwards King of the Romans. Having been nearly destroyed by fire in 1271, he rebuilt it and gave it a pretended "portion of Christ's blood". At the Dissolution its revenues were returned at £357 7s. 8d. The soil is a stiff clay, alternating with gravelly loam. The land is chiefly pasture and woodland. The village is very small, and wholly agricultural. The living is a curacy annexed to the vicarage of Didbrook, in the diocese of Gloucester and Bristol. The church is built out of the abbey ruins. Lord Sudeley is lord of the manor."

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]