Burton-upon-Trent History

BURTON-UPON-TRENT
Description and History from 1868 Gazetteer

BURTON-UPON-TRENT, a parish and market town, chiefly in the northern division of the hundred of Offlow, in the county of Stafford, but partly also in the hundred of Repton and Gresley, in the county of Derby, 24 miles to the E. of Stafford, and 123 miles from London by the London and North-Western and Midland (west branch) railways. It is a station on the Midland railway, which is here joined by the North Staffordshire line.

The parish is situated on the banks of the river Trent, in a pleasant and fertile country, sheltered on the N. and E. by gently sloping hills, from the summits of which there are extensive prospects over the rich valleys of the Trent and Dove, with the noble forest of Needwood and the ruins of Tutbury Castle in the distance. It extends over an area of 7,730 acres, comprising, besides the market town of Burton-upon-Trent, the townships of Branstone, Burton Extra, Horninglow, Stretton, Stapenhill, and Winshill, the two last named being in Derbyshire.

Burton is a place of very great antiquity. Its Saxon name was Byrtune and it was the site of one of the most important and wealthiest abbeys in the country. The abbey was founded in 1004, by Wulfric, one of the earls of Mercia, for monks of the Benedictine order. It was a mitred abbey, and some of the abbots sat in parliament. Various and valuable privileges were conferred on it by several kings, and its revenue amounted at the Dissolution to about £357. The church was then made collegiate, and the lands and endowments of the abbey were given to Sir William Paget, an ancestor of the Marquis of Anglesea, to whom the manor now belongs. The lord of the manor exercises the privileges granted to the abbots.

The Trent, which here divides into two channels, is crossed by a fine old bridge nearly a third of a mile in length, built of stone, with thirty-six arches. Its foundation is believed to have been coeval with that of the abbey. It was repaired in the reign of Henry II., and a chapel was erected at the west end by Edward II., in commemoration, it is said, of his victory over the Earl of Lancaster, who attempted to hold the passage of the river against the king. During the civil war in the reign of Charles I., Burton was several times taken and retaken by the royalists and parliamentarians; and the old church and the manor-house were much damaged.

The town has two principal streets, one of which runs parallel with the river, and is crossed at right angles by the other. The streets are paved and lighted with gas, the houses mostly well built, and the town abundantly supplied with water. There is a handsome townhall with assembly rooms, erected by the Marquis of Anglesea. In the 16th century this place was noted for its alabaster works. It is now chiefly celebrated for its ale, which is named after the town, and is brewed in enormous quantities in several extensive breweries, especially those of Messrs. Bass and Co. and Messrs. Allsopp. It was not till about 1700 that the first brewery was established here, and it is only within the last fifteen years that the town has assumed its present aspect of one vast brewery. Besides several minor establishments, Messrs. Allsopp have just erected a colossal brewery adjoining the railway station, which is constructed to convert no less than 130,000 quarters of malt annually into ale; and Messrs. Bass and Co. have facilities for brewing 4,000 barrels a day, for which they pay to the excise near £150,000 a year in malt and hop duty. The latter firm has also extensive malting establishments and a steam cooperage recently constructed. There are also cotton-mills and iron-works. The conveyance of goods is facilitated by the Grand Trunk canal, which meets the Trent near the town.

The government of the town is administered, under a recent Act of Parliament, by commissioners elected by the different wards. Henry VIII conferred on the townsmen the privilege of exemption from serving in the office of sheriff or on juries. Burton is the seat of a Poor-law Union, the head of a County Court district, and a polling-place for the north division of the county of Stafford. The Union poorhouse is in the township of Horninglow.

The living is a perpetual curacy in the diocese of Lichfield, value £192, in the patronage of the Marquis of Anglesea, who is lay impropriator. The church, a modern edifice in the Italian style, with a tower, is dedicated to SS. Mary and Modwen, and was erected in 1720, on the site of the ancient church, which was taken down on account of the injury it had sustained in the Civil War. St. Modwen, the patron saint of the abbey, was an abbess expelled from one of the Irish monasteries in the 9th century. She came to England, and is said to have performed a skilful or miraculous cure on Alfred the Great, and thereby earned the privilege of an asylum from Ethelwolf, his father.

Two new district churches have been erected in the town; one in 1823, dedicated to the Holy Trinity; the other in 1843, called Christ Church. The former is situated in Hornlinglow-street, and is considered a good example of the florid Gothic style; the latter is in the form of a cross, and in the early English style. The livings are both perpetual curacies, the former in the patronage of the Marquis of Anglesea; the latter, value £150, in the patronage of the Incumbent of Burton.

There are chapels belonging to the Baptists, Independents, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, and Primitive Methodists. There is a free grammar school, founded by William Beane, Abbot of Burton, in 1520, the revenue of which, from endowment, is about £460 per annum, and was readjusted by order of Chancery in 1859. Another free school, for 30 boys, was established and endowed in 1728 by Richard Allsopp, and has an income from the original and subsequent endowments of about £30 a year. There are also National and British schools; almshouses for six poor women, founded by Ellen Parker in 1634, with a revenue of £55 per annum; and others for five poor women, founded by Elizabeth Pawlett in 1591, with a revenue of about £90. There are several other charities. The annual value of the charitable endowments of the parish is above £1,100. The town possesses a subscription library and reading-room, a dispensary, and a savings-bank.

Of the abbey nothing remains but some arches of the cloisters near the church, part of the gateway, and the manor-house, or abbot's apartments, which is, however, much altered. Besides these ruins and the venerable bridge, Burton has several other objects of interest for their antiquity. The principal are the old house of the prebendary, the ancient seat of the Every family, and, near the town, the water-mill erected before the Norman Conquest, and mentioned in Domesday Book. Isaac Hawkins Browne, a poetical writer, who obtained some note in the 18th century, was born at Burton in 1706.

Thursday is the market day. Fairs, chiefly for the sale of cattle and cheese, are held on the 5th February, the 5th April, Holy Thursday, the 16th July, and the 29th October. The last is a noted horse fair, and continues about a week.

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