History of Thornbury

Thornbury is a market town in South Gloucestershire, England,approximately 12 miles(19km) north of the city of Bristol,with a population of around 12,000. The town hosts South Gloucestershire Council headquarters and is twinned with Bockenem in Germany.Thornbury is a Britainin Bloom award-winning town and also has its own competition, Thornbury in Bloom. Its suburbs include the Morton and Thornbury Park districts.

There is evidence of human activity in the Thornbury area in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages but the earliest documented evidence of Thornbury's history comes in the 9th century,with a settlement called "Thornbyrig". The Domesday Book noted a manor known as "Turneberie" with 103 residents.

The town charter was created in1252. The charter's 750th anniversary in 2002 was celebrated with a"750" flower bed planted on Grovesend Road. St. Mary's church is the oldest surviving building in the town. In 1974a town council was elected. Thornbury used to be a borough but became a parish in 1984.

In 1765 a Dr Fewster (possibly John Fewster) of Thornbury presented a paper to the Medical Society of London entitled "Cow pox and its ability to prevent smallpox"

The Thornbury railway station andrailway line have been redeveloped into a housing estate, a bypass road and along footpath. More remains of the line can be found at Tytherington quarry to the east of the town.

Thornbury had a thriving market,held on the High Street and in the Market Hall. It moved to Rock Street in 1911 but closed down in the late 1990s and was partly replaced with a smaller market in a car park near the United Reformed Church. The older site has been redeveloped as a new community centre, called "Turnberrie's", while the Market Hall is now a clothes shop.

A hoard of 11,460 Roman coins was found in 2004 whilst a resident was digging out for a fishpond. This was acquired by Bristol Museum for £40,000

Thornbury's coat of arms is the arms of four families important in the town's history: Attwells, Howard', Clare and Stafford.John Attwells left £500 in his will for the establishment of the Free School which merged with the grammar school in 1879. The Attwells coat of arms was later adopted as the badge for the grammar school, now Marlwood School.The other three families held the manor at Thornbury over several centuries. It has the motto Decus Sabrinae Vallis (Latin for "Jewel of the Severn Vale").