Gloucester

• 1. Introduction

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  Gloucester's Chapter House witnessed an unusual coronation in 1216. A nine-year-old was made king of England with a gilded iron ring, because no proper crown was available. That boy was Henry III. His improvised ceremony pointed to what this place had always been. History had a habit of arriving here uninvited.

  Gloucester sits between the Cotswolds to the east and the Forest of Dean to the west, 7 miles from Cheltenham and 33 miles from Bristol. Around 132,000 people live there today. The city was founded by the Romans and is still linked by canal to the Severn Estuary.

  The Romans who established a garrison at this bend of the Severn called the place Glevum. How did this river crossing accumulate so much history? What drew legions, kings, monks, and merchants here across twenty centuries? And how did a spelling complaint from international customers end up attaching Gloucester's name to the first British jet aircraft? The story of that name is itself worth following.

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• 2. Roman Glevum

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  Around AD 48, Roman forces established a garrison at a site now known as Kingsholm. It sat close to a major crossing of the River Severn and near the Fosse Way. The Fosse Way formed the early frontier of the Roman advance into Britain. Twenty years later, a larger legionary fortress rose on slightly higher ground nearby, centred on what is now Gloucester Cross. A civilian settlement grew around it. The legion XX Valeria Victrix was stationed there until around AD 66. Legio II Augusta followed, preparing to campaign in Roman Wales before departing around AD 87.

  In AD 97, under Emperor Nerva, the settlement was elevated to the rank of colonia. Its formal title became Colonia Nervia Glevensium. This was the highest civic status Rome could grant an overseas community. Scholars believe Glevum likely served as the capital of Britannia Prima, a later Roman province of Britain.

  Within roughly fifteen years of that elevation, private homes replaced the military barracks. Bath houses, temples, and colonnaded public buildings rose in stone. Piped water arrived. At the heart of the town, a formal forum took shape, flanked on three sides by ranges of shops. Closing off the south end was a basilica measuring 100 metres by 40 metres. Fine homes with mosaic floors spread across the settlement. At its height, Glevum may have held as many as 10,000 people, surrounded by an unusually dense concentration of Roman villas.

  By the end of the third century, the town walls were being systematically replaced. The work came in two stages: first, massive reused stone blocks; then deep timber foundation piles beneath them. Stone external towers were added. Two parallel wide ditches were cut in front. The four main streets of modern Gloucester follow almost exactly the lines of their Roman predecessors.

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• 3. The Bright Fort

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  Alfred Holder, an Austrian philologist, proposed in 1896 that the name Gloucester means "bright fort." His reading traced the city's identity through more than a thousand years of linguistic change.

  The Welsh name for Gloucester is Caerloyw. It combines two elements: caer, meaning fort or stronghold, and loyw, derived from gloyw, meaning bright or shiny. When Roman authority collapsed around AD 410, Anglo-Saxon settlers moved through the region and adapted the old Roman place-name. The familiar English suffix -cester or -chester eventually replaced the Welsh caer. Medieval scribes wrote the name variously as Caer Glow, as Gleawecastre, and as Gleucestre.

  Not all scholars accept Holder's reading. An alternative etymology links the first element to a Welsh word meaning "valiant," giving the city's name the sense of "fortress of the valiant." Neither reading has displaced the other. By the Battle of Deorham in 577, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle placed Gloucester within the kingdom of Wessex.

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• 4. Monks, Merchants, and Exiles

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  Henry II granted Gloucester its first charter in 1155. That document gave the town's residents the same freedoms as the citizens of London and Winchester. A second charter from the same king extended freedom of navigation on the River Severn. In 1200, a charter from King John added freedom from toll throughout the kingdom.

  St Peter's Abbey had been founded in 679 by Aethelred of Mercia and would eventually become Gloucester Cathedral. St Oswald's Priory was established in the 880s or 890s. In the early tenth century, the remains of Saint Oswald were brought there, drawing pilgrims to the site. Llanthony Secunda Priory was founded in 1136 as a retreat for a community of Welsh monks. The Franciscan Greyfriars community arrived in 1231, and the Dominican Blackfriars settled in Ladybellegate Street in 1239.

  A Jewish community was present in Gloucester as early as 1158-1159. They lived near East Gate Street and maintained a synagogue on the south side, near St Michael's church. Gloucester was likely the home of Rabbi Moses, founder of an important Anglo-Jewish family. In later decades, Dominican monks falsely accused the Jews of murdering a child named Harold of Gloucester, hoping to establish a cult similar to that of William of Norwich. The accusation failed entirely. It was revived in the climate surrounding the Edict of Expulsion. In January 1275, Eleanor of Provence expelled Jews from all towns within her dower lands. Those in Gloucester were ordered to move to Bristol; finding conditions there especially difficult, they relocated to Hereford.

  Wool was the city's primary medieval export, flowing from Cotswold farms to be processed in Gloucester. Leather and iron goods also moved through its markets, alongside a significant fishing industry. In 1378, Richard II convened Parliament in Gloucester, and parliaments continued to meet there under Henry IV until 1406. King Richard III incorporated Gloucester as a county in its own right in 1483, giving the town the power to appoint its own magistrates.

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• 5. Unconquered Faith

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  John Hooper, the Bishop of Gloucester, was executed by burning in St Mary's Square just outside the Abbey gate in 1555. The order came from Queen Mary I. A monument to Hooper stands in St Mary de Lode church to this day.

  The Royalist strategy at Gloucester in 1643 relied on bombardment and tunnelling toward the east gate. The parliamentary garrison responded with sniping and counter-artillery fire directed at the Royalist encampment. Inadequate cannons could not breach the defences. When the siege was lifted, the outcome became the centrepiece of Gloucester's civic memory. The motto adopted for the coat of arms, officially granted in 1652, reads Fides Invicta Triumphat: "unconquered faith triumphs." It referred directly to the events of 1643. Letters patent confirmed the coat of arms on the 16th of April 1945, with the motto unchanged.

  Robert Raikes opened England's first Sunday school in Gloucester in 1780. The movement he founded spread nationally, transforming basic education for working-class children. His house in Southgate Street still carries his name.

  In 1926, the Gloucestershire Aircraft Company at Brockworth changed its name to the Gloster Aircraft Company, prompted by international customers who found "Gloucestershire" too difficult to spell. That abbreviated name would carry the city's identity into the history of British aviation.

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• 6. The Jet and the Factory

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  Frank Whittle's pioneering turbojet engine was fitted to a Gloster aircraft, the E.28/39, which became the first British jet aircraft to fly. The tests took place at the company's own airfield, on the ground where Gloucester Business Park stands today. A pub called The Whittle stands at the park in memory of that history. Roads throughout the business park carry the names of other Gloster aircraft. A small statue looks out over where the main runway once ran.

  A sculpture in Gloucester's city centre marks the city's connection to the jet engine. Messier-Dowty's landing gear plant and GE Aviation Dowty Propellers both operate on the city's outskirts.

  The Unilever factory in Barnwood has been making ice cream since 1962. Its products include the Cornetto and the Viennetta. The factory is the largest ice-cream factory in Europe.

  In July 2007, flooding struck Gloucester and the surrounding area. Hundreds of homes were flooded. Around 40,000 people were left without power for 24 hours. The entire city went without piped water for 17 days. In 2009, Gloucester Day was revived as an annual celebration of the city's history and culture, and has been observed every year since.

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