Scenic and rural, the parish of Cradley stretches down westwards from the Malvern Hills, bordered by Worcestershire to the north and east. It is one of the largest parishes in Herefordshire, and from the medieval period to the nineteenth century was populous and prosperous. Cradley manor was a valuable holding of the medieval bishops of Hereford. The ecclesiastical benefice, Anglo-Saxon in origin, was equally lucrative, frequently passing nepotistically to well-connected young priests; however, such connections did not prevent one thirteenth-century rector being outlawed for murder! The expanding number of manors in the parish, from the thirteenth century onwards, resulted in a fragmented model of land ownership and the development of a powerful body of wealthy yeomanry, shaping the distinctive character of the parish and its governance in the early modern period.

Drawing extensively on local archival sources, this volume analyses, among other topics, the centrality of agriculture to the parish’s story, charting Cradley’s socio-economic growth from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, before its subsequent decline. As such, this book constitutes an important contribution to English local history, exploring the prosperity that could be enjoyed by parishes in fertile Eastern Herefordshire, and the impact of changes in the national economy upon rural, agrarian communities.