The Church
Bishopswood stands on land which at the taking of the great Domesday survey in 1086, formed part of a great Norman demesne used for hunting and long associated with Ruardean. It derives its name from its subsequent incorporation into the Chase of the Bishops of Hereford ‘a wild wooded district lying between the Forest of Dean and the River Wye, rich in scenes of exquisite beauty'. That the area has been inhabited almost time out of mind is evidenced by the fact that in 1896 a large cache of gold coin, dating from the Roman era, was found on the estate.
Successive Bishops of Hereford used the estate for hunting and occasional bribery. Records show that in 1441, the nineteenth year of the troubled reign of Henry VI, and the year the Duchess of Gloucester was sentenced to life imprisonment for dealing with sorcerers, the estate of Bishop's Wood was held by Alexander Jordan, the Bishop of Hereford's body servant and valet. In 1614 a degree in the Court of Chancery was made regarding the estate, then of about two thousand acres, by which the Lords of the Manor, the Earls of Clanricarde and Essex, took one half of ‘the Bishop's Wood' free from manorial rights while the manorial copyholders took the other half as their own property, free from the lords' rights. As a consequence this section of the estate has been independent of the manor since that date. Henry V is rumoured to have hunted here and the great Duke of Wellington certainly did.
The house (further up the hill) was built in 1844, the seventh year of the reign of Queen Victoria. It incorporates a staircase, either original to or, copied from one designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1670 for Wandsworth Manor House. It was constructed by and for John Partridge, who had served as High Sheriff for Monmouthshire in 1824. Partridge was the son of a wealthy ironmaster named William Partridge. This was a time of great change. A year later, in 1845, the ecclesiastical parish of Bishopswood was formed out of the parishes of Walford in Herefordshire and Ruardean in Gloucestershire. The new parish had no church and John Partridge came up with the money to build and endow the present one.
The "Church in the Woods" is a simple Estate church built from nearby Forest of Dean stone. Electricity did not come to the church until 1963 to replace the oil lamps.
The Cache
To find the cache, find the answers to the following questions:
Using the CM number in the title, answer questions 1 to 3:
Q1: The 5th digit minus the 4th digit = A
Q2: The sum of all the digits = B
Q3: The answer to question 1 plus the 1st and 3rd digit = C
Go to the waypoint and find the grave of James Lusty and answer the next two questions.
Q4: In which month of the year did James Lusty die? =D
Q5: In which year did he die? = 18EF
The cache can be found at:
N 51° 51.(B-F)(C+A)C W 002° 35.D(B-A)(E+D)
Checksum - A+B+C+D+E+F=28
The path can be slippery when it has rained, so please take care.
Permission to place this cache has been kindly granted by the owners of Bishopswood Estate.
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For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by sadexploration please read the Place your own Church Micro page before you contact him at churchmicro.co.uk
See also the Church Micro Statistics and Home pages for further information about the series.
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