Littleton-upon-Severn | |
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Littleton-upon-Severn shown within Gloucestershire | |
OS grid reference | ST595899 |
Unitary authority | |
Ceremonial county | |
Region | |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | Bristol |
Postcode district | BS35 |
Police | Avon and Somerset |
Fire | Avon |
Ambulance | South Western |
EU Parliament | South West England |
UK Parliament | |
Littleton-upon-Severn is a village and civil parish in South Gloucestershire near the mouth of the River Severn and is located to the west of Thornbury. Historically it belonged to the Hundred of Langley and Swinehead. In 1831 it had a population of 179 people.
A church was first mentioned as being in the village when the Abbott of Malmuesbury held a Court Leet here each year under a licence from King Edward the Martyr (975-979), and in the Domesday Book, it was listed as being in the Langley hundred, and having a priest and thirty acres of pasture. In the twelfth century, the wooden church was replaced with a stone building, and the font and piscine are also twelfth century.
The present parish church of St Mary's of Malmesbury is a Grade II* listed building, having been registered on 30 March 1960. It dates from the fourteenth century but was largely rebuilt in 1878. It is built out of rubble stone in the Decorated style, with a roof of fish-scale tiles. The plan consists of a nave, south porch and aisle, chancel, north vestry, and tower at the west end.
The village contains a popular 17th Century pub called The White Hart. In 2015 it as reported that locals were distressed with the prospect of a developer wanting to built a refugee centre for some 1000 migrants in the village.
Littleton Brick Pits are an artificial lagoon, once the site of clay extraction for brick making, where the Avon Wildlife Trust have reintroduced reedbeds close to the Severn Estuary, as a feeding and resting place for migrating birds.