Woodchester

Woodchester railway station served the villages of Woodchester and Amberley in Gloucestershire, England. It was on the 9.3 km-long Stonehouse and Nailsworth Railway, later part of the Midland Railway. The station opened six months after the railway and its other stations, on 1 July 1867. The delay was allegedly due to resistance from objectors who thought the provision of a station might encourage attendance at a nearby Catholic chapel. When the station was provided, it was given scruffy wooden buildings, unlike the substantial stone-built stations elsewhere on the line, a sign of the influence of the Midland Railway and the financial problems of the Stonehouse and Nailsworth Railway. Woodchester was a busy station with tourists visiting Amberley, which was identified with "Enderley" in the novel John Halifax, Gentleman. It also had a large volume of goods traffic. The Stonehouse and Nailsworth Railway, along with the rest of the Midland Railway, became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway at the 1923 Grouping. Passenger services were suspended on the line as an economy measure to save fuel in June 1947, and were officially withdrawn from 8 June 1949. Woodchester remained open for goods traffic until 1964. The line itself closed for goods traffic in 1966. The station buildings at Woodchester have all been demolished, though the station-master's house remains and the line of the track is used as a pedestrian and cycle path between Dudbridge and Nailsworth.

A former Convent of Poor Clares is located in Woodchester, near Stroud in Gloucestershire. The convent was home to nuns of the Poor Clares order from 1850 to 2011.The convent is based around a 17th-century house that was enlarged in the 1850s. The dedicated convent buildings were built between 1861 and 1869 by Charles Francis Hansom. A separate guest house was built around 1870 by Canon Scoles.The convent is Grade II listed on the National Heritage List for England. The convent originally belonged to a Franciscan order before its adoption by the Poor Clares.Five sisters of the Poor Clares order remained at the convent's dissolution; they subsequently moved to a Poor Clares convent in Lynton, North Devon.Poor Clares exiled from France in 1904 joined Franciscan nuns at Woodchester. The convent at Woodchester was built in the 1860s; at its zenith, the convent housed 30 nuns after the Second World War, but it had declined to 12 mostly elderly nuns by 1998.Duff Hart-Davis visited the convent for a 1998 article in The Independent on Sunday and met the Mother Abbess, Sister Mary Anthony, and a Sister Mary Therese. Hart-Davis reported that the nuns' primary source of income was the production of altar breads, of which they made five million a year, earning them £25,000. The nuns also had a vegetable garden and an orchard and kept bees, cows, and chickens. Hart-Davis also wrote about the nuns' Christmas celebrations and reported that they did not have a television, but borrowed one for Christmas and Easter.The Poor Clares donated their library from the Woodchester convent to Durham University Library. Durham's holdings comprise 485 titles from the Woodchester Convent, dating from the 16th to the 19th century, with the majority of books from the Poor Clares convent in Princehof near Bruges. The books are mostly devotional in nature.Since the convent's closure, the buildings have been used as a boutique hotel, restaurant and live music venue.

Neu-Lindsey Nature Reserve (grid reference SO845014) is a 0.4-hectare (0.99-acre) nature reserve in Gloucestershire. The site is listed in the ‘Stroud District’ Local Plan, adopted November 2005, Appendix 6 (online for download) as a Key Wildlife Site (KWS).The site is owned and managed by the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust since 1986. It was donated by Mrs T Lindsey.

Woodchester Roman Villa was situated at Woodchester near Stroud in the English county of Gloucestershire. It is one of many Roman villas discovered in Gloucestershire and was occupied between the early 2nd and late 4th centuries AD. There is now nothing visible of the villa above ground and the site is occupied by a later churchyard. The villa's most famous feature is the Orpheus mosaic, the second largest of its kind in Europe and one of the most intricate. It dates to c. AD 325 and was re-discovered by Gloucestershire-born antiquarian Samuel Lysons in 1793. It has been uncovered seven times since 1880, the last time in 1973, but there are no plans to reveal it again. It depicts Orpheus charming all forms of life with his lyre and has been praised for its accuracy and beauty. A replica mosaic, made of more than one-and-a-half million pieces of stone, was created by brothers John and Bob Woodward, who were inspired after seeing the original pavement. The replica was displayed at Prinknash Abbey in Gloucester, England before being auctioned in June 2010 for £75,000.

Amberley, Gloucestershire is a small village about two miles south of Stroud in Gloucestershire, England. It is situated on the edge of Minchinhampton Common, known for its Golf Club and course.

Whitstone was an ancient hundred of Gloucestershire, England. From the 13th century it comprised two adjacent divisions, which included the ancient parishes of: Lower DivisionEastington Frampton-on-Severn Frocester King's Stanley Leonard Stanley Stonehouse Wheatenhurst (now Whitminster)Upper DivisionFretherne Hardwicke Haresfield Longney Moreton Valence Randwick Saul Standish Quedgeley (part)The hundred existed at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, but covering a smaller area. By 1220 the adjacent Blacklow hundred had been absorbed. Blachelaue in the Domesday Book contained the parishes of Alkerton (now Eastington), Frampton (-on-Severn), Frocester, (Kings) Stanley, (Leonard) Stanley, Stonehouse, Wheatenhurst, and Fretherne.The ancient meeting place of the hundred was probably at Whitestones Field in the parish of Hardwicke, although meetings were later held at Quedgeley, Stonehouse, Wheatenhurst and Frampton.

The Lawn Ground was located in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire, England, and was, from 1890 to 2006, home to the English football club, Forest Green Rovers who currently play in League One, following promotion in 2021-22. The Lawn Ground also hosted local cup finals as well as being home to Forest Green's Ladies and youth sides. The ground was located at the top of a steep hill in the hamlet of Forest Green and had a total capacity of 5,141 people. Forest Green matches drew approximately 1,000 spectators on average at the Lawn Ground. The ground's record attendance is 3,002 for a match between Forest Green and St Albans City, in a FA Trophy semi-final on 18 April 1999. Until the 1950s, the Lawn was little more than an open field, but the Rovers' success required upgrades to the stadium. At this point, terraces were constructed for fans and a "famously partial leveling of the pitch" occurred. In 1996, the Trevor Horsley Stand, named after the chairman of the club, Trevor Horsley, was constructed for over £200,000. This stand seated 300 and included three hospitality boxes, underground changing rooms, a board room, function room, bar, a health suite and offices. It also featured a quirky watermill behind the stand. Aside from the Trevor Horsley Stand, the rest of the ground, about 80 percent, was terraced. The biggest terrace stand was the covered Barnfield Terrace. The terrace was built during 2001 and 2002 to increase the ground's capacity, and Forest Green fans paid to have their names engraved onto bricks inside that stand. The Barnfield Terrace was sponsored by Rockwool. When the club left the ground at the end of the 2005–2006 season, the stand was transferred brick by brick to their new ground. Other sections of the Lawn Ground included the Nympsfield Road Terrace which was located behind a goal at the northern end of the ground. The Lawn Ground was demolished and turned into housing after the club moved into the new, modern The New Lawn Stadium, which now hosts all their matches. Forest Green began playing at the new stadium which is only a few hundred yards from the old Lawn, from the start of the 2006–2007 season.

The New Lawn, also known as The Bolt New Lawn for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Nailsworth, Gloucestershire. It has been the home stadium of League One club Forest Green Rovers since 2006. During the 2007–08 season the stadium was shared with Gloucester City. The stadium has a capacity of 5,147, of which 2,000 is seated. It replaced The Lawn Ground as Forest Green Rovers' home stadium and is expected to be replaced by a new stadium development located near the M5 motorway. In 2020 the ground was renamed The Innocent New Lawn Stadium due to a sponsorship deal with Innocent Drinks. In 2021, the stadium was renamed after the YouTube channel Fully Charged.

Erinoid Ground was a cricket ground in Stroud, Gloucestershire. The first recorded important match on the ground was in 1880, when Stroud played a United South of England Eleven.In 1956, Gloucestershire played Nottinghamshire in the ground's first first-class match. Gloucestershire played 14 first-class matches at the ground from 1956 to 1963, the last of which saw them play Glamorgan in the 1963 County Championship.In 1970 the Bristol and District Cricket Association played Midlands Club Cricket Conference on the ground. Today, the site of the ground is occupied by the Bath Road Trading Estate. The ground's name came from the adjacent Erinoid plastic factory.

Selsley is a village within the civil parish of King's Stanley and district of Stroud, in Gloucestershire, England. It is composed of around 175 houses, scattered around the western and eastern edge of a Cotswold spur, located approximately 2 miles (3.2 km) south of Stroud.

Newmarket is a hamlet in the parish of Horsley, Gloucestershire, England.

Rodborough Common is a 116.0-hectare (287-acre) biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Gloucestershire, notified in 1954. The site is listed in the ‘Stroud District’ Local Plan, adopted November 2005, Appendix 6 (online for download) as an SSSI and a Regionally Important Geological Site (RIGS). The Common is also a Special Area of Conservation (SAC) under the EU Habitats Directive Rodborough Common is sited south of Stroud and is owned and managed by the National Trust. It is north of Minchinhampton Common. It lies on Jurassic limestone and is on top of the Cotswold scarp. It is bounded on either side by the Nailsworth valley and the Frome valley. It is on a hill (a plateau area), and its margins are dissected by dry valleys. The sides of this plateau are steep.Rodborough Common, like Minchinhampton Common, is notified for its biological and geological importance. The grassland is unimproved, herb-rich and calcareous. There is an important geological area for fossils for research purposes.