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Ledbury is a Herefordshire market town, lying east of Hereford, and west of the Malvern Hills. It has a significant number of timber-framed structures, in particular along Church Lane and High Street. One of its most outstanding is the Market House,〔(The Market House - Ledbury Town Council )〕 built in 1617, located in the town centre. Other notable buildings include the parish church of St. Michael and All Angels,〔(Parish Church of St. Michael and All Angels )〕 the Painted Room〔(The Painted Room - Ledbury Civic Society )〕 (containing sixteenth-century frescoes), nearby Eastnor Castle and the St. Katherine's Hospital 〔(St. Katherine's Hospital - British Listed Buildings )〕 site. Founded c.1231, this is a rare surviving example of a hospital complex, with hall, chapel, a Master's House,〔 (【引用サイトリンク】 format= PDF )〕 almshouses and a timber-framed barn. ==History== Ledbury is a borough whose origins date to around 690 AD. In the Domesday Book it was recorded as Liedeberge. It may take its name from the River Leadon on which it stands. Old English ''burg'' (fortified or defended site) has been added to the river name. As a town it was created on a bishop's manor, probably, like Leominster, Bromyard and Ross-on-Wye, in the episcopate of Bishop Richard de Capella (1121-1127).〔Joe Hillaby, Ledbury, A Medieval Borough, Logaston Press, 1997〕 It returned members to Parliament in the reign of Edward I. The ''Feathers Hotel'' was a famous 16th century drovers' inn.〔("Eighteenth Century Road Travel" )〕 Ledbury was home to poetess Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who spent her childhood at Hope End. It is also the birthplace of poet laureate John Masefield, after whom the local secondary school is named. William Wordsworth's sonnet ''St. Catherine of Ledbury'', dated 1835, begins "When ... Ledbury bells broke forth in concert".〔(''St. Catherine of Ledbury'', in William Wordsworth, ''The Complete Poetical Works'', with introduction by John Morley, Macmillan, London, 1888. )〕 In 1901 St. Katharine's priest was Charles Madison Green, whose wife, Ella, was the eldest sister of author H. Rider Haggard. The Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal, which opened from Gloucester as far as here in 1798, passed through the lower part of the town with wharves at Bye Street and at what is now the Ross Road near the Full Pitcher public house. After closing in 1885, part of the Ledbury-to-Gloucester section of the canal was used by the Great Western Railway for the Ledbury and Gloucester Railway. The original line of the canal northwards towards Hereford can still be seen, where it went underneath the Ledbury-to-Hereford railway. When the Gloucester railway closed in 1964 as a result of the Beeching cuts it became overgrown, but the route through Ledbury then was used as a footpath. In 1997 a section from the bypass / Ross Road roundabout to the railway station was upgraded to a wide path with a surface of compacted limestone chippings that could be utilised by cyclists and wheelchair-users. This included creating several access points, thinning out but retaining many of the trees that had grown since the 1960s and reopening the skew bridge across the A438 Hereford Road. Unfortunately the proposed bridge to take the Town Trail (as it is now known) across the B4214 Bromyard Road into the station yard was never built. The Trail ends at the Hereford/Bromyard road junction. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ledbury」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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