There is evidence of human activity in the Thornbury area in the
Neolithic and
Bronze Ages, but evidence of the Roman presence is confined to the
Thornbury hoard of 11,460
Roman coins dating from 260 to 348 CE, found in 2004 during the digging of a fishpond. The name Thornbury derives from the
Old English þornburh meaning '
thorn burh' (fortification). The earliest documentary evidence of a village at "Thornbyrig" dates from the end of the 9th century.
Domesday Book noted a
manor of "Turneberie" belonging to
William the Conqueror's consort,
Matilda of Flanders, with 104 residents, after which Turnberrie's community centre is named. St Mary's Church, begun in the 12th century with later additions, is the oldest surviving building. The
town charter was granted in 1252 by
Richard de Clare, 6th Earl of Gloucester and lord of the manor of Thornbury. (The charter's 750th anniversary in 2002 was celebrated with a "750" flowerbed planted in Grovesend Road.) The town grew around the site of its cattle market. Thornbury lost its status as a
borough in 19th-century local-government reforms, but in 1974 the
parish council exercised its new right to designate itself a town council. The
ancient parish covered an area extending to the
River Severn, including the detached area of
Rangeworthy until 1866, when this became a separate civil parish. In 1894 the western part of Thornbury was detached to form the civil parish of
Oldbury-on-Severn and the eastern part to create that of
Falfield.
Thornbury Township, Pennsylvania, founded in 1687, was named after Thornbury, Gloucestershire, by George Pearce, whose wife Ann came from there. In 1765 Dr
John Fewster of Thornbury presented a paper to the
Medical Society of London entitled "Cow Pox and its Ability to Prevent Smallpox". Fewster influenced his friend and colleague
Edward Jenner, pioneer of
vaccination. Thornbury was once the terminus of a
Midland Railway (later
LMS) branch line from
Yate on the Bristol to
Gloucester main line, with intermediate stations at
Iron Acton and
Tytherington. It lost its passenger services in June 1944 but continued as a goods route, also serving quarries at Tytherington. The site of
Thornbury railway station and the line have been redeveloped into a supermarket, a housing estate, a bypass road and a long footpath. Further relics can be seen at Tytherington Quarry to the east of the town. There are plans to reopen the line to Yate via Tytherington and Iron Acton and possibly restore services to Gloucester and Bristol. Thornbury held a market in the high street and the market hall. This closed in the late 1990s and was partly replaced by a smaller one in a car park near the United Reformed Church. The older site has been redeveloped as a community centre called "Turnberrie's"; the older community centre, at the Chantry in Castle Street, remains in active use. The old market hall is now a restaurant. Thornbury's
coat of arms combines the arms of four families important to its history: the Attwells – Howard, Clare and Stafford. John Attwells bequeathed £499.99 for the establishment of a
free school that merged with the
grammar school in 1879. Their arms were later adopted as the badge for
Marlwood School. The other three families held the
manor at Thornbury over several centuries, with the Latin
motto Decus Sabrinae Vallis (Jewel of the Severn Vale). ==Geography==