Pembridge Parish Council

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The Council comprises 13 unpaid members elected from within the parish and a paid clerk who acts as advisor and administrator. Its primary concerns are with planning, highways, traffic, community safety, housing, street lighting, playing fields, litter, seats, shelters and rights of way. The Council raises money through taxation (the precept) which is collected via the Council Tax. For the current year the precept is £18,000.

Meetings are held monthly except August and are open for anyone to attend. A time is set aside at each meeting for parishioners to raise any points or questions.

Pembridge is located in north-west Herefordshire in a region of agricultural importance set in the undulating landscape of Herefordshire’s Central Lowland. The Domesday Book records a resident population of approximately twenty-eight households at Pembridge (Penebruge) in AD 1086. The castle at Pembridge, surviving as an earthwork monument, was constructed in the late 11th or early 12th Century, and the parish church dates from the 12th Century (rebuilt during the early 14th Century). The timber framework of the detached belfry, one of seven in Herefordshire, was erected in the early 13th Century.

Pembridge flourished as market centre during the medieval period, following the grant of a royal charter in AD 1239 and the establishment of a planned borough with a market place and burgage plots. Recent analysis of timber-framed buildings in the conservation area suggests a significant phase of house construction during the middle years of the 15th Century, a period of economic recovery following the political unrest of the early years of the century associated with the rebellion of Owain Glyndower.

By the late 17th Century, Pembridge had declined as a market centre, probably as a result of competition from nearby market towns. A number of the timber-framed buildings were replaced, encased, or refronted in brick during the 18th and 19th Centuries. During the late 20th/early 21st Century, new residential developments have been undertaken on cul-de-sacs on the fringes of the settlement and on infill and backland sites within the settlement. Even so, the plan-form of the medieval borough, including the market place and the burgage plots, earthworks on the site of the castle, and a large number of timber-framed hall houses, dating from at least the 15th Century, have been preserved.

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