Mangotsfield

Mangotsfield is a village in South Gloucestershire, England, situated north of the suburb of Kingswood, bounded to the north by the M4 motorway and to the east by the Emersons Green housing estate.

The village is in the north-east outer-suburbs of the Bristol area and is mentioned in the Domesday Book 1086 National Archives Cat Ref: E31/2/1 Manegodesfelle. St James's Church was originally 13th century but was altered in 1812 by James Foster of Bristol and again in 1851 by Pope, Bindon and Clarke. Rodway Hill House is 16th century.

In the centre of the village there used to be small village green, but it has been replaced by a large pavement, car parking and some local shops. Over the last decade the development of the Emersons Green housing estate has given rise to a large amount of traffic in the village.

Mangotsfield railway station on the former Midland Railway line was closed in 1966. It was the junction on the main line between Bristol and Gloucester for the branch line that ran to Bath Green Park and on to the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway to Bournemouth. The playwright and actor Arnold Ridley, famous for portraying the part of Private Godfrey in the BBC comedy Dad's Army, reputedly got the idea for his famous play The Ghost Train whilst waiting at the deserted station to catch a train in the early 1920s.

Mangotsfield is the home of Mangotsfield United F.C. and Cleve R.F.C. Rodway Hill is a favourite spot for dog walkers and the starting point of many pigeon races.

Mangotsfield was an ancient parish. It was reduced in 1894 by the creation of a Kingswood parish, with the rest forming a rural parish in Warmley Rural District. In 1927 a Mangotsfield urban district was set up in part of the parish, the remainder becoming the Mangotsfield Urban District Council parish.

Schools
There is one secondary school in Mangotsfield: Mangotsfield School (A Specialist College in Engineering and Science).

It was formed after an almagamation between The Rodway School which is located at the current Mangotsfield School site opposite Rodway Common, and The Chase School for Boys which was located in Cossham Street. The Cossham Street and Rodway sites provided the lower school and upper school sites for Mangotsfield School respectively.

The Cossham Street site was demolished in 1996 to make way for the Emersons Green housing estate. The whole school was brought onto an expanded Rodway site. In 1997, whilst excavating the old school field, archaeologists made an important discovery when they unearthed a sarcophagus containing the remains of two people; one of them is thought to be a high-ranking Roman official. The sarcophagus is displayed in Bristol City Museum.

Notable people
Francis Greenway, a transported convict who became a prominent architect in Sydney, New South Wales, and whose image appeared on the first Australian decimal-currency $10 note in 1966, was born here in 1777.

Local hero and ex Queens Park Rangers and Aston Villa striker Gary Penrice grew up in Mangotsfield.