STROUD, a market-town of Gloucestershire, is situated on the Swindon and Gloucester branch of the Great Western Railway, on a branch of the Midland Railway, and on the Thames and Severn Junction Canal, 10 miles south of Gloucester and 30 north-east of Bristol. It is picturesquely situated on an eminence environed by higher hills, but is built in a somewhat straggling and irregular fashion. Among the principal buildings are the town-hall, built in the reign of Elizabeth, the Lansdown hall (1879), the Badbrook hall (1869), with reading-room and large room for concerts, the subscription rooms (1834), and the hospital, erected in 1875 at a cost of £8754, to replace the dispensary erected in 1823. The town is the principal seat of the west of England cloth manufacture, and possesses very extensive mills. There are also silk mills, scarlet-dye works, breweries, logwood-crushing mills, I See Proc. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1869-1870, p. 99 ; reprinted in Jour. Anat. and Ph.ysiol., vol. vii. pp. 140-155.

and flour-mills. Stroud at the time of the Norman survey was part of Bisley parish, from which it was separated in 1304. The local board was established in 1857. The population of the urban sanitary district (area 999 acres) in 1871 was 7082, and in 1881 it was 7848.