Beoley is a small village and larger civil parish north of Redditch in the Bromsgrove District of Worcestershire. It adjoins Warwickshire to the east. The 2001 census gave a parish population of 945, mostly at Holt End. The parish includes the hamlet of Portway, adjacent to the A435 road. It adjoins the Redditch suburb of Church Hill and the civil parishes of Alvechurch, Tanworth-in-Arden, Mappleborough Green and Wythall. History Manor The estates of the Benedictine Pershore Abbey included lands at Beoleahe from the 10th century at the latest, when Edgar the Peaceful restored them to the monks in AD 972. The Domesday Book of 1086 records that the abbey held 21 hides of land at Beolege and Yardley. An ancient castle, of which very slight traces remain, belonged successively to the noble families of Mortimer, Beauchamp, and Holland. Roger Mortimer (died 1214), Lord of Wigmore first appears in the pipe roll for 1174–1175, when he owned land in Shropshire and Worcestershire, and his daughter Joan Mortimer (died 1225) married Walter de Beauchamp of Elmley, Worcestershire, according to the Annals of Worcester. In 1378 John Holland, First Duke of Exeter and Earl of Huntingdon was granted lands by his half-brother King Richard II which included Buley Castel, this part being forfeited on 14 April 1385, though other lands were restored to him elsewhere. The de Beauchamp family of Elmley Castle, ancestors of William de Beauchamp, 9th Earl of Warwick, were mesne lords of the manor from the 12th century until about 1265, when they acquired the overlordship (superiority) from the abbey. In the 13th century the toponym was variously rendered Boleye, Beleg or Buley. The superiority of Beoley descended with the de Beauchamps until the death of Henry de Beauchamp, 1st Duke of Warwick in 1446, when it passed to his daughter Elizabeth, wife of George Nevill, 1st Baron Latimer. It is said to have remained with the Latimers until John Nevill, 4th Baron Latimer sold it in 1549. William Sheldon of Abberton, however, must have held a good part of the parish by feu, as he was established at Balford Hall in Beoley in the reign of Edward IV (1460–1483). In addition, he bought Benyt's Place in that parish in 1488. Sheldon supported the Yorkists at the battle of Bosworth in 1485, and as a result of the definitive Lancastrian victory there he was deprived of his property, but it