Brimscombe and Thrupp () is a civil parish made up of the villages of Thrupp and Brimscombe, in the narrow Frome Valley slightly south-east of Stroud, Gloucestershire, England. The parish also includes the hamlets of Quarhouse and The Heavens. The population taken at the 2011 census was 1,830. History The mills Although small-scale textile weaving and cloth manufacturing had been taking place for centuries it was with the construction of the Thames and Severn Canal and Brimscombe Port in 1789 that the two villages expanded rapidly, and many cloth and woollen mills were constructed. Many of these were later adapted for other purposes. Bourne Mills at one time housed a company that produced walking sticks. Griffin Mill was founded in 1600 by the Griffin family for the making of cloth and was subsequently used for furniture making. Ham Mill produced textiles from 1601 to 2000, when the carpet manufacturer occupying the premises ceased trading. Phoenix Mill was the site of the old iron works (see Phoenix Iron Works below). Port Mills was at one time a grist mill before later becoming a textile mill (until the 1930s); then, in the late 1930s and 1940s, it housed a garden tractor company and an engineering works (see under Brimscombe Port below). Phoenix Iron Works Early records indicate that there was a cloth mill at Thrupp dating back as far as 1381. By 1770 the premises had expanded to include a house, four fulling mills and a gig mill. The gig mill, which eventually became known as Thrupp Mill, was leased to Edward Ferrabee in 1793. By 1828 the entire premises were leased to the Ferrabees, and an iron works, the Phoenix Iron Works, had been established. The Ferrabees became well known for their production of cloth-making machines, steam engines, agricultural machinery and water wheels. It was here that John Lewis had invented a machine in 1815 to shear the surplus fibres or nap from the surface of cloth, using a horizontal blade. In the 1820s Edwin Beard Budding, a machinist or "mechanician", was employed by Edward's son, John, at Thrupp. It was while Budding was working at Thrupp that Lewis' machine was developed to use rotary cutters, and Budding realised that this machine could be adapted for other purposes. Using gears, a revolving horizontal shaft and three blades he developed a machine to cut grass, which until then had been cut manually,