A history of the county of Stafford

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Bibliographic Information

A history of the county of Stafford

edited by L. Margaret Midgley

（The Victoria history of the counties of England）

Published for the Institute of Historical Research, by the Oxford University Press, 1958-

  • v. 2
  • v. 3
  • v. 4
  • v. 5
  • v. 6
  • v. 7
  • v. 8
  • v. 9
  • v. 10
  • v. 11
  • v. 14
  • v. 17
  • v. 20

Other Title

A history of Staffordshire

Staffordshire

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Note

Description based on v. 4

Vol. 2: edited by M.W. Greenslade and J.G. Jenkins; v. 3, 7, 14, 17, 20: edited by M.W. Greenslade; v. 6: edited by M.W. Greenslade and D.A. Johnson; v. 8: edited by J. G. Jenkins; v. 9-11: edited by Nigel J. Tringham

Publishers varies: v. 9-, Woodbridge : Published for the Institute of Historical Research, by Boydell & Brewer

Later printing distributed by Dawsons Pall Mall

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Vol. 4: Staffordshire Domesday and West Cuttlestone Hundred. -- v. 5: East Cuttlestone Hundred. -- v. 7: Leek and the Moorlands. -- v. 9: Burton-upon-trent. -- v.10: Tutbury and Needwood Forest.-- v. 11: Audley, Keele and Trentham. -- v. 14: Lichfield. -- v. 20: Seisdon Hundred (part)

Vol. 2. "With index to volumes 1 and 2"

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

v. 3 ISBN 9780197227329

Description

The ecclesiastical history of Staffordshire provides the content of Volume III. The opening chapter on the Medieval Church traces the early history of Christianity in the area and recounts the struggle for predominance between Lichfield and Coventry. There are separate chapters on the Church of England since the Reformation, Roman Catholicisim, and Protestant Nonconformity; among much else, the last describes the origins in the Potteries of Primitive Methodism. There are also individual accounts of the county 's 40 religious -houses, including Burton Abbey, the College of St. Peter, Wolverhampton, the alien priory of Tutbury, and, most important, Lichfeld cathedral, a house of secular canons where St. Chad was buried.
Volume

v. 6 ISBN 9780197227336

Description

This volume completes the general articles planned for Staffordshire and also contains the history of the county town. Four articles on agriculture survey a thousand years of farming. Cultivation gradually reduced the extensive woodlands recorded in Domesday Book. The progress of arable farming in the south was paralleled by that of stock-rearing in the north, while from the 17th century dairying became increasingly important. The water meadows of the Dovewere famous. By the 19th century Staffordshire was a county of great estates noted for improving landlords and agents who encouraged new crops and techniques. Today farming still occupies over two-thirds of the county. There arearticles on the more important public schools and endowed grammar schools and on Keele University, the first of the new universities after the Second World War. The story of Stafford Borough, not told before on a comparable scale,begins with a settlement in a loop of the river Sow, existing perhaps by Roman times and later associated with the hermitage of the Saxon St. Bertelin. Stafford, first appearing in written records in 913, became the county town of the new shire which was laid out round it. William the Conqueror built a castle there in 1070; King John recognized the town's borough status with a charter in 1206. By then there were two parish churches, the collegiate churchof St. Mary and the little St. Chad's, a gem of mid-12th-century architecture. Stafford's most famous son is Izaak Walton, born there in 1593. Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who was M.P. for over 20 years from 1780, proposed the toast'May the manu-factures of Stafford be trodden under foot by all the world', a reference to the footwear industry. Although only one shoe factory now remains, many other industries flourish, notably electrical engineering, introduced in 1903. By 1971 Stafford was a borough of over 5,000 acres and 55,000 inhabitants.
Volume

v. 17 ISBN 9780197227435

Description

Historical accounts of three important industrial towns of the Black Country fill the present volume. West Bromwich, Smethwick, and Walsall are all close neighbours and all former county boroughs. West Bromwich had a domes-tic nailing industry in the 16th century but remained a scattered settlement on the heathland of the coal measures until the development of its mining and iron industry in the mid 19th. Smethwick's growth began with the building of the Birmingham canal in the late 18th century and was particularly marked from the 1830s-. Walsall, an early medieval borough with its church standing on a limestone hill at the town's centre, underwent a rapid increase in population from the 1820s. Immigrants to man the indus-tries of the area have included French and Belgians in the early 19th century, and in the mid 20th people from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent. The pattern of communications feeding the industries is a palimpsest of ancient roads bridging the small streams of the Mid-lands plateau, the successive networks of canals and railways, and the motorways of the 1960s. Household names like Mitchells & Butlers,Chances, G.K.N., and Tube Investments are reminders of the industrial strength and variety of the area, which has also included brick- making, brush-making, chemicals, cloth and clothing, coal-mining, engineering of many types, iron-smelting, ironstone mining, leather trades, limestone-mining, and organ-building. Along with the large factories and numerous small workshops are remarkable buildings of other kinds, such as West Bromwich manor-house, a classicmedieval example, and the former Sand-well Hall, seat of the earls of Dartmouth. Apart from manufacturers many well known people have been connected with the area, including Joseph Chamberlain in politics, Madeleine Carroll and Sidney Barnes in entertainment and sport, and in literature Jerome K. Jerome and Sir Henry Newbolt.
Volume

v. 20 ISBN 9780197227657

Description

The volume covers the south-west corner of Staffordshire, bordering on Shropshire and Worcestershire and including the Tettenhall and Amblecote portions of the new county of West Midlands. The area was part of Seisdon hundred andincludes the village of Seisdon in Trysull parish where the hundred met. Most of it lay in Kinver forest. Stourton Castle in Kinver parish was built in the 1190s as a royal hunting lodge and became the home of the keeper of the forest. The area, watered by the Stour and its tributary Smestow brook, remains largely agricultural, with mixed farming and also market gardening for the nearby Black Country towns. There are three great houses, Enville Hall, Patshull House, and the Wodehouse at Wombourne, all at one time having fine gardens. By the 19th century business men working in Wolverhampton were coming to live in Tettenhall and Codsall, and in the 20th century Kinver, Pattingham,and Wombourne too have rapidly expanded as residential areas. By the late 18th century Tettenhall was the goal of excursions from Wolverhampton, and Kinver Edge has at-tracted visitors from the neighbouring towns for the past century. Rock houses cut into the sandstone of the Edge remained occupied until the mid 20th century. There were several early industries, notably ironworking along the rivers. Kinver had a flourishing iron industry from the 17th tothe 19th century, and clothworking too was important there in the 17th and 18th centuries. There was an iron industry in Wombourne from the 16th century until the closure of Richard Thomas & Baldwin Ltd.'s Swindon works in 1976. At Amblecote glassmaking has been important since the early 17th century when Lorrainer glassmakers were attracted there by cheap coal and excellent fireclay.
Volume

v. 14 ISBN 9780197227787

Description

The volume tells the story of Lichfield and its neighbourhood from Romano-British times to the late 20th century. Lichfield was first mentioned in the mid 7th century and was chosen as a see in 669A.D. with St. Chad as its first bishop. A cathedral has stood there ever since, much rebuilt and restored over the centuries and noted for its three spires, 'the ladies of the vale'. Until the Reforma-tion St. Chad's shrine attracted a stream of pil-grims. The cathedral and its medieval fortified close were garrisoned by both sides during the Civil War and suffered great damage and losses. There are two other early churches, St. Chad's which is associated with the saint's dwelling place,and St. Michael's on the hilltop site where there may once have been a pagan sanctuary. The city itself originated as a new town planted by the bishop in the mid 12th century. In the mid 16th century it was granted city and county status by the Crown. A church dedicated to St. Mary was built in the market place, and other medieval institutions included a Franciscan friary, an almshouse for men and another for women which both survive, and an important religious and social guild. On the eve of the guild's suppression at the Reformation much of its landed property was conveyed in trust for the maintenance of the city's medieval water supply and for other needs. As a result Lichfield has for centuries enjoyed private-enterprise public services, and the Conduit Lands Trust is still active. In the 18th century Lichfield was a centre for polite society with its races attracting many visitors. In the 19th century there was industrial development, notably in the brewing industry. The later 20th century has seen the growth of light industry and also extensive residential development, with a nearly threefold increase in the city's population. Tourism too has been encouraged and is associated particularly with Samuel Johnson, born in the city in 1709. The volume also covers seven former townships lying outside the city but once part of the Lich-field parishes of St. Michael and St. Chad. They include Wall with its Romano-British remains, Fisherwick which once possessed a mansion and park by Capability Brown, and the urban parish of Burntwood containing the former mining village of Chasetown and Chase Terrace; the others are Curborough and Elmhurst, Freeford, Hammer-wich, and Streethay with Fulfen.
Volume

v. 10 ISBN 9781904356103

Description

Classic VCH account of the important town of Tutbury and its environs. Tutbury and Needwood forest have a rich history, fully explored here from the earliest times to the present day: the former with its great medieval castle, the heart of a major feudal honor held from the 13th century by the royalearls and dukes of Lancaster, and the latter with its medieval parks and hunting lodges. The volume also covers the important early Anglo-Saxon monastic and royal site of Hanbury, the burial place of St Werburh, a Mercian princess; and offers accounts of the mansion houses built in and around the ancient forest area by members of the Bass brewing family and others, and the magnificent late 19th-century church of Hoar Cross, one of Bodley's masterpieces. NIGEL TRINGHAM is County Editor for VCH Stafforshire and lecturer in history at the University of Keele.
Volume

v. 11 ISBN 9781904356417

Description

Comprehensive and authoritative history of north-west Staffordshire, including Keele, Trentham and Audley. Covering the hilly north-west part of the county from the Cheshire border to the valley of the river Trent south of Newcastle-under-Lyme, this volume treats parishes that lie mostly on the North Staffordshire coalfield and where both coal and ironstone mining and iron-making became important, especially in the nineteenth century. A rich archive has been used to illustrate the origins of this industrial activity in the Middle Ages, when the area was characterised by scattered settlements, with an important manorial complex and a grand fourteenth-century church at Audley, a hunting lodge for the Stafford lords at Madeley, a small borough at Betley, and at Keele and Trentham religioushouses which became landed estates with mansion houses after the Dissolution. In the nineteenth century Trentham gained fame for its spectacular gardens created by the immensely rich dukes of Sutherland, and Keele rose to prominence in 1950 as the site of Britain's first campus university. After coalmining ceased in the twentieth century several villages and mining hamlets acquired large housing estates, which in Trentham parish were absorbed into Stoke-on-Trent. Nigel Tringham is a Senior Lecturer in History at Keele University, with special responsibility for researching and writing the volumes of the Staffordshire Victoria County History.

Table of Contents

Introduction Audley Betley Keele Madeley Trentham

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