The Annals of Willenhall Part 12

It should be explained that during the eighteenth century there was almost a mania to discover and exploit wells and springs, and to regard them as fountains of health to which the fashionable and the well-to-do might be attracted. Before the newer fashion of sea bathing was introduced-which was early in the next century-there was a great number of these newly-invented places of inland resort. For instance, Dudley had its charming Spa on Pensnett Chace; and to show that Wolverhampton was not behindhand, we take the liberty of quoting from the MSS. of Dr.

Wilkes:

"A medical spring has lately been discovered at Chapel Ash, in the south-west part of this town, which purges moderately and without the least uneasiness. A brown ocre, or absorbent earth, remains after evaporation, mixt with salt and sulphur; so that it seems to promise relief in all kinds of disorders proceeding from costiveness, and alcaline, fiery, and acid humours in the stomach and bowels, attended by a flow of feverish heat, eruptions on the skin called s...o...b..tic, headaches, giddiness, flatulency, sour eructations, flying pains called nervous and rheumatic, the hemorrhoids or piles, asthma, and many other disorders which seem incurable by the most powerful medicines."

Truly the Doctor might have earned a good living nowadays by writing the advertis.e.m.e.nts for modern quack specifics.

Shaw's description of the Willenhall Spa says that "the spring arises on the north side of a brook which runs almost directly from the west to the east, and so very near to it that a moderate shower will raise the brook as to cover it. About 200 yards up this brook, on the same side, are several springs, one of which was much taken notice of by our ancestors, and consecrated to St. Sunday, no common saint. Over it is the following inscription:-

Fons occulis morbisque cutaneis diu celebris, A.D. 1726."

"Saint Sunday" must have been some local saint; or, more probably, a jocular embodiment of the sacredness of this day of the week with its peculiarly pagan name, to the cause of idleness, and so dubbed by the native wit of Willenhall; anyway, no saint of this name is to be found in the authorised Calendar of any church.

One of the Wilkes MSS. utilised by Shaw, and dated 1737, records the following experiment worked by the learned doctor with the local mineral waters:-

"I evaporated in a bra.s.s furnace 13 gallons to 3 quarts, then let it stand 3 days to settle, and poured the clear water from the fces.

This was a light smooth insipid earth of a yellow colour, fat between the fingers, insipid and impalpable, which being dried, weighed 93 grains. The remaining 3 quarts I evaporated in a bra.s.s kettle and had from it 53 grains of a very salt glutinous substance which dried into a solid ma.s.s of a brown colour. When the water came to a pint or thereabout, it began to smell like glew, and continued to do so when in a solid substance; it was then also as high-coloured as lye; but I am afraid this colour might arise from the bra.s.s kettle, in some measure, or too great a fire, being perhaps burnt."

Another of his scientific records runs:-

"Oct. 9th.-I put into a Florence flask as much of this water as filled it up to the neck within 5 inches of the top. This I placed in a sand heat and increased the fire gradually till it boiled; and so I evaporated ad siccitatem. Some volatile sal stuck to the gla.s.s even up to the top; at the bottom was a small quant.i.ty of dark coloured matter, like that above, but I could not get together 2 grains of either. Here it is plain this sal is so volatile as to be raised and fly away by heat."

In another place he writes:-

"On the 5th of November, 1737, I filled several gla.s.ses with this water, and put into them the following simples:-

1. Green Tea. This, in about 24 hours, made it of the colour of sack, and, by standing, it became much deeper coloured, like strong old beer.

2. Fustic; not so deep, more like cyder.

3. Red Sanders; almost the same colour in the light; but if I held the gla.s.s in the shade, it appeared of a blueish green, exactly like some old gla.s.s bottles I have formerly seen.

4. Alkanet; deeper, like old mountain wine.

5. Galls; paler than any of the foregoing. A large blue sc.u.m on the top, such as we see upon urine in fevers, and standing lakes of water, where there are minerals. With logwood, tormentil, cort, granat, etc., there are some spots of this kind, but with none so much as with galls.

"A little below the Spaw (continues our authority), on the other side of the brook, they meet with a white clay, full of yellow veins of a deep colour, like gumboge when it has been for some time exposed to the air. These two they temper together and make into cakes, which they sell to the glovers by the name of ochre cakes, and with them they give a yellow colour to leather.

"Near the surface of the earth the country is for the most part a strong clay, which makes good brick, but, for a small compa.s.s from this Spaw all along the village on the north side of the brook we have sand. Underground the whole country abounds with coal and ironstone."

The glovers' handicraft, it may be mentioned in pa.s.sing, was once strongly represented in olden Darlaston.

The situation of Willenhall is by no means an elevated one, and the whole plain in which it is situated formerly abounded in Springs, ere the surface had been so much disturbed by mining operations.

On the edge of the valley, under the shadow of Sedgley Beacon, was the famous Spring known as the Lady Wulfruna's, and which gave the place its name, Spring Vale; from this spot the silvery stream flowed eastwards into Willenhall, seeking the cool shade of the pleasant woodland there.

The stream, as it came in from Bilston, and ran eastwards through Willenhall, till it met the Tame, was once called the Hind Brook, or Stag River. In Saxon times the Tame here seems to have been designated Beorgita's Stream; and Mr. G. T. Lawley, in his "History of Bilston,"

says that the original bed of this brook was discovered in Willenhall some years ago when extensive excavations were being made.

So far the scientific aspect of this once famous Well. The popular view of a much frequented mineral spring which had "long been celebrated for disease of the eye and skin" opens out an even wider aspect. As previously mentioned, the brook flowing past it ran from west to east; a stream so directed was always accounted by the Druids of old as a sacred watercourse. Being thus from the earliest dawn of history within sacred precincts, there can be little doubt the Willenhall fountain enjoyed the reputation of a "Holy well" for many centuries. As such it came in for the annual custom of "well dressing," a vestige of the old pagan practice of well worship. Respecting this ancient custom, Dr. Plot, writing in 1686 in his "Natural History of Staffordshire," says:-

"They have a custom in this county, which I observed on Holy Thursday at Brewood and Bilbrook, of adorning their Wells with boughs and flowers; this it seems they do at all gospel places, whether wells, trees, or hills, which being now observed only for decency and custom's sake, is innocent enough. Heretofore, too, it was usual to pay their respect to such wells as were eminent for curing distempers (one of which was at Wolverhampton in a narrow lane leading to a house, called Sea-well; another at Willenhall; others at Monmore Green, near Wolverhampton; at Codsall and many other parts of Staffordshire) on the saint's day whose name the well bore; diverting themselves with cakes and ale, and a little music and dancing; which, whilst within bound, was also an innocent recreation."

Dr. Oliver says the beautiful spring at Dunstall was the favourite resort of the Lady Wulfruna, and from contact with her sanct.i.ty acquired a reputation for possessing healing virtues of a miraculous character, and that this fountain was long known among its devotees as Wulfruna's Well.

Pitt's "History of Staffordshire," issued in 1817, gives a long list of local wells bearing at that time some similar repute for their remedial waters. Among them was Codsall Well, near Codsall Wood, supposed in olden times to be efficacious in cases of leprosy, and adjacent to which once stood a Leper House, replaced at a later period by a "Brimstone Ale-house," so-called because the water was sulphureous. The waters of the Monmore Green Well are described as containing "sulphur combined with vitriol." The Sea-well Spring still retained its name as a "Spaw" famous for its "eye water"; while those of Willenhall and Bentley were said to yield a valuable remedial sulphur water so long as they "could be kept from mixture with other waters."

Folklore not only connected these Wells with patron saints, but a.s.sociated their magic precincts and curative effects with beneficent fairies. A well like that of Willenhall, which in a post-renaissance period was honoured with a stone frontal bearing a Latin inscription, would of a certainty be attended by fairy elves in an earlier and more primitive era.

About this Spring (if ancient fame say true) The dapper elves their midnight sports pursue; Their pigmy king and little fairy queen, In circling dances gambolled on the green, While tuneful sprites a merry concert made And airy music warbled through the shade.

[Picture: Decorative design]

XVIII.-The Benefice.

Owing to the meagreness of the record, a complete list of the holders of the benefice is not to be expected. Thomas de Trollesbury has been named as "the parson of Willenhall" in 1297 (Chapter VII.); while we also have the names of three chantry priests here-William in the Lone, 1341 (Chapter XI.); Thomas Browning, "chaplain of the chantry" in 1397 (Chapter VII.); and Hugh Bromehall in 1526 (Chapter X.); all of them doubtless nominees of the Deanery of Wolverhampton.

Of course, it was possible, though not often the practice, for the holder of the living to act as "chaunter" priest as well. The Chantry endowments, as we have seen, were forfeited at the Reformation, at which period the benefice was returned as of the annual value of "10 clear."

Either of these notorious evil-livers mentioned in Chapter XI., the non-preaching "dumb-dogs," Mounsell and Cooper, may have been the occupant of the Willenhall curacy in 1586. In 1609 an improvement in the intellectual status of the holder had been effected, William Padmore, D.D., being then inc.u.mbent.

In a previous chapter it was shown that the Rev. T. Badland was expelled from the living of Willenhall in 1662. It can now be shown that he was holding the benefice at least as early as 1658-and possibly from the beginning of the Cromwellian rule and the overthrow of the Episcopacy in 1646.

About 16456 ordinances were pa.s.sed appointing a Committee to consider ways and means of upholding and settling the maintenance of ministers in England and Wales. In 1654 the powers of the Plundered Ministers'

Committee were transferred to the Trustees for Maintenance. The Committee took the receipts of all t.i.thes, Fifths, and First Fruits; and later on the income of the rectories, bishoprics, deaneries, and chapters; they sold the bishops' lands, &c.

It was out of this income that augmentations and advances were granted by the said Committee to ministers and school-masters. In the Record Office at London there is an audited account the Treasurer to the "Trustees for the Maintenance of Ministers and other pious uses of moneys," showing among the disburs.e.m.e.nts for the year ending 26 December, 1658, one to

"Thomas Badland, of Willenhall (6 months to 1659, March 25) . . .

10."

In curious contrast with this high-minded clergyman, who sacrificed his living to his conscience, is his successor in the Curacy of Willenhall, the Rev. Mr. Gilpin, who had to be seriously admonished for non-residence and other faults, and was at last, in the year 1674, turned out of the living altogether. Not improbably this gentleman was a pluralist, an example of the cla.s.s of clergymen by which the Church of England was very much degraded at that period.

Dr. Oliver's history printed the following "Dismissal of the Rev. Thomas Gilpin," from the original doc.u.ment found in the possession of Mr. Neve, of Wolverhampton, in 1836:-

We, whose names are subscribed, the undoubted and immediate lords of the Manor of Stow Health, hearing and well weighing the said complaints of the Inhabitants of the towne of Willenhall, lying within our said Manor, made and brought against you, Thomas Gilpin, clerk, Curate of the Chapell there:

Doe in consideration thereof and in pursuance of an Order made and inrolled on some of the Rolls of the Court of our said Manor, bearing date 11th day of October in the Sixth Year of the Reign of our late Soveraigne, Lord, King James, over England, etc.

And of our power and authority thereby, Displace and Discharge you, the said Thomas Gilpin, from the place, Dignity, and office of Curate, Minister, or Priest in the said Chapell.

And do hereby present and allow John Carter, clerk (a person elected and approved by the Inhabitants of Willenhall aforesaid), to be Curate of the said Chapell in your place and stead, to read divine service there; and to do and perform all such other offices and things as shall properly belong to his Ministerial function and calling.

And thus much you, the said Thomas Gilpin, are hereby desired to take notice of.