The Annals of Willenhall Part 17

The several payments of 6s. 8d. to the Minister and 8s. and 13s. for bread, appear to have been annually made; but the bread having been distributed by the Pedley family themselves, or persons deputed by them, without the intervention of the Chapelwarden or Overseer, the fees of 2s. 4d. to these Officers have been hitherto withheld, and are indeed unnoticed in a Will of James Pedley, dated in 1792, whereby he devises the Closes in question to the above-named Charles Pedley, describing them as subject to the other payments of 27s. 8d.

only.

Mr. Bailey has, however, expressed his readiness to supply the omission in future, and to pay the bread money, or deliver the bread to the Officers of the Township to be distributed by them according to the directions of the donor.

The distributions appear to have been hitherto made respectively on New Year's Day and at Midsummer, among Poor Old Widows and other Poor of the Township.

3.-CHARITIES OF JOHN TOMKYS AND GEORGE WELCH.

At a Court Baron held for the Manor of Stowheath, on 29th May, 1781, the lords of the manor, at the request of certain persons being Chapelwardens, and certain others being Overseers of the Poor of the liberty of Willenhall, and of certain others, being three of the princ.i.p.al Inhabitants of Willenhall, on behalf of themselves and others, the inhabitants of Willenhall, by the hands of the Steward, according to the custom of the manor, gave, granted, and delivered to Joshua Fletcher, of Willenhall, and Catherina, his wife, all those three Closes or parcels of land, containing together five acres, or thereabouts, theretofore enclosed from the waste or common-land called Shepwell Green, within the liberty of Willenhall, for their natural lives and the life of the survivor, with remainder to the heirs and a.s.signs of the said Joshua Fletcher for ever, subject to the payment of 20s. on St. Thomas's Day yearly for ever, to the Chapelwardens and Overseers of the Poor for the liberty of Willenhall, to be by them paid or applied to or for the use of the Poor of the said liberty of Willenhall, yearly and every year for ever on St. Thomas's Day aforesaid, at the Vestry of the said Chapel, according to their discretion, it being the interest of 20, 10 thereof being theretofore given by one John Tomkys, and the other 10 theretofore given by one George Welch, to and for the use of the said Poor.

These premises are now the property of John Fletcher, by whom the annuity of 20s. is duly paid to the officers of the Township. This payment is distributed on New Year's Day among the Poor of the liberty in small sums not generally exceeding 6d. to each individual.

4.-JOHN BATES'S CHARITY.

This Charity consists of the sum of 5, which appears to have been left by John Bate some time before the year 1701; the interest to be yearly distributed among the Poor of Willenhall on St. Thomas's Day.

The princ.i.p.al was placed at interest on 21 December, 1701, in the hands of Joseph Hincks, on the security of his bond; and the interest appears to have been duly paid by himself and his heirs successively.

It is now paid by Thomas Hincks on St. Thomas's Day annually to fifteen Poor Widows of the Township in shares of 4d. each.

The founders of the "lost" Prestwood Charity were doubtless members of the family mentioned in Chapter VII. as resident in Willenhall as early as 1409; Prestwood, be it noted, was also the name of an ancient moated farm and homestead in Wednesfield. The name of Prestwood is again mentioned, as are also the names of the other Willenhall benefactors, Bates and Tomkiss, in the endowment deeds of 1607, quoted in Chapter XXI.

As to the Welch family, their homestead in Willenhall stood in the location known as Welch End.

Concerning Pedley's Charity, which has not been distributed these 50 years, the Churchwardens have, as recently as 1895, made earnest attempts at its recovery. The lands once chargeable for the dole were identified as Shares Acres, lying between the ca.n.a.l and the road leading to New Invention from Monmer Lane. The property, however, was found to be in the hands of the Trustees of the late W. E. Jones; and as, through the remissness of someone, the estate had been sold and conveyed without due provision for the payment of the annuity once charged upon it, the Trustees had not power to make such payment. While the minerals under this land have been yielding wealth, the Poor have been defrauded from their rightful share in the same.

Painstaking inquiries for the other "lost charities" have also been made, but with no success. For many years the Inc.u.mbent and Wardens have provided and distributed a Dole of 40 loaves, for which there has been no legal responsibility resting upon them.

In 1881 Jeremiah Hartill gave 200 to the Vicar and Wardens, which was invested in Consols, and the interest is annually distributed on January 1st amongst twenty poor people of the township. The Hartill Charity and the Tomkys and Welch Doles are the only ones now administered.

Thirty or more years ago a Mr. Stokes gave the Inc.u.mbent of Willenhall 500 to be applied in his absolute discretion for the benefit of St.

Giles's School. The interest until recently was applied by him for that purpose. The princ.i.p.al has recently been spent in purchase of an extended playground for the new Infant Schools, and in the part purchase of a site for a new Mixed Department, adjacent thereto.

A few years after the pa.s.sing of Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1847, advantage was taken of it to split the populous area of the ancient chapelry into new district parishes; and by 1855 the said chapelry was divided into three nearly equal parts, the new parishes of St. Stephen and Holy Trinity, leaving to St. Giles's Church Bentley and the remaining portion of the Willenhall township. The fourth daughter parish, St. Anne's, came a few years later.

St Stephen's Church, in Wolverhampton Street, was erected mainly through the exertions of its first vicar, the Rev. T. W. Fletcher, M.A., and opened in 1854, seven years after its ecclesiastical district had been formed. Mr. Fletcher died in 1890, and the living is now held by the Rev. Herbert Percy Stevens, M.A. This parish maintains a Parochial Hall and Mission at Portobello.

St. Anne's Church, Spring Bank, was built largely as a memorial to his wife by Mr. H. Jeavon. It was consecrated in 1861.

Holy Trinity Church (Short Heath) Vicarage and Schools were all built by the Rev. Dr. Rosedale, the first vicar of the parish, and father of the present vicar of St. Giles's. His labours commenced in a Mission Room at the Brown Jug Inn, Sandbeds, and he trained several very earnest men for the ministry, including the Rev. John Bailey, first vicar of the Pleck Church, Walsall, and the Rev. - Pritchard, vicar of Blakenall Church, Bloxwich. The jubilee of the building of the church was held about 1905.

The Rev. - Wood was the second vicar, the Rev. G. W. Johnson the third, and the present vicar is the Rev. G. C. W. Pimbury.

A Mission Room at New Invention completes the list of Anglican Establishments in Willenhall.

In connection with St. Giles's a Men's and a Junior Men's Club have recently been established; and among other projects for further developments in the parochial machinery is a Mission Room at Shepwell Green. This movement was initiated some years ago when the Rev. H.

Edwards was acting as Curate during the illness of the Rev. Mr. Fisher; a site has recently been purchased, in the antic.i.p.ation that the Mission in due time will develop into a new ecclesiastical parish.

Dr. Hartill, as Churchwarden, was instrumental in securing a grant of 700 from a bequest of 15,000 left for Church objects by a Miss Green, with which to increase the endowment of Holy Trinity Church, Short Heath; this was supplemented by another 700 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners; while in the following year a further sum of 700 from each source was also obtained for increasing the endowment of St. Anne's Church.

XXIII.-The Fabric of the Church.

As already discovered (Chapter VII.), a church has existed in Willenhall since the 13th century. It was at first a small chapel-of-ease, and seems to have been dedicated in pre-Reformation times to a non-biblical patron, Saint Giles.

The first edifice, as a mere chapel of accommodation, was in all probability a very primitive structure, constructed entirely of timber cut from the adjacent forest of Cannock. But when it became a chantry also, the original structure may have been replaced by a more elaborate edifice, in the style which is generally known as half-timbered.

Soon after the Reformation the mother church of Wolverhampton was pewed on a plan for the specifically allotted accommodation of all the parishioners, when the centre aisle was given to the inhabitants of Wolverhampton, the south aisle was set apart for the people of Bilston, and the north aisle was appropriated to Wednesfield and Willenhall. In those days, as previously explained, the law supposed that every adult person attended church on Sundays; there was, in fact, a penalty for absence enforcible by law.

With regard to Willenhall's timber-constructed church, there is evidence that in 1660 it was in a deplorable condition through fire ravages.

After the Reformation it became a practice for collections to be made in the churches throughout the country to provide funds for the repair or rebuilding of parish churches which had fallen into a state of dilapidation beyond the means of its own parishioners to make good; or for other charitable purposes in which the needs of the one seemed to call for the help of the many. These collections were authorised to be made by Royal Letters Patent, through official doc.u.ments known as Briefs; and entries of these are to be found in most Parish Registers till the middle of the 18th century, when their frequency through the complaisance of the Court of Chancery was considered such an abuse that it was ordered for the future that their issue should be granted only after a formal application to Quarter Sessions. Thus we find records in the Tipton Registers of no less than seven collections made there between 1657 and 1661 for the relief of distress through fire and other causes in Desford, Southwold, Drayton (Salop), Oxford, East Hogborne, Chichester, and Milton Abbey.

Willenhall called for this form of national a.s.sistance in 1660, as entries of a Brief on its behalf have been found as far apart as Chatham, in Kent, and Woodborough, in Notts, and may doubtless be traced in various parish registers up and down the country. Here is a copy of the Nottinghamshire entry:-

September ye 23, 1660.

COLLECTED at ye Parish Church and among ye Inhabitants of Woodbourogh for and towards the Reliefe of ye distressed inhabitants of Willenhall, in ye County of Stafford, being Commended hityr [hereto]

by ye King's Majestyes Letters Patents with ye gorat Sale [Great Seal] for and towards their loss by fire, ye sum of 4s. 10d.

Witness,

JOHN ALLATT,

Minister.

JAMES JOB, HENRY MOORELAW,

Churchwardens.

[It has been romantically suggested by a local writer that the "burning of Willenhall" was an act of revenge perpetrated by the Puritans of Lichfield and the vicinity for the succour given at Bentley Hall in 1651 to the fugitive Charles II.; and that these church collections are evidence of the personal interest taken by that monarch on his Restoration, in the place which had afforded him shelter in his hour of direst need. Two considerations will immediately dispel any such illusion. First, the Briefs were very commonplace affairs, as already shown; secondly, displays of Stuart grat.i.tude were just as rare. All the reward commonplace affairs, as already shown; secondly, displays of Stuart grat.i.tude were just as rare. All the reward Charles vouchsafed to the devoted Lanes was the cheap honour of an augmentation of the family arms, and the scanty gift of 1,000 to Jane Lane. Allusion has been made (Chapter XIII.) to the Royal fugitive taking advantage of the hiding-place afford by the "priest's hole" at Moseley Hall where Charles was loyally secreted by Jesuitic and other priestly adherents, though they might have pocketed a reward of 10,000 by betraying him-yet in after years this ungrateful prince had no compunction in signing more than twenty death warrants against Romanist priests, merely for the crime of being priests!]

[Picture: Bentley Hall]

To resume our history of Willenhall Church: What was manifestly a "restored" chapel was in 1727 consecrated by Edward, Lord Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, on the same day that Bilston Chapel was consecrated; but the building could have been scarcely worth the attempt, as twenty years later it had to be entirely replaced.

On August 14th of the year 1727, the Bishop having first consecrated Bilston Chapel, in the presence of a large a.s.sembly of the local clergy, which included the Rev. R. Ames and two other prebendaries; the vicars of Walsall and Dudley; Mr. Tyrer, curate of Tettenhall; Mr. Gibbons, minister of Codsall; Mr. Varden, rector of Darlaston; Mr. Perry, curate of Wednesbury; and Mr. Holbrooke, curate of Willenhall; his lordship proceeded to Willenhall in a coach and four, where the ceremony of Consecration "in Latine" was repeated upon what was merely a renovated building. After which Squire Lane, of Bentley, gave a splendid entertainment in celebration of the event.

A "chappel-yard for the Burial of the Dead," which had been added, was consecrated at the same time, and, strangely enough-as if the parishioners of Willenhall were eager to signalise their acquisition of such a parochial inst.i.tution as a graveyard-the first interment was made the selfsame day.

About the middle of the eighteenth century there was a wave of zeal for church extension, on which we find Wolverhampton carried along rather freely; for within the short s.p.a.ce of ten years, under the auspices of Dr. Pennistan Booth, the enterprising Dean, the building of four chapels-of-ease was projected. These daughter churches were:-