History of Penkridge

Mentioned in Domesday, Penkridge underwent a period of growth from the 13th century, as the Forest Law was loosened, and evolved into a patchwork of manors of greatly varying size and importance, heavily dependent on agriculture.

From the 16th century it was increasingly dominated by a single landed gentry family, the Littletons, who ultimately attained the Peerage of the United Kingdom as the Barons Hatherton, and who helped modernise its agriculture and education system.

In the second half of the 20th century, Penkridge grew rapidly, evolving into a mainly residential area, while retaining its commercial centre, its links with the countryside and its fine church.

Early human occupation of the immediate area around Penkridge has been confirmed by the presence of a Bronze or Iron Age barrow at nearby Rowley Hill.

The village of Penkridge in its current location dates back at least to the early Middle Ages, when the area was part of Mercia, and it held an important place in local society, trade, and religious observance.

This makes it likely that Edgar stayed here simply because it was one of his homes: medieval rulers were itinerant, moving with their retinue to consume their resources in situ, rather than having them transported to a capital.

However, this was not a result of the Norman Conquest directly, but was intended as confirmation of a grant to the French abbey by Ælfgar, Earl of Mercia, in the closing years of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy.

Penkridge itself would have been a small village on the southern bank of the River Penk, with the homes of the laity grouped to the east of the church, along the Stafford-Worcester road, and with a scattering of hamlets in the surrounding area.

They formed an indigestible block within the borders of the diocese of Lichfield, whose bishop was the ordinary - the officer responsible for carrying out the laws of the Church and maintaining proper order in the region.

The canons were now prebendaries, meaning that each was supported by revenue from a fixed group of estates and rights that constituted his prebend, and which was technically attached to his choir stall, not to him personally.

Although John's son, Henry III challenged this by appointing a dean of his own, the relevant charter was recovered and the principle established that the deanery of Penkridge was to be held by the archbishops of Dublin, as it was from this point until the Reformation.

In 1280 the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Peckham, fired with righteous indignation by the council's strictures, tried to carry out a visitation of all the royal chapels that lay within the Coventry and Lichfield diocese.

Royal inquisitions in 1261 and 1321 found that those canons who were resident tended to make free with the property of the college, at the expense of the absentees, and the 1321 inquiry also implicated the chantry priests in wasting resources.

This did not go unchallenged, and the Husseys raised claims to Penkridge occasionally until the 16th century - a lingering dispute typical of feudal land tenure - although their actual possessions shrank to a couple of small holdings at Wolgarston.

A common complaint was that of the widow, often neglected by children or step-children, who then launched legal action to regain life interest in part of the estate - usually a third.

Infant heirs fell into the clutches of the overlord, sometimes the king, who was in a position to exploit the estate unmercifully during the minority and to extort a hefty feudal relief on succession, as did John and Henry IV.

Agricultural expansion was greatly impeded by the Forest Law imposed after the Norman Conquest, which preserved the wildlife and ecology of the area for the king's enjoyment through a savage penal code.

As soon as the act was passed, Rowland Lee, Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, wrote to his friend Thomas Cromwell, pressing his suit for the priory's lands.

Edward VI's reign brought a more ideological phase of the Reformation, with Somerset and then Northumberland pursuing increasingly radical policies through the boy king.

A more distant chapel, in the exclave of Shareshill, was soon also set up as an independent parish church, but those at Coppenhall, Dunston and Stretton were to remain dependent on Penkridge for another three centuries.

[32] The college property, still leased and managed in practice by Littleton, was granted by the Crown to John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, a key figure in Edward VI's regency council, and shortly to emerge as the leading man in the land, with the title Duke of Northumberland.

[34] At the same time he was granted Gailey Hay, another large area of waste that had been part of the royal forest since King John had taken it from Black Ladies Priory in 1200.

Gailey Hay also went to Dudley's widow but, after her death, rights and ownership were sold off piecemeal, creating a complex patchwork of competing claims that lingered for three centuries.

This cousin was Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, an important figure in the parliamentary opposition to Charles I and in the early stages of the English Civil War.

As a man of considerable organisational ability, he soon emerged as a commanding figure in central England, where loyalties were divided and the course of the war was determined by a patchwork of sieges and skirmishes.

After prospering throughout the Georgian period and especially in the Napoleonic wars, when the Continental System and the Corn Laws together kept grain prices high, agriculture went through a series of crises in Victorian times that hit rural areas hard.

The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, designed by James Brindley, opened in 1772, running straight through the parish and the township from north to south, and crossed by 15 bridges.

In 1837, the Grand Junction Railway was opened, carried over the River Penk by the fine seven-arched Penkridge Viaduct, designed by Joseph Locke and built by Thomas Brassey.

Meanwhile, agriculture remained in the doldrums, with the Long Depression of the late Victorian period driving down farm incomes and rents and hastening migration to the industrial towns.

Initially, this was most important for the improved flow of commercial traffic: after World War II, with greatly increased availability and use of motor cars, it made Penkridge much more viable as a home for workers employed in the conurbation or the county town.