The Annals of WillenhallHackwood, Frederick William
History
The Annals of Willenhall
Hackwood, Frederick William
Willenhall (Walsall, England)
There is often a wealth of history to be unearthed from place-names.
Localities often preserve the names of dead and gone personages,
half-forgotten incidents, and matters of past history well worth
recalling for their interest. Besides the pleasure to be derived from
the right interpretation of place-names and old street names, great
interest often centres around the social associations of old inns and
taverns. Let us consider a few of the old-time inns and localities of
Willenhall.
The site of the mediæval Holy Well, which in the later fashion of the
18th century blossomed forth as a Spa, was situated between the church
and the present Manor House. In the remoter age we may imagine it as the
haunt of the lame, the halt, and the blind (possibly the church was
dedicated to St. Giles, the patron of cripples, on this account), and in
the more recent period as the resort of fashionable invalids and wealthy
valetudinarians.
In the Private Act of Parliament, dated 6th August, 1844, for disposing
of the Willenhall Endowment properties, a number of field-names occur in
the schedule which are pregnant with local history. Welch End is a name
which seems to mark the locality where resided the family of Welch, who
founded the church dole; the Doctor’s Piece was perhaps part of the
estate of the celebrated Dr. Wilkes; the Clothers and the Little
Clothiers are names which are said to indicate certain lands once
belonging to the Cloth-workers’ Company of the City of London; Somerford
Bridge Piece and the Hither Bathing were presumably located near the
brook; while the Poor’s Piece, the Constable’s Dole, and the Dole’s Butty
(query: does the last-named, interpreted in the dialect of the district,
signify “the companion piece to the Dole?”), are names which suggest the
identity of charity lands.
There is mention of a High Causeway, which manifestly indicates the
position of some old paved road; and the Butts, doubtless, named the
field where in ancient times archery was practised by the men of
Willenhall, as the men of Darlaston did at the Butcroft in their parish.
Reverting to the schedule, there are some names for which no explanation
can be offered; as Ell Park, Berry Stile, the Stringes, and the Farther
Stringes. Many of the properties named in the list are declared to be
“uninclosed lands that lie dispersedly in the Common Fields there,
intermixed with other lands.” How much, or rather, how little, common
land is there in Willenhall to-day?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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