History of Madeley / including Ironbridge, Coalbrookdale, and Coalport

by John Randall

Events relating to the Social and Political History of Madeley, from the 13th to the 19th Centuries, not previously noticed.

We have no means at command for giving anything like such a consecutive account of Madeley as would show its growth and progress from the feudal times, when first noticed in the Domesday Survey, to the present time; and the facts that we have to offer on this head must necessarily appear disjointed and isolated.

The next notice we find succeeding that in Domesday is one in 1291, when it was taxed to the Ninth, twelve merks, but whether of gold or silver we cannot say, probably the latter, as one merk of gold was equal to five of silver—to £3 16s. 8d.

Land was being gradually won from the forests, but it was as yet of small value. Thus we read, under date of March 28th, 1322, of a man named Bercar and his wife, who, for the payment (or fine) of three shillings, bought small parcels of new land in the fields of Madeley and of Caldbrook (Coalbrookdale), of William, the bailiff, to hold for their lives.

In the year 1341 the parish was assessed at £2 16s. 0d., but the reason assigned for the low assessment was that there had been great storms, want of sheep-stock, and a surrender of the land held by tenants. In 1379 a valuation of the manor is thus mentioned:—“Capital messuage, nothing (this would be the Court, or manor-house); water-mill (the old manor or Court mill), ten shillings; fisheries of two vivaries, three shillings; three caracutes of land (or as much as three teams of oxen could plough in the year), as averaging £1 18s.” Three acres of meadow is set down as worth, when carried, three shillings. The verbiage of the park was valued at three shillings and fourpence. The assized rents of free tenements amounted to £6 16s. 2d., and the pleas and perquisites of the Court (held by the prior at the Court-house) at two shillings. In 1390 the rents of Madeley, including a ferm of coals, and the pleas and fines of the Court, were said to yield £22 18s. 0d. This ferm of coals was probably that granted by the prior in 1322 to Walter de Caldbrook for six shillings.

In the sixteenth century the rental of the manor was returned at £39 18s. 8½d. At the same time—that is in 1534–5—the rectorial tithes are set down at £2, and the vicar’s income at £5 5s. In 1693 an assessment made for Madeley, by order of the justices of the peace, James Lewis, balf., George Weld, and Thos. Crompton, of 4s. 6d. in the £, from sixty-four persons, produced £149 1s. 4d. In this assessment the name of Sarah Wolfe occurs sixth on the list. In 1698 an assessment of 3s. 6d. in the £, by order of Richard Littlehales, balf., and Ralph Browne, from fifty-two persons, produced £112 5s. 0d. In this assessment the iron, coal, and lime works paid £55 14s. 0d. of the above sum. In 1704 an assessment of 4s. 6d. in the £, from forty-six persons, paid £149 to which the iron, coal, and lime works contributed £84. The sum paid in on the 27th of March of the same year for 1697, for window-tax, was £8 14s.; the tax for births, deaths, &c., for the same year, was £4 18s. 4d., for 1698, £4 1s. 7d., and for the following year, £3 5s. 6d. In the same year the land-tax produced £27 14s. 6d. In 1670 the window-tax was £8 6s. 0d. In 1671 the land-tax produced £55 0s. 0d. In 1672 the window-tax was £8 0s. 2d. In 1704 the sum realized for windows had risen to £10 17s. 6d., and that for births, deaths, and marriages to £5 12s. 0d. In 1676 the land-tax paid £36 19s. 4d., for the first quarter, 24th July; for the second quarter, 23rd October, the same; and for the third quarter (paid March 27, 1675), the same; the sum for the fourth quarter was also the same. In 1675 two sums, £31 9s. 8d., and £63 8s. 6d., were paid in for land-tax, and £16 2s. 2d. the following March. On the 4th of May, 1706, “John Boden paid in full of ye last year’s land-tax, £36 17s. 0d.” The fourth quarterly payment of the poll for Madeley, made April 15, 1695, was £14 14s. 6d.

We pass over payments for intervening years, and come to 1709. In July of that year the first and second quarterly payments of the land-tax were each £36 19s. 4d.; for the third quarter, £37 8s. 4d., and for the last quarter, £36 10s. 4d. The first and second quarterly payments in full amounted to £73 18s. 8d. In 1702 a survey of the lordship of Madeley showed there were twenty-seven tenants, holding 2073 acres; that the yearly value was £1021 10s. 0d.; also that there were upon the land 3369 trees, and sixteen loads of wood, the value of which by purchase was set down at £17,366 9s. 4d. In 1725 a case was prepared by the vicar and churchwardens, after a vestry-meeting had been held, for the opinion of counsel on the question of the right of the vicar to receive tithe of wood cut down by the lay impropriator. The case set forth that “the vicars of the other twenty-two parishes in the franchise of the priory enjoyed tithes of wood as small tithes, excepting in a few instances, and that the vicar of Madeley has from time to time received the tithes of hay, clover, &c., which are usually esteemed great tithes. But hitherto no tithes of wood have been paid at Madeley within memory of living witnesses, except that about thirty years since the late vicar received one shilling as a composition from the tenant of the impropriator.”

Counsel (Thos. Browne, of the Inner Temple), in reply, says Madeley was appropriated to the priory of Wenlock at the same time as Stoke St. Milburgh—22nd March, 1343—and yet the vicar of Stoke receives tithe-wood, and thinks that the smoke-penny to the vicar is strong evidence in favour of his being entitled to the tithe of wood so used, because that payment comes in lieu of such wood; but it must be admitted that the impropriator is entitled to all the tithes of a vicar, unless such vicar shows usage or endowment to support the demand as to such great tithe.

The counsel’s opinion seems to have left the question pretty much in the same state as before, and that the vicar and churchwardens did not establish their claim is shown by subsequent assessments and by the report of the Tithe Commissioners (1848), who said all woodlands are by prescription or other lawful means exempt from tithe.

The appropriation of the rent-charge in lieu of tithes in the parish took effect in 1847, and it may be interesting to add that after various meetings and inquiries it was found that by prescription or other lawful means all the woodlands, containing in estimated statute measure 200 acres, well known by metes and bounds, were absolutely free from tithes; also all gardens annexed to houses.

It was also found that 267 acres of the Court Farm were covered from render of small tithes in kind by prescriptive or customary payments in lieu thereof to the vicar, and 233 acres of the Windmill Farm by payment of 5s. 3½d.; the Broad Meadow, containing twenty-two acres, by payment of ninepence; the Hales, seventeen acres, by payment of fivepence; the Bough Park, twenty acres, and Rushton Farm (Park House), twenty-six acres, by payment of 10½d.; part of Court Farm (J. and F. Yates, proprietors), and six other acres, by payment of twopence. The quantity subject to tithes amounted to 2800 acres, 2000 being arable, and 800 as meadow or pasture.

Finding also that the average value of tithes for the seven years preceding Christmas, 1835, did not represent the sum which ought to be the basis for a permanent commutation, the Tithe Commissioner awarded as follows: to Sir Joseph H. Hawley, impropriator, of Leybourn Grange, Kent, £115 10s., by way of rent-charge; and £226 to the vicar for the time being, instead of all the remaining unmerged tithes of hay and small tithes, arising from the lands of the said parish. The valuation was by William Wyley, upon wheat, barley, and oats, as under:—

Wheat	7s. 0¼d.	32,427,300.
Barley	3s. 11½d.	57,517,590.
Oats	2s. 9d.	82,787,879.

The great-tithes have since been purchased from Sir Joseph Hawley for Ironbridge church, now a rectory.