The Annals of Willenhall

by Frederick William Hackwood

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?

And yet the amount of “waste” land in and around Willenhall was once excessive, as the writings of George Borrow cannot fail to convey (Chap. XXVIII.). In Chap. XXII. we read of Canne Byrch, situated in “Willenhall Field,” lying in the highway towards Darlaston, where perhaps the village community of ancient times tilled their lands in common; and more directly of the “waste or common land” called Shepwell Green; a wide stretch of open land once apparently stretching away towards the wilderness and solitudes of that gipsy-land immortalised by George Borrow.

“Willenhall Green” is named by Dr. Plot, writing in 1686, as a place where yellow ochre was found a yard below the surface, and which after being beaten up was made into oval cakes to be sold at fourpence a dozen to glovers, who used it in combination with cakes of “blew clay,” found at Darlaston and Wednesbury, “for giving their wares an ash colour.”

The old highway between Walsall and Wolverhampton lay along Walsall Street, through Cross Street, and the Market Place; the new coach route, or the New Road, as it was called, was made in the early part of the nineteenth century.

New Invention is a place-name which originated not from any connection with the local industries, as one might be led to expect, but from nothing more serious than a nickname of derision. The tradition is that many years ago an inhabitant from the centre of the town was strolling out that way, when he was thus accosted by an acquaintance living in one of the few cottages which then comprised the neighbourhood, and who was standing on his own doorstep to enjoy the cool of the evening: “I say, Bill, hast

seen my new invention?” “No, lad; what is it?” “That’s it!” said the self-satisfied householder, pointing up to a hawthorn bush which was pushed out of the top of his chimney. “That’s it! It’s stopped our o’d chimdy smokin’, I can tell thee!” And ever after that the locality which this worthy honoured with his ingenious presence was slyly dubbed by his amused neighbours the “New Invention,” by which name it afterwards became generally known.

Portobello, on the outskirts of Willenhall, is said to have borrowed its name from that second-hand Portobello near Leith, which was named after Admiral Vernon’s famous victory of 1739. At the Scottish suburb a bed of rich clay, discovered in 1765, led to the development of the place through the establishment of brick and tile works; a similar discovery of a thick bed of clay outside Willenhall, and its subsequent industrial development on parallel lines led to the copying of that patriotic name, more particularly because a neighbouring coal-pit was already rejoicing in the name of Bunker’s Hill, conferred upon it by local patriots after the American victory of 1775. The Willenhall wags, however, have given quite another derivation. A man once passing a solitary farmhouse in that locality, say they, called and inquired if the farmer had any beer on tap. The reply was, as the man pointed cellarwards, “No—only porter below!”