THE OAK HOUSE, WEST BROMWICH, STAFFORDSHIRE.

THE OAK HOUSE, WEST BROMWICH,
STAFFORDSHIRE.

est Bromwich—a village distant a few miles from busy Birmingham—supplies a curious and interesting example of the half-timbered houses, of which many still remain in the Midland Counties of England. It is commonly known as “The Oak House,” is situated on the borders of the great Staffordshire coal-bed, and is now surrounded by collieries,—creating a dense and murky atmosphere, which almost hides the ancient mansion from sight. Yet the site was well chosen; for at the period of its erection it commanded extensive views of a picturesque and fertile country, now absolutely covered with iron-works and other results of the traffic peculiar to the district. Far as the eye can reach, it encounters only the smoke and steam which indicate busy labour; the few trees that endure to grace the landscape are stunted and sickly, and even the fields seem never to have borne a coating of natural green. Nevertheless, although the eye may turn away unrefreshed from a scene which exhibits Nature expelled by Commerce, the mind will be cheered to know that in these unsightly mountain-heaps, “dug from the bowels of the harmless earth,” originates the true supremacy of England. The coal-fields of Staffordshire and Warwickshire render available the gigantic discoveries which have made the present century already famous. Without their aid, science and manufacture could have achieved comparatively little; it is by such auxiliaries only we can set at work the forge and the foundry, where

“Incessant, day and night, each crater roars,
Like the volcano on Sicilian shores:
Their fiery wombs each molten mass combine;
Thence, lava-like, the boiling torrents shine;
Down the trenched sand the liquid metal holds,
Shoots showers of stars, and fills the hollow moulds.”

The “Poet of Science” seems to have had in view the locality to which we refer; at least, to no part of England are his lines more strictly applicable.

Little is known of the ancient possessors of the Oak House, notwithstanding that the direct descendants of the earliest occupants continued to inhabit it until towards the close of the last century. The only author who appears to have taken any note of them is the Rev. Stebbing Shaw, who in his “History of Staffordshire,” under the head of West Bromwich[33] states, that the Oak House belonged for several generations to a branch of the respectable old family of Turton, of Abrewas, near Lichfield; and the first mentioned in this parish was John Turton, in the freeholders’ book, A.D. 1653. Amongst the inscriptions formerly in the ancient Church of St. Clement, here, was one to the memory of William Turton, of the Oak, gent., who died A.D. 1682 (son of that John), and Eleanor his wife, daughter of Robert Page, of Leighton, in the county of Huntingdon, who died A.D. 1696, ætat. 61; and one also to John Turton, of the Oak, gent., the eldest son of the above William, who died December 6th, 1705, ætat. 45. This is the same John, no doubt, who, with William his brother and Sarah their sister, are mentioned in the will of Sir John Turton, of Abrewas, as his cousins. Either from the first mentioned John, or from another of that name settled at Rowley Regis, a few miles off, was, according to Shaw, descended the eminent physician Dr. Turton, of London, whose ancestors had for some years resided in an old house called “The Hall,” at Wolverhampton. The house and estate afterwards came into the possession, by will, of a Mrs. Whylie, who left it to the present owner, J. E. Piercy, Esq., of Warley Hall; and it is now inhabited by his agent, Mr. Samuel Reeves.

The general character of the building is that of the later years of the reign of Elizabeth; this will be sufficiently apparent from the drawing of the north front, which supplies our principal plate. The groups of tall chimneys, and the minor details of the doors, windows, &c., are all of that age; while evidence of its date is confirmed by the south or garden front (as will be seen by the accompanying vignette), built chiefly of red brick, and containing the pediments and square stone mullions of the period.