The “Britain from Above” archive contains a huge number of aerial photographs covering the entire country. These are usually arranged in sets of photographs concentrating on a particular notable landmark, and they give a huge amount of detail of the area around the site. Low-resolution photos can be downloaded and used on websites, and a simple free registration allows the reader to zoom in to small parts of the photographs for amazingly detailed views. When a search is made for Kingswinford, two sets of photographs appear – one is a set of six photographs of “Woodfield House and its Environs, Kingswinford, 1939” and the other a set of nine photographs of “Gibbons (Dudley) Ltd Silica Works at Corbyn’s Hall, Kingswinford, 1950”.  It is with the second that this blog post is concerned. I will post some of the low-resolution photos taken as the plane flew around the site and label them with information contained on the large scale Ordnance Survey map for the 1950s from Edina Digimap. Taken together they provide us with a glimpse of the Corbyn’s Hall area in the 1950s and also, if one looks carefully, at the neighbouring villages of Kingswinford, Pensnett and Bromley. 

Gibbons (Dudley) Ltd

The firm was founded in 1834 by Benjamin Gibbons, who is discussed at length in Kingswinford Manor and Parish, using high-grade fireclay to make bricks. They manufactured refractory products – firebricks, cements, concretes and plastic refractories. The main works was at Dibdale, Lower Gornal with additional works at Cooper’s Bank and Corbyn’s Hall, Pensnett.  The Pensnett works  was just one of the industrial concerns that grew and prospered on the Corbyn’s Hall estate that came into the ownership of the Gibbons Family in 1780. These included coal mines, iron and steel works and brick works. The map from the 1950s indicates a brick works at the centre of the site, with a number of chimneys, which was presumably the Sillica works, but also a large steel works and numerous disused coal and ironstone pits. In all the photographs that are used, the tallest chimney at the works will be marked by a red cross as a point of reference for the reader. 

Looking northeast

We begin with the view looking northeast over the site, given. Here the relevant photograph is given twice. The first highlights the roads in the area – the Kingswinford-Dudley Road, Dreadnaught Road, Tansey Green Road, Smithy Lane and Pensnett High Street. Lench’s Bridge is also shown. This was built to span the Stourbridge Extension Canal. Little can be seen of this canal by 1950, it having been abandoned several decades earlier, although I will indicate its course in later photographs. The second photograph shows the various industrial concerns in the area, mainly distributed along the Wombourne Branch Railway (at this time still part of the through route for goods trains from Stourbridge to Wolverhampton). Just south of the main road is the site of Pensnett Halt, one of the stops on the short-lived passenger service on the line in the 1920s.  On the Corbyn’s Hall site itself the brick works and steel works can be seen, the former being marked by a red cross as mentioned above, together with a number of old colliery workings. On the northern side of the Dudley – Kingswinford Road there are the Dreadnaught tile works and Stourbridge Refactories, both rail connected. The sawmill just to the south of the road has a long history and it can be traced back in census records to the 1880s at least. One of the most obvious features of the photograph, that will be observed on all those that follow, is the large area of waste ground around the site – caused by a century or more of coal and ironstone mining and other industrial use. This area, with all its hidden dangers, was the playground of my youth.

Looking east

The next photograph shows the view looking east over the site. In the background we can see Pensnett High St, the large house known as the Plantation, which was formerly known as Shut End House, the residence of Ben Gibbons himself. The photo also shows the site of the original Corbyn’s Hall which suffered badly from subsidence due to the mining activities and was demolished in the early years of the twentieth century. 

Looking southeast

The next photograph swings round further and looks southeast. At the top of the photograph Tiled House Lane and its numerous cul-de-sacs is clearly seen, together with a region of allotments and Pensnett Secondary Modern School. The large area ofwaste land between Tiled House Lane and the works is very obvious.

Looking south

The next photograph looks due south towards Bromley, with Bryce Road, Bromley Iron Works and the disused New Bromley Colliery in the distance. I include on this photograph, and the following two, the line of the abandoned Stourbridge Extension Canal. It can be seen that the steel works is effectively built over the line of the former.  The canal had a number of short branches. One of these served the Corbyn’s Hall old iron works which was on the left of the picture, and would have left the main line somewhere under the modern works, and gone under the railway line. The other was the Standhills branch, which left the main line somewhere around the top of the photograph and followed a large loop to the west. 

Looking west

This photograph looks due west towards Kingswinford in the background. I have indicated on it the line of the Stourbridge Extension Canal, and also the line of Dawley Brook. The latter marks the bottom of the steep slope down from Commonside in Pensnett towards Kingswinford. The original Corbyn’s Hall estate extended well to the west of the brook.  On the Fowler map of 1822, this brook had a number of pools along its length – which were possibly the remains of mill pools or ornamental features. 

Looking northwest

The last photograph, looking northwest, is repeated three times. On the first the Dudley –Kingswinford Road is again labeled, together with the Kingswinford Brick and Tile Works, St Mary’s Church and the old shafts and spoil tips of Shut End Colliery.  The second again shows the lines of the Stourbridge Extension Canal (on both sides of Lench’s Bridge) and the Dawley Brook, and also shows the line of the original Kingswinford Railway (of Agenoria fame). The third shows the names of some of the surviving fields. These can be linked back to the 1822 Fowler Map of the area, and also earlier 18^thCentury maps of the Corbyn’s Hall Estate. Their essentially rural names speak of a very different age. Some of these names indicate the presence of mills along the Dawley Brook. I find it remarkable that they were able to survive in an identifiable form as late as the 1950s. 

More detail

As mentioned above, much more detail can be seen by zooming in on the photos on the Britain from Above site. It is tempting to reproduce screen shots of these views here, but I don’t think this would meet the license conditions. But I would urge interested readers to have a look. The specific views that intrigue me are on the “Looking east” photo, where one can see the large open cast area just west of Tansey Green (close to the old Shut End Methodist Chapel), the Birds Meadow school, and the back of the Independent Methodist Chapel on Commonside (the successor to the Shut End Chapel, and the one I attended as a child); and on the “Looking southeast” photo the close up of houses in Tiled House Lane – including the one where I spent the first 18 years of my life.  Do take a look!

Cornyn’s Hall today

Finally, following a request from Tony Garratt (see comments), the figure below shows the area in 2020 (from Google Earth). I have marked the Kingswinford to Dudley Road (A-A-A) and the Wombourne Branch railway line (B-B-B) for comparison with the other photos. The picture is dominated by Ketley Quarry (X), the Pensnett Trading Estate (Y) and the industrial premises on the part of the site shown in the photos above, to the west of the railway line (Z).

Part 2 of this post can be found here.

The Baptismal Register gives details of those ministers who baptized the children. These can be expected to be in two categories – members of the church who held a position of authority of some form and conducted services – perhaps stewards or trustees; and preachers from the local Primitive Methodist Circuit. In total 151 baptising ministers are listed  (although the variable forms of the names may mean this is an overestimate), with most officiating at just a few baptisms.  The five most common baptizing ministers are shown in table 6 below.

The census returns in principle allow a little more information to be gleaned for these ministers. For one of them – Robert Bowen – there is however no obvious candidate in the census record.  Of the others, William Dudley was born in 1817 in Oldswinford and in 1861 he is listed as a tailor and draper in Kingswinford. Samuel Kendrick was born in 1811 in Ketley in Shropshire, lived in the Smithy Lane area and is listed as a miner.  Abraham Dodd was born in 1844 in Oak Farm and worked as a miner. He was the son of another Abraham, a miner from Wombridge in Shropshire. There are a number of Joseph Homer’s in the census record, born around 1835 to 1845, so it is not possible to be precise concerning his birth or residence, although all of the possible Joseph’s were either miners or labourers. 

The longevity of the ministry of all in table 6 would suggest that they were all members of the congregation itself – indeed in the case of Sam Kendrick and Abraham Dodd, their families can be traced in the baptismal entries themselves. It is likely that many of the others who performed just a few baptisms were circuit ministers. Only two such can be identified with confidence by their appellation – Rev R Brewen in 1861 and the Rv J Hawkins from 1881 to 1884. Dood (1883) draws attention to another possibility – Henry Higginson – and says that he was nicknamed the Roving Ranter. Unfortunately the census records reveal no more about him, which is the greatest of pities, as the name suggests there are stories to be told.

Two further points arise – firstly the ministers in the local congregation all shared the same background as those to whom they ministered, as manual workers or small shopkeepers. Secondly the link with the Shropshire coal field is obvious. In KMAP I described the society in Pensnett in the 19^thcentury as a migrant society, with a considerable population influx, particularly from the Shropshire area. 

To fully describe all the families and individuals mentioned in the register is of course not possible, and its primary use in this regard will be by those researching family histories. The approach I take here is to consider in some detail just three families, who between them were involved in 46 baptisms over the course of the 42 years of the register. These are the Astons, the Cottons, and the Shukers. The family connections for these three families are shown in figures 3, 4 and 5 below. In these figures the following conventions have been adopted.

• Those individuals with no shading on their entry appear directly in the register either as parents of as the child being baptized.
• Those shaded in green indicate membership of families that appear elsewhere in the register.
• Those shaded in blue indicate individuals who have been identified through census / BMD searches, usually from generations earlier than those in the register, that connect some of the register entries together. 
• Those shaded in yellow indicate linkages between the three families.

Note that these trees only show the names of individuals in the register or those who link the various individuals together.  Many of the families in these figures can be shown through census records to have other children who do not appear in the register for one reason or another.

First consider the Aston tree shown in figure 3. Three generations of the family appear in the register. Those in the first generation – John (1822) and Richard (1830) were probably brothers, but their parents are elusive in the record. The earlier generation comes from the Dudley area, and the later generations lived in the Tansey Green and Commonside areas. Without exception all those in the register were manual workers throughout their lives. Richard (1830) married Maria Shuker (1832), the first of the inter-family connections that we can identify.

The Cotton tree in figure 4 covers four generations. George (1792) (not in the register) came from the Wombridge area of Shropshire (near Oakengates and Wellington), and the two distinct families of the Cottons were his descendants, migrating to the Kingswinford area in the early 19^thcentury. James (1818) and Hannah Bird (1822) also come from the same area. Hannah is the second of the family interconnections – see below. After the family moved to the Pensnett area, they all lived around Shut End / Coopers Bank / Tansey Green. Without exception, all the males mentioned in the register were miners. 

The third tree in figure 5 is that of the Shukers. Here 5 generations are shown, with the latter three appearing in the register. The early generations were again from the Wombridge area. Samuel Shuker (1806) married Ann Bird (1809), the elder sister of Hannah in figure 4. The Bird family was again from Wombridge.  One of their children, Maria (1832) married into the Aston family (figure 3). The later generations lived in the Shut End / Tansey Green / Commonside area and were mainly labourers, but one or two were skilled manual workers.

These three trees can only of course represent a snapshot of a small section of the register, yet they do show the interconnectedness between the families and other families who attended the Chapel, and their common roots. Other families could of course be considered – such as the Dodds from Shut End and Tansey Green (12 baptisms), or the Greenaways from Coopers Bank (19 Baptisms), both of which had those in leadership positions in the church – Abraham Dodd (mentioned above) baptizing in the 1870s and 1880s, and Christopher Greenaway baptising in the 1880s. The significant point remains the same however – the lack of social and occupational mobility for such families. 

Part 1 of this post can be found here.

The typed transcript of the Baptismal Register of Dodd (1983) is a copy of a handwritten transcript, that has itself been significantly amended. This was in turn a copy of the original register.  The Baptismal entries from 1845 to 1887 are given, with the following information.

• Date of baptism
• Christian name(s) of baptized child.
• Christian name(s) of father and mother, and surname
• Address – usually given by a broad area location
• Occupation of father
• Name of officiating minister
• (Date of birth of child)

In total there were 777 entries over the period of 42 years, with 514 different couples represented. The Register can thus be seen to contain a great deal of potentially interesting information.  However, it must be admitted that that the typed transcript of the register is a bit of a mess – which either reflects the original register, or may be partly due to its transmission history.  Entries are not always in the correct date order, with some being significantly displaced. Names on the original were clearly difficult to read, and some of the guesses thus made are meaningless. The spelling is in general variable, which probably reflects the abilities of the officiating minister in transcribing names given orally.  

To analyse the register in detail, I transcribed all the entries to an EXCEL spreadsheet, which was not one of the more exciting experiences of my life. To enable the data to be ordered to reveal its various aspects more clearly, some cleaning up was needed. This involved adopting common spellings for addresses, occupations and names. The latter had to be done with care, so as not to use essential information, but most name changes were trivial – for example to standardize on “Henry” rather than “Henery” or “Henary”. In other places a greater degree of interpretation was required.  Whilst these changes may have resulted in minor errors that affect the statistics presented below, these should not be significant.

Table 1 shows the number of baptisms in five-year periods. It can be seen that these increase from 50 between 1850 and 1854 to a maximum of 132 between 1870 and 1874 i.e. from 10 to 26 / year on average. After that there is a slight fall off. KMAP shows that the population of the Shut End area followed a similar trend, peaking in the 1860s and then decreasing, and whilst the number of baptisms possibly reflects this, it also reflects the age distribution of the chapel congregation. Baptisms usually took place between 2 and 4 weeks after birth, but there were exceptions. For example, sometimes double family baptisms are recorded in the register. Whilst a few of these were baptisms of twins, for most of those where children’s birth dates are given,  they are for a baby and an older sibling who had clearly missed out on baptism after birth for one reason or another.

Table 2 shows the number of baptisms by area of residence. To compile this table, the register entries have been consolidated somewhat – for example in the few cases where streets are given, these are included in the relevant area. In the table, the Pensnett area refers to the area of the new developments, mainly centred on the Hollies area, but extending as far west as New / Swan St. It is not clear to me how Shut End and Tansey Green were distinguished by residents, and there may well be some confusion between them. These uncertainties aside the vast majority of baptisms were of those in the 1845 ecclesiastical parish of Pensnett (Pensnett, Commonside, Shut End, Tansey Green and Bromley – 83.1% in total) and most of the rest from closely surrounding areas (Kingswinford, Coopers Bank, Oak Farm, Brockmoor, Brierly Hill and Wordsley – 13.8%). The remaining entries were wide spread, from as close as Dudley to as far away as Wigan, and probably indicate married children returning home for the baptism of their child at their home chapel.

Table 3 shows the Register entries grouped by father’s occupation. Here again some cleaning of the data was required. The major change was to re-label a range of entries as “Iron Workers”. These took on a large variety of forms including moulder, furnace man, roller and puddler. Some of these, particularly the latter, were regarded as highly skilled jobs.  The “other” category includes trades such as groom, keeper, horseman, boat builder, shoemaker, grocer, butcher, with a very small number classified as managers or clerks.  It can be seen that the majority of the entries are for fathers who were miners or labourers, whilst almost all of the others would be working in or servicing the various industries listed. The labourers could be working in any of the other industries included in the list.

Now to some degree these figures will reflect the fact that the fathers of those baptized were relatively young and unskilled, and thus more likely to be labeled as labourers than their elders, but nonetheless they do show that the congregation at the chapel were overwhelmingly manual workers of various skill levels.

The baptismal registers of course give a very great deal of information concerning names – both Christian names and surnames. However this aspect of the register data is most difficult to analyse because of the huge variability in spelling, and a lot of cleaning of the data was required to put the most common names into a common format so that the data could be ordered and searched. The results of the analysis are shown in table 4 for male names and table 5 for female names. Each table shows the most common ten names and their percentage of the total from the following sources. 

• The Fowler 1882 map directory for the whole of Kingswinford parish (as included in KMAP).
• The names of the mothers and fathers in the Baptismal register.
• The names of the children in the baptismal register.

This thus represents three different time slices – the first reflecting names given between around 1780 and 1820, the second for the period between approximately 1820 and 1860, and the third for the period between 1845 and 1885. The second and third thus overlap somewhat.

Consider first the male names in table 4. The most striking thing is the similarity between the three lists, with most names occurring in all three. Benjamin, Richard and Samuel become less popular over the years, whilst George moves up the popularity list. Overall the top ten names contribute 85% to the total in 1822, but only 60% between 1845 and 1885, reflecting the fact that whilst that outside the most popular names, there was an increasing variability. For both the father’s and the son’s names, there was a consistent use of Old Testament forms, some more obscure than others. There were also a few oddities: from 1871, Lord Dando, son Mark and Caroline Dando of Pensnett, Blacksmith; from 1849, Squire Shuker, son of Samuel and Ann Shuker of Shut End, Engine Worker; and from 1860, Theophilus Hadduck son of Benjamin and Meriah Hadduck of Commonside, Forgeman.

The female names in table 5 show something of the same level of stability for the top 5 names, but thereafter the names in the list are very variable. In 1822 the top 10 names contributed 86% to the total, but for the baptized girl’s names, this figure fell to just 56%, indicating again a greater variability as the years go by. This trend seems to be more pronounced amongst the female names, perhaps indicating a greater influence of prevailing fashion, although it is probably best if I, as a male, say no more here.  Of all the names the most variable in spelling was Maria and its variants – Mariah, Meria, Meriah and Marieh. Whilst they all obviously refer to the same name, the large number of occurrences of these variants suggests a variability in the way that they were pronounced – and thus recorded in the register. Again there were some oddities: in 1865, Tryphena Wassell, daughter of John and Sarah Wassell of Bromley, Brickmaker; in 1868, Ursula Adelaide Danks, daughter of William and Caroline Danks of Pensnett, Roller; in 1874, Adelaide Amos, daughter of John and Pamela Amos of Tansey Green, Miner.  The name Adelaide seems to have been taken from Queen Adelaide, the wife of William IV.  

In Part 3 of this series of posts I will consider in more detail the ministers of the church and the church families that can be found in the register.  

This is the first in a series of three posts concerning the Shut End Primitive Methodist Chapel in Pensnett, and in particular the period from 1845 to 1887. In this first post I will consider the physical nature of the Chapel itself and the activities that went on there. In the second and third posts I will discuss the very informative Baptismal Register for that period. It will be seen that this gives a wealth of information on the members of the chapel, their families and occupations. Nearly all of them were at the bottom of the social scale as labourers and miners, and the register allows their lives a little more visibility than would normally be the case.  

Introduction

The Shut End Primitive Methodist Chapel is described in Kingswinford Manor and Parish (KMAP) as follows.

The other (Primitive Methodist) was the Shut End Methodist chapel, the history of which begins in 1832. The Chapel was situated on Tansey Green Road, and consisted of a Chapel Building and a Schoolroom. Directly behind it was the Shut End Pit, and there were later to be subsidence problems due to this. The first services were held in December 1832, and by 1836 meetings of some sort were also being held in Commonside and at Shropshire Row in The Oak……..The 1851 Religious Census records morning / afternoon and evening congregations of 110, 134 and 120 respectively, with 120 sittings provided, and in 1887 there were over 250 children in the Sunday School and 20 teachers. The Church also operated its own Friendly Society – the Shut End Primitive Methodist Economic (Sunday School rooms) with 54 members in 1878, and assets of £200. …….In 1861, the minutes of the Trustees of the Primitive Methodist Church on Tansey Green reveal an offer for the purchase of the building from the proponents of the Dudley and Bridgnorth Railway, part of the Welsh and Midland Counties Junction Railway – a line that was never given parliamentary approval and about which little detail is available……Over the years the building continued to deteriorate and there were repeated moves to persuade the local Primitive Methodist circuit to purchase land for a new chapel. Matters came to a head in the early 1890s when the congregation purchased land for a new chapel on Commonside themselves and were expelled from the circuit. It seems that payment of the quarterly circuit fees were also an issue at the time (Wesley History Society, 1961). In 1893 the original building, which by that time was badly in need of repair, was finally sold and the new Independent Methodist chapel built (on Commonside). The baptismal registers are available for this chapel, unlike the other non-conformist chapels in the area (Dodd, 1983). 

The Chapel Building

The Shut End Primitive Methodist Chapel and its associated Schoolroom was situated in the triangle of Tansey Green Road, Dreadnaught Road and Pensnett High Street as shown on the Google Earth view of figure 1.  Basically the site was a long rectangle at the rear of the back gardens of the current numbers 25 to 29 Tansey Green Road, with the western side of the rectangle being the boundary between these houses and numbers 17 to 19 Tarry Hollow Road. The latter name is presumably the name that was given to the open cast workings of Shut End mine, although it is not one with which I am familiar. The northernmost part of the site is beneath the property at 6a Renown Close.  The whole triangle of land between the roads was indicated as owned by Ben Gibbons on the 1822 Fowler Map of Kingswinford, and consisted of crofts and houses.  By the time of the 1840 Fowler map, the Chapel building itself existed, to the north end of the plot. The land in the triangle was then owned by the Trustees of the Earl of Dudley, and was described as old colliery lands or crofts.  The Chapel itself is described as being owned by the “Trustees of William Porter and others”, whilst the southern half of the plot was owned by Joseph Downing, but occupied by Ephraim Guest, William Greenway and William Morris. These surnames occur frequently in the Baptismal Register. 

The 1859 redrawing of the Pensnett portion of the 1840 map shows no change to the chapel but there were by then mines to the north of the plot and open cast workings to the west.  By the 1883 OS map (figure 2) the Schoolroom was present, and the open cast mine to the west was very clear. Both the Chapel and the Schoolroom were rectangular in form, roughly 14m by 8m in plan.  After the congregation moved to the new building on Commonside (the Independent Methodist Chapel, it would seem that the buildings were in use as a sewing factory. The 1910 map indicates that they had become a “Picture House” and the Chapel and Schoolroom had been joined together into one long structure. 

No details of the interior of the building survive, but these can perhaps be conjectured by what was built to replace them on Commonside. This had a balcony at the front of the chapel for the choir and organ, with the raised preaching desk and the table for the Lord’s Supper placed centrally at the front of the Chapel beneath the balcony. Pews occupied the rest of the chapel building. Although the original chapel was unlikely to have had a balcony, it would almost certainly have had a preaching desk / pulpit of some sort of simple communion table at the north end (probably beneath where 6a Renown Close now is.

As noted in the Introduction above in the 1850s there were three services on a Sunday – morning, afternoon and evening. In the latter years of its life various directories in the 1880s indicate that there were only two services on a Sunday – at 10.45am and 6.00pm, but there was also a mid week service on Wednesday at 7.30pm, which probably existed throughout the life of the chapel. Similar midweek services were common practice for all the churches in the area at that time. The dates in the baptism register indicate that baptisms could occur on Sundays and also on other days. 

In the second post of this series, I will begin my consideration of the Baptismal Register from 1845 to 1887, and in particular look to see what this document says about the overall nature of the congregation – where thy lived, the jobs they did, and the names they chose for themselves.

In the latter chapters of Kingswinford Manor and Parish (KMAP), a fair amount of attention was given to the developments in the central section of the parish, and in particular the Shut End and Corbyn’s Hall estates, which both developed from estates owned by the local gentry into major industrial concerns. A significant system of railways developed in the area, and this is discussed in Chapters 5 and 6 of KMAP and in the recent post “The Earl of Dudley’s Railway”. In this post I want to look in detail at these railway systems as revealed by the 25 inch to the mile 1882 Ordnance Survey map. It will be seen that very extensive networks existed on both estates, which it was not possible to show on the small-scale maps of KMAP. Unfortunately, because of the licensing conditions, it is not possible to show the map itself, so I will use figures that I have drawn that show the major features that will be discussed. 

Figure 1. The study area (Major roads are shown in grey and the Stourbridge Extension Canal in blue)

Figure 1 shows the area to be discussed, with the major roads and the Stourbridge Extension Canal shown. The locations of the larger scale maps of Shut End and Corbyn’s Hall that will be used below are also shown. 

Figure 2. The railway network (GWR lines in black, Pensnett Railway in brown, Shut End Railway in green. Black dotted circles show iron works. Small black circles show coal mines in operation.) 

Figure 2, to the same scale as figure 1, shows the overall railway network in 1882. The iron works at Sut End (A) and Corbyn’s Hall (B and C) are shown as dotted circles. There are three distinct railway operations. The first is the GWR line (in black) that broadly follows the line of the canal to the terminus of both near Oak Farm (D), which began life as an OWWR branch before that company was taken over by the GWR in 1863. The second is the Pensnett Railway of the Earl of Dudley (in brown), with the main line from the Wallows and Round Oak going down the Barrow Hill incline (E to F), before looping around to the north of Oak Farm to a junction with the original Kingswinford Railway (G to H). Of particular note is the long Tiled House branch (J) to Corbyn’s Hall, which will be discussed below.  The third is what we will call the Shut End Railway, around the Shut End works (in green). Not all details of this railway can be shown at this scale. The dotted line indicates the course of the original incline to the works (K), which at this stage was not used.  There was also a fourth system (the Corbyn’s Hall Railway), which can again not be shown at this scale. Figure 2 also shows locations of working coal pits, which can be seen in the main to be rail connected.

Now in this particular part of the Black Country, the development of Iron Works can be considered to have three phases.

• Phase 1. Where the works developed in an area where both coal and ironstone was readily available, and the first priority was to develop links to transport their products to local markets. 
• Phase 2, where the immediate sources of supply were used up and a transport system to bring in coal and ironstone from the surrounding area was developed.
• Phase 3 where all the raw materials within easy reach of the works have been exploited and either material needs to be brought from a distance,  the works needs to close or its nature needs to change. 

In terms of these phases, Corbyn’s Hall in 1882 seems to have been in phase 3, and Shut End in phase 2. Corbyn’s Hall Iron Works was developed by the Gibbons brothers in the 1820s, and its phase 1 transport links was provided by a tramway to the Fens branch of the Stourbridge Canal to the south. This was replaced, to some extent, by the Kingswinford Railway in 1829 and by Stourbridge Extension Canal in 1840, which indeed purchased the tramway.  The Kingswinford Branch of the OWWR in 1858 also gave another outlet for the products of the works.  The phase 2 supply lines were also provided by a complex set of tramways on and around the estate, which can be seen on the 1832 one inch to the mile OS map and the 1840 Fowler Map.  By 1882 all the local mines were exhausted and, as we shall see, raw materials were brought to the Corbyn’s Hall works from elsewhere. 

Shut End Iron Works developed somewhat later that Corbyn’s Hall, in the mid-1830s, and its phase 1 transport links were immediately supplied by the Kingswinford Railway and later by Stourbridge Extension Canal and the Kingswinford Branch of the OWWR.  By 1882 the map of figure 2 shows a phase 2 pattern, with its external railway network extended into surrounding areas, to mines some distance from the works. By 1903 the Iron Works had closed although some mines were still exploited, and other industrial concerns were latter to develop at the site (Phase 3).  

As an aside, it is interested to note that the Round Oak Iron works of Lord Dudley can also be considered within this pattern, with the Pensnett Railway shown on figure 2 acting as the phase 2 transport links to bring in raw materials from the surrounding area from the many mines to which it was connected, although in this case this railway was also used to transport coal for export to elsewhere in the UK. 

Figure 3. The Corbyn’s Hall Iron Works (GWR and Pensnett Railways are indicated by black and brown lines respectively, and the Corbyn’s Hall railway by purple lines. Old mine shafts are shown as open circles, and the major residential properties as filled triangles) 

Now let us turn to the Iron works themselves. Figure3 shows the area around Corbyn’s Hall at an expanded scale.  The various railways are again shown, and this time the Corbyn’s Hall Railway, an internal network within the works is also shown. It can be seen that there are two iron works. The original one was to the east of the Canal, near to Corbyn’s Hall itself, and is marked on the 1882 map as disused, but was clearly still in situ.  The new works was to the west of the canal, so we probably here have a picture of the transitional situation. The map also shows the major residential properties of Corbyn’s Hall itself, by this time becoming increasingly derelict; the Tiled House and Shut End House. Many disused collieries can also be seen, from where the original raw material was obtained in the 1820s and 1830s. The Corbyn’s Hall railway itself is a complex set of interlinked lines serving the immediate needs of the old works, and providing connections to the Corbyn’s Hall branch of the Stourbridge Extension canal and the GWR Kingswinford Branch. The Tiled House branch of the Pensnett Railway (in brown) can be seen in the bottom right of the figure, ending in a set of sidings. The gradient of this branch is severe, at about 1 in 25, and there is no indication of an engine house anywhere that could provide motive power for hauling full trucks up the branch. It thus seems sensible to regard this branch as being to supply the needs of the Iron Works for coal and ironstone, rather than taking away finished products, with loaded trucks descending the branch by gravity (but with brakes!) and empty trucks being hauled up the branch by horses. It can also be seen that the Corbyn’s Hall railway provides a somewhat convoluted connection between the Pensnett Railway and the GWR in this region, although it is doubtful it was ever used such.

Figure 4. Corbyn’s Hall land use (Green indicates arable land, allotments etc. Brown indicates residential areas, including gardens, hatched area indicates spoil and waste, and grey areas active industrial areas and links)

Figure 4 shows a map of the same area as figure 3, but this time showing the land use in broad categories. Note there is some subjectivity in how these are defined from the OS map.  The large area of “waste” that surrounds the works is very apparent, and was to be a lasting scar on the area for many decades afterward. Nonetheless there was still arable land in close proximity. 

Figure 5. The Shut End Iron Works (GWR and Shut End Railways are indicated by black and green lines respectively. Working mines are shown as filled circles and old mine shafts are shown as open circles. Brickworks are shown as filled squares)

Figure 5 shows the area around the Shut End works. The most striking feature of this map is the extensive internal works network of the Shut End Railway. It would seem that this can be divided into two – the solid green lines show the tracks that connect to mines in the locality and to the Pensnett Railway and the GWR. The dotted lines show those tracks that seem to serve an internal works purpose only. Further study on the layout of the works themselves would be of interest, but I lack the detailed knowledge of the operation of iron works in that period that would be required for this. 

Figure 6. Shut End land use (Green indicates arable land, allotments etc. Brown indicates residential areas, including gardens, hatched area indicates spoil and waste, and grey areas active industrial areas and links)

Finally figure 6 shows the land use in the Shut End area. Again the area of waste and spoil is significant (and indeed over the next 20 years was to come to encompass nearly all of the area shown on the map. The proximity of both arable and residential areas to the waste and industrial areas is also clear.

The Ashwood Hay Enclosure Act of 1776 discussed in Chapter 3 in “Kingswinford Manor and Parish” (KMP) mainly relates to the formal enclosure of around 600ha of land in the west of the parish of Kingswinford (see figure 1 which is figure 2.9 in KMP). However, it also contains extensive details of land exchanges between proprietors in the area marked as Common Fields Enclosure, which were not considered in any depth in KMP. These formalize long term leases that were entered into about a century before the enclosure to consolidate land holdings in the area, moving away from the concept of individuals holding strips in each of the three open fields.  Figure 2 (figure 2.6 in KMP) shows the conjectured position of these fields that seem to have been variously named over the centuries – Wall Heath / Mosgrove field represented by the area A, Kingswinford / Old / Wartell field by area B and Wordsley / Broad field by area C. 

In this blog, I give transcriptions of just two of these land exchanges as illustrations – frankly because a complete transcription would be a daunting task that I simply don’t have time for at the moment. Now it is, in the main, possible to locate the various packets of land that were exchanged from the corresponding names on the Fowler 1822 map of the parish, but that is not always the case, and the location of some of the exchanged plots below  is very conjectural.

The first exchange is shown in figure 3 for lands relinquished and received by Mary Homfrey, a relatively minor landowner in the parish. The lands that she relinquished were somewhat scattered in Wallheath / Mosgrove field and Wordsley / Broad field, mainly to the west of the Stourbridge to Wolverhampton turnpike road, but with at least one on the east in Wordsley field (near Stream Meadow) (figure 4). The lands that she received were in Kingswinford / Wartell field, and there it is clear that they all bordered land she already owned. She received about half an acre more than she relinquished, and it is stated that this will be allowed for in the division of the common lands in the Ashwood Hay enclosure.

The second transcription is of lands relinquished and received by William Bendy (figure 5). From the tree of figure 3.6 in KMP it can be seen that this refers to William Bendy (1700-1782) the son of the second marriage of his father, William Bendy (1653-1725). He was the minor beneficiary of his father’s will, most of whose estates going to the Hodgetts and Dolman families, through the marriage of the daughter’s of his first marriage. He relinquished 22 acres of land in 5 lots. Four of these, amounting to around 4 acres, can be confidently placed in the area of Wall Heath field to the east and north of Wall Heath itself (figure 6).  The major area, referred to as the Murclays, which was relinquished to John Hodgetts (1721-1789), cannot be precisely located with confidence, and was almost certainly subdivided by 1822.  It is possible that it corresponds to an area of Wartell field close to Kingswinford village, that was owned by his son, John Hodgetts Hodgetts Foley (1797-1861) in 1822, which has an area of around 20 acres.  It would have been close to the latters Shut End Estate, which itself had been inherited from William Bendy (1653-1725) through his great-grandfather’s marriage to William’s daughter Mary.  In return the later William received six parcels of land amounting to 24 acres, with no indication that the areas would be equalized in the Enclosure allocation. These areas cannot all be located, but were clearly contiguous in the main with land he already owned, so again there seems to have been a consolidation of land. Those that can be located were to the east of Wall Heath bounded by the turnpike road. We know that William Bendy lived in the New House, somewhere on the Wolverhampton to Stourbridge Road in that area, so these lands were presumably around that house. A possible location is the triangle of land between Wall Heath and the turnpike road shown on figure 6, where the 1822 map shows a significant dwelling. On the 1882 OS map, this is named as Dawley House. 

If the somewhat speculative locations inferred above are accurate, then there were some interesting consequences. When the Kingswinford Railway was built in 1827, most of the land it passed over was owned by its main promoters – the Earl of Dudley and James Foster (who by then had purchased the Shut End Estate from Hodgetts-Foley for his new Iron Works). The exception was the land north of Kingswinford still owned by Hodgetts-Foley  – identified here as the Murclays. The subsequent lease that was required was, to a significant extent, to determine the operation and life of the Kingswinford Railway and had various knock on effects to the whole of the Earl of Dudley’s Pensnett Railway network.

Secondly, in 1822 Thomas Dudley (1749-1825) was in residence in Shut End Hall, still at that stage owned by Hodgetts-Foley from the Bendy inheritance. The Dudley family tree is given in figure 3.10. His son Robert Dudley (1783-1856) was in residence in the house on the turnpike road identified here as the New House, by now owned by the Earl of Dudley, but again part of the Bendy inheritance. There is a pleasing symmetry here that the residences of William Bendy (1673-1725) and his son William Bendy (1700-1782) should come to be once more occupied by a father and son. 

It can thus be seen from the above that the land exchanges containing the Ashwood Hay Enclosure Act contain a potential wealth of information concerning the life in Kingswinford at the time. They deserve fuller consideration. Perhaps one day I will look at them in more detail. Then again…..

In early 2019, I gave a talk to the Aldridge 41 club ( a group of retired Rotarians) entitled the Earl of Dudley’s Railway – i.e. the Kingswinford and Pensnett Railways. Most of the material I used was easily available in books or on the web, but I did draw some sketch maps to show how the railway developed and declined over its 150 year life. These maps provided a quite striking way of looking at the railway, and it seemed worthwhile to add a little detail to them and reproduce them here – see below. Before considering them further a health warning or two is required. First these maps were produced for a presentation and thus their cartographic accuracy is not great; secondly the information they contain has been culled from a variety of sources, particularly maps of different sorts. Even the best of these (OS) can sometimes show features that ceased to exists some time before the map was produced, and these anachronisms may well have been reproduced below. That being said, let us consider these maps one by one.

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• The 1780 map shows the towns of Dudley, Stourbridge and Kingswinford as three red circles, that will appear on all the following maps. The only form of large scale transport at that time was the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal in the western boundary of the map.
• By 1800 the local canal system had begun to develop and the Stourbridge and Dudley canals formed a link between the Staffordshire and Worcestershire canal and the Birmingham Canal Navigations in the north east, via the Dudley tunnel. These served a range of extractive and heavy industries in the region close to the canals.
• Little had changed in transport terms by 1820, but coalminers were being developed in the area around Corbyn’s Hall to the north of the Stourbridge canal. These mines and the associated industries were to drive much of the future development.
• The 1830 map shows the newly opened Kingswinford Railway from Ashwood Basin on the Staffs and Worcs (shown as a solid green line) to the iron works and collieries in the centre of the map. A number of tramways (shown as dotted green lines) to transport coal and iron products to the canal were also in existence. The tramways are only shown in outline – the system was considerably more extensive and detailed than could be included here.
• 1840 saw the opening of the Stourbridge Extension canal from the Fens branch of the Stourbridge canal to the Oak Farm area. The Pensnett Canal, a short branch from the Dudley tunnel entrance to the Round Oak area, had also been constructed.
• By 1850 the Round Oak Iron Works was in production and the first lines of the Pensnett Railway had been constructed to supply the works with coal.
• By 1860 the Pensnett Railway had developed considerably, with a network centred on Round Oak extending both north and south. Main line railways had reached the area with the opening of the OWWR line between Stourbridge, Dudley and Wolverhampton. This connected at Dudley with the southern end of the South Staffordshire Railway, and also had short branch to the Stourbridge canal at Bromley.
• Mainline railway developments continued and by 1870, the Stourbridge Railway had been built (later to be taken over by the GWR) and the Bromley brain of the OWWR had been extended to Kingswinford and beyond. The Pensnett Railway continued to grow and a connection had been made between the Pensnett and Kingswinford lines.
• The situation was similar in 1880, with the only development in the area being the GWR Dudley to Old Hill branch. At this time there was a very extensive internal railway system at the Bradley Iron works that is not shown on the map.
• By 1900 the Pensnett Railway had changed somewhat, with branches to now dissed collieries being shut and new branches being opened. The longest of these, to Dibble in Gornal, was actually owned by Ben Gibbons and was not a formal part of the Pensnett Railway.
• New lines continued to be built and by 1920 we can see the GWR Wombourne brach from Kingswinford to Wolverhampton (which briefly included a passenger service) and the final Pensnett Railway extension to Baggeridge Colliery in the north of the picture. By this time the eastern end of the original Kingswinford Railway had been truncated.
• The decline of industry in the area saw the decline of the transport network and by 1950 the Stourbridge Extension canal and the Pensnett Canal had been abandoned, and most of the Pensnett Railway branch lines had met similar fate.
• The situation was even more stark by 1980, with the Pensnett Railway reduced to an internal works railway at Round Oak, and the main line Wombourne branch beings truncated at Kingswinford and the Old Hill branch having been closed.
• The current situation is shown in the 2010 map. The Kingswinford branch and the main line north of Round Oak has been closed, and the only railway in the area is the Stourbridge to Birmingham line in the south.
• There are however possibilities of reopening, as shown in the 2030 map. There is sporadic discussion of reopening the line between Stourbridge, Dudley and Walsall primarily s a heavy freight diversionary route. There are more concrete proposals for using the trackbed of the line from Wednesbury to Dudley for a branch of the Midland Metro tram system, with street running from there, through Dudley town and on to Merry Hill and Brierley Hill. At the time of writing preliminary works on this line are underway.

One other point is worthy of mention. For the sake of clarity I have not included the street tramways of the area on these maps. These had quite short lifetimes, with a steam operated line between Dudley and Stourbridge opening in the 1880s, which eventually became a linked system of electric tramway connecting Dudley, Stourbridge, Kinver, Kingswinford and Old Hill and Cradley Heath. These were all to close in the 1920s.