Miss A Brettle, Mr J Millard, Mr S Heafield, Miss E Miller, Mr D Lawton, Mr A T Mothershaw, Mrs L Lewis, Mrs S Pritchard, Mr G J Machin, Mr G Richardson, Mrs L Machin, Mrs T M Whitehouse, Miss F P Marsh, Miss A J Williams Mrs B Millard.Each member made his or her individual contribution to the work as well as helping to shape the whole of it.
The parish of Madeley lies close to the north-west boundary of Staffordshire and about eight miles west of the Potteries. The large Pool which is such a distinctive feature of Madeley village was constructed above the Lea Gorge and used to channel a mill-race for the water-wheel machinery of the Upper Corn Mill at the Pool's northern end. The lower land round the village was poorly drained; to the west of the Pool, the Moss provided water-meadows, while, to the east, strings of pools lined the course of the Checkley and Hazeley Brooks.
The section includes a photograph of Madeley Pool and Bar Hill taken about 1930.
Among the many fascinating pieces of evidence for early settlement in Madeley is a collection of third and fourth-century Roman copper coins once buried in the ground at Little Madeley, perhaps during a time of troubles, and unearthed by chance in 1817. Madeley came to have a Saxon place-name Madanlieg, meaning a clearing in the woodlands made by, or belonging to, one named Mada.
Topics covered:This chapter has a map of the Medieval Deer Park at Great Madeley and a litho print by Holt of Madeley Parish Church.
In 1547, the manor of Madeley was sold to Thomas Offley, a merchant in the wool and cloth trade and member of the Staple of Calais. Thomas Offley was born at Stafford around 1505 and was the eldest son of William Offley, a mercer. He attended school in London, was later apprenticed to a merchant-tailor, became in time a cloth merchant in his own right and eventually, in the year of his purchase of Madeley, was made Master of the Merchant Taylors Company. He became Lord Mayor of London in 1556 and received a knighthood. Altogether, five generations of Offleys were lords of Madeley.
Topics covered:The population of Madeley rose very strikingly in the nineteenth century from less than a thousand to nearly three thousand. Proportionately, this was a greater increase than the national average and it was all the more significant since it was an increase on a scale not shared by neighbouring villages such as Keele and Betley.
In 1837, a section of the Grand Junction railway was laid down through the parish of Madeley on the western side passing north from Whitmore towards Wrinehill and on to Crewe. Lord Crewe, was probably more concerned in shutting out the view of the railway from Crewe Hall than in trying to divert it from Madeley. The railway brought solid advantages to an estate-owner. It helped to raise the rents of adjacent farms if there were a station nearby. The Railway Company itself often paid a good price for the land it used and it was charged rates by the parish; the income from these rates helped to alleviate the burden of poor-relief and correspondingly to reduce the personal responsibility of the squire. Moreover, if there were any industrial resources in the area, such as the coal-mining at Madeley, a connection with a main railway-line was an obvious stimulus to development.
Topics covered:This chapter includes a black and white photograph of Charles Hungerford Crewe (1812-1894 with his niece and great nieces and on another page a plan of Madeley Church
In December 1921 a major estate-sale by auction was held at the Crewe Arms Hotel in Crewe. Lord Crewe decided to dispose of the estate which his uncle had so assiduously cared for. Nearly £150,000 worth of farm property was sold, chiefly to tenants. The average price per acre was £40. Many cottagers, too, seized the chance of a lifetime to buy their own properties, some 'workmen', according to a contemporary account, 'buying their homestead at prices as low as £50.' In what ways people managed to raise the necessary purchasing money in 1921 would stand further investigation but there are stories of long mortgages and of mortgages which changed hands later when they could no longer be met by the original buyers. Even so, not all the farms were sold and some have remained with the estate until the present day. The manor house itself, for all its attractions, failed to find a purchaser and was lived in by Lord Crewe's eldest daughter, Annabel, until her death in 1948; it was sold in a period after her second husband's death in 1951. The estate-sale released more land for speculative building and the inter-war 'ribbon development' of housing along the main road in Middle Madeley was one feature of the times. The old squire-tenant relationship, though not yet at an end, was no longer an essential part of the life of the villages.
Topics covered:
Other resources for sale
Paperbacks Downloadable eBooks eBooks on CD-ROM Directories Parish Registers Family Histories Local Histories