Rugeley

Coordinates: 52°45′36″N 1°56′20″W / 52.7599°N 1.9388°W / 52.7599; -1.9388

Rugeley
Rugeley  Rugeley shown within Staffordshire
Population	22,724
OS grid reference	SK042180
District	Cannock Chase
Shire county	Staffordshire
Region	West Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	RUGELEY
Postcode district	WS15
Dialling code	01889
Police	Staffordshire
Fire	Staffordshire
Ambulance	West Midlands
EU Parliament	West Midlands
UK Parliament	Cannock Chase
List of places: UK • England • Staffordshire

St. Augustine's Church, Rugeley

Rugeley is a historic market town in the county of Staffordshire, England. It lies on the northern edge of Cannock Chase, and is situated roughly midway between the towns of Stafford, Cannock, Lichfield and Uttoxeter. The population as at the 2001 census was 22,724 (including the Brereton and Etchinghill wards).^[1]

The town was a centre of coal mining until 1991, when the Lea Hall Colliery was demolished. The Rugeley B coal-fired power station dominates the skyline where a flue gas desulphurisation plant is currently being constructed. This will allow it to continue to generate electricity and comply with environmental legislation. The former Rugeley A station took its fuel directly from the neighbouring mine by conveyor belt. This was the first such arrangement in Britain. It is twinned with Western Springs, Illinois in the United States.

Transport

Rugeley has two railway stations, Rugeley Town and Rugeley Trent Valley, which lie on the Chase Line connecting Rugeley, Walsall and Birmingham. This line has not yet been electrified, and so the service is functional but slow, a typical end-to-end journey taking 54 minutes. Rugeley Trent Valley also lies on the West Coast Main Line, and now has a regular hourly service to London via Lichfield, Nuneaton, Rugby and Milton Keynes, and to Crewe via Stafford and Stoke-on-Trent.

The major roads into Rugeley are the A460 from Cannock, and the A51 Lichfield to Stone. A new eastern bypass was opened in 2007 to take the A51 through traffic out of the congested town centre.

The River Trent and the Trent and Mersey Canal both pass through the town.

Demographics

Rugeley is a former mining town and, as such, suffers from a moderate level of social deprivation. Parts of the town consist of council or ex council house stock. However, on the fringes of Rugeley housing can be considerably more expensive, particularly in Etchinghill. A large number of new houses have been built recently, notably along Hednesford Road and there are concerns that these estates represent unwanted incursions into green belt land.

Amenities

Rugeley has a modern swimming pool and leisure centre, opened 2006 on Burnthill Lane. Rugeley has also benefitted from a skate park being built in Hagley Park.

Rugeley has a reasonably sized town centre which boasts an outdoor market 3 days per week on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It also has an indoor market and a shopping centre of sorts called the Brewery Street Arcade. Rugeley has a number of well known high street names like Boots, Argos and Greggs. It has a Morrisons and Tesco has been granted permission to build a supermarket in the Power Station Road area of the town and are due to start building in November, 2011.

Rugeley has a number of public houses and takeaways and Horsefair is reputed to contain one of the densest concentrations of takeaways and public houses in Europe.

Residents of the town benefit from their proximity to Cannock Chase and indeed there is now a heritage trail funded by the National Lottery linking the town to Hednesford and Cannock with excellent disabled access. The trail is now complete and contains numerous notice boards highlighting the town's history.

Rugeley also has a state-of-the-art health centre off Sandy Lane, a replacement for its predecessor on Horsefair, there is now a modern care home on the site of the old surgery. Technically, two separate surgeries coexist there with chairs in the waiting room oriented one of two ways towards the plasma screen that informs patients of their appointment, there is also the Aelfgar Surgery in Taylors Lane.

The town also has the Rugeley Rose Theatre which is a theatre and community centre in Taylors Lane and recording studio, Abbeysound, housed in a former convent in Heron Street, which is also home to Rugeley Snooker & Poker Clubs

Rugeley is well served by sports clubs, playing home to two cricket clubs (Rugeley C.C. and Trent Valley C.C.), several football clubs and Rugeley Rugby Club, as well as Rugeley Rifle Club which offers some of the best indoor and outdoor ranges in Staffordshire, catering for .22 and air gun target shooting. The Lea Hall Social Club underwent extensive renovation between 2005 and 2011 and serves Rugeley residents with a variety of facilities including cricket and football pitches, tennis courts and a crown bowling green. Etching Hill Tennis Club is well known in the area for producing talented young players^{[citation needed]}.

Microclimates

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2010)

It is well known in the Rugeley area that snowfall amounts can vary considerably between the town and nearby Cannock Chase. Generally speaking, Cannock Chase and Cannock receives significantly more snowfall than Rugeley. One culprit is elevation, much of the Chase is above 500 feet with a peak at Castle Ring of slightly over 800 feet. Another culprit is the power station, which can warm snowfall sufficiently to create a significant snow free zone where snow is on the threshold of sticking. Rugeley also lies in Trent Valley which can exhibit noticeable temperature inversions on cold, clear nights. It is not uncommon for lower Etchinghill and the town to be under frost and fog and for the estates at elevation, such as the Pear Tree Estate, to be frost free.

History

The town, historically known as Rudgeley, is listed in the Domesday Book. This name is thought to be derived from 'Ridge lee', or 'the hill over the field'. In the mediaeval period, it thrived on iron workings and was also a site of glass manufacturing. Rugeley has recently had some new, modern pubs including the Glass Works (Brewery Street) and the Plaza, the old town cinema converted by Wetherspoon's. There is a charter fair that occurs during the first weekend in June, which is a huge attraction with most people from the town joining in the street parade. The town council also puts on a fireworks display during the last weekend of the school summer holidays, known as "Back to School with a Bang". There is a Christmas lights switch-on during December, which also includes a market and late night opening of shops with the local traders association joining in the organising of street entertainment.

St. Augustine's Church in Rugeley has memorials to the Levett family, who live at nearby Milford Hall and who established the Rugeley Home and Cottage Hospital on Church Street in 1866.^[2][3]

Future

Rugeley suffered a lack of employment when Lea Hall Colliery closed in the 1980s. However, a number of large industrial units have, and are still being built on the Towers Business Park, a brownfield site situated on the former ground of the colliery. In August 2011, Amazon.co.uk opened a 700,000 sq ft fulfillment centre on the Towers Park, creating 750 new jobs, however Randstad Holding have laid off 650 staff leaving 100 there in a very controversial decision.

Famous people

William Palmer

In 1855, the town gained notoriety when a local doctor, William Palmer, was accused of murdering an acquaintance, John Parsons Cook (who is buried in a still visible grave in the local St Augustine's churchyard). It was claimed that Cook had been poisoned, and in the months that followed, Palmer was implicated in the deaths of several other persons, including his own wife and brother, and possibly even some of his own children. He was put on trial for the murder of Cook in 1856, and an Act of Parliament was passed to allow the trial to be held at the Old Bailey, London, as it was felt that a fair jury could not be found in Staffordshire. Palmer was found guilty of murder, and hanged publicly outside Stafford Gaol on 14 June 1856. Local legend has is that, on being instructed to step on to the gallows trap-door he asked the now famous question "Is it safe?". Furthermore, following the uproar surrounding the discovery of Palmer's activities, the town put in a special request to the Prime Minister requesting that they be permitted to change the name of the town to disassociate themselves from the murders. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister at the time was Lord Palmerston, who agreed to the request only on the condition that the town be named after him. For obvious reasons the locals declined this offer. The story of Palmer was told in The Life and Crimes of William Palmer (1998), starring Keith Allen in the role of the infamous doctor.

George Edalji

George Ernest Thompson Edalji (March 1876 – 17 June 1953) was famously and wrongly convicted of one of the 'Great Wyrley Outrages,' (the village of Great Wyrley being some eight-and-a-half miles south of Rugeley, south of the Cannock Chase district and north of Walsall) but cleared as the result of an investigation by Arthur Conan Doyle. Julian Barnes's 2005 novel Arthur & George recounts the entire episode in great detail, though it does not always stick to the historical record (see Roger Oldfield's book 'Outrage: The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes', Vanguard Press). Edalji was educated at a Rugeley grammar school in the 1880s.

Christina Collins

The body of Christina Collins was discovered in the Trent and Mersey Canal in Rugeley on 17 June 1839. She was believed to have been raped and murdered by Shale who had agreed to transport her from Liverpool to London to join her husband. The steps which she was carried up are still known as the 'bloody steps' to this day. Although, as they are made from sandstone, the steps have no doubt been replaced several times, local legend has it that they sometimes ooze blood and her ghost appears upon them. Christina's grave can still be seen today in the churchyard at St Augustine's. Three of the four bargemen were charged with her murder. The story of her murder was the inspiration for an Inspector Morse mystery first broadcast in 1998, entitled The Wench is Dead.

Nearby places

Towns and cities

• Cannock
• Hednesford
• Stafford
• Lichfield

Villages

• Abbots Bromley
• Admaston
• Armitage
• Blithbury
• Brereton
• Cannock Wood
• Colton
• Colwich
• Cheslyn Hay
• Etchinghill
• Great Haywood
• Hamstall Ridware
• Handsacre
• Hill Ridware
• Kings Bromley
• Little Haywood
• Longdon
• Mavesyn Ridware
• Slitting Mill
• Upper Longdon

Other

• Aelfgar Centre
• Blithfield Reservoir
• Brindley Heath
• Shugborough

Twin town

• Western Springs, Illinois, since 1957.

References

External links

• Rugeley Town Council
• Brereton and Rugeley Parish Website
• Map of Rugeley at Streetmap.co.uk
• Rugeley Bypass
• Rugeley Power Station
• Rugeley Cricket Club
• Rugeley Rifle Club
• Rugeley Rangers Football Club
• Lea Hall Miners Welfare CEntre and Social Club