Wombourne

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Coordinates: 52°31′49″N 2°11′08″W / 52.530223°N 2.185692°W / 52.530223; -2.185692

Wombourne
Wombourne Civic Offices
Wombourne  Wombourne shown within Staffordshire
Population	13,691  (2001 Census)
OS grid reference	SO873928
District	South Staffordshire
Shire county	Staffordshire
Region	West Midlands
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	Wolverhampton
Postcode district	WV5
Dialling code	01902
Police	Staffordshire
Fire	Staffordshire
Ambulance	West Midlands
European Parliament	West Midlands
UK Parliament	South Staffordshire
List of places: UK • England • Staffordshire

Wombourne (also spelt Wombourn) is a very large village (sometimes claimed to be the largest village in England) and civil parish located in the district of South Staffordshire, in the county of Staffordshire, 6 km (4 miles) south-west of Wolverhampton. Local affairs are run by a parish council. At the 2001 census it had a population of 13,691. It is just outside the West Midlands metropolitan county, and only narrowly outside the West Midlands conurbation, so it is, to some extent an urban fringe settlement or dormitory village, although it also has a distinctive centre and a long history.

Etymology and usage

The Old English word burna signifies a stream, and a stream is a notable feature of the village. Formerly the village name was thought to mean "Womb Stream", or stream in a hollow^[1], because this is a reasonable description of the situation. However, more recent scholarship explains the name as meaning a Crooked Stream^[2], which is at least as good a description.

Burna was one of the terms for a stream used in the earliest Anglo-Saxon place names, and the stream was presumably itself called the Wom Bourn. However, today it is always distinguished from the village by the name Wom Brook, from another, slightly later, Old English term for a stream: brōca. The Wom Brook, which has required considerable work to ameliorate its flooding, originates on Penn Common and is a tributary of the Smestow Brook, which it meets just south of Wombourne.

The spelling "Wombourne" is now preferred for official use. However, the village is marked "Wombourn" on the 1775 William Yates Map of the County of Stafford and as late as the 1945-48 series Ordnance Survey maps^[3]. There has been considerable feeling about the issue and road signs were regularly amended unofficially with spray paint until the 1990s at least.

History

Origins

The village has Anglo-Saxon origins, and was part of the large central kingdom of Mercia, which was settled by Angles. The whole region was wooded when the Germanic settlers arrived, and hamlet names like Bratch ("newly-cleared-land) and Blakeley ("dark clearing") attest to the need to clear land for settlement. The settlers reared large herds of pigs, which were easily fed in the beech, oak and birch woods, which are the naturally-predominant vegetation in the region. Local toponyms like Kingswinford ("royal pig crossing") and Swindon ("pig hill") confirm the importance of pig rearing in Anglo-Saxon times.

The medieval village

Wombourne is mentioned in Domesday Book and was clearly a medium-sized village by the standards of the time. Before the Norman Conquest, it was owned by an Anglo-Saxon nobleman called Thorsten. By the time of the survey, probably 1086, William, Fitz Ansculf, held seven hides of land, some of them let from him by one Ralph of Wombourne. William was an important landowner throughout the West Midlands, the son of Ansculf of Picquigny, a Picard baron who came to England with William the Conqueror and built a castle at Dudley. William's total holding at Wombourne supported 8 ploughs and was worth £3. There were 13 villagers (probably not including dependents, so perhaps thirty to forty people in total); a priest, and so perhaps some sort of church; as well as two mills, the first evidence for the importance of water power in the area. Wombourne was part of the Seisdon Hundred.

The Priors of Dudley built or rebuilt the Parish Church of St. Benedict Biscop around 1170, the only parish church dedicated to this Anglo-Saxon cleric. The building as it is seen today, however, is the result of numerous reconstructions and refurbishments, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. The parish of Wombourne extended far from the village, taking in Orton and Swindon.

Industrial developments

For most of its history Wombourne was mainly an agricultural village. However, its involvement with industry began unusually early. From the Middle Ages, the Smestow Brook and the Stour were lined with small iron bloomeries and forges, using local reserves of charcoal and water. The Industrial Revolution brought coke-fired furnaces. In 1772, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal was opened, with major canal locks at the Bratch and Bumble Hole, integrating the area more closely into industrial Britain. Iron production concentrated in a smaller number of centres - at Swindon, Gothersley and the Hyde at Kinver, and increasingly in the nearby Black Country - using the canal to bring ore, coal and limestone to the works. The outlying villages, however, remained centres for smithing, with cheaper and more available iron greatly increasing the number of workers. Increasingly, Wombourne became a centre for nail-making. The Wom and the Smestow continued to provide both power and cooling water, with several large mills along each stream by the late 18th century. Perhaps the largest water-driven forge was to the west of the village, where, an 1817 history remarks, "has been erected an iron-work called the Heath-forge, with genteel mansion"^[4]. This large works used the power of the Wom and a tributary stream, close to the confluence with the Smestow, and was later converted into a corn mill. The mansion building, now converted into flats, is still to be seen in the Poolhouse estate, while the Heath Mill industrial estate preserves its name. The water mill is clearly marked on the 1775 Yates map of Staffordshire, along with one at the Wodehouse, and another just south of the village centre, the remains of which are now the Pool Dam.

It was around the same time that the Hellier family reached the peak of their influence in the area. The Helliers lived at the Wodehouse, on the Wom Brook, to the east of the village. It was the fourth Samuel Hellier, knighted in 1762, who turned the Jacobean house into a centre of culture. He had the grounds laid out in fashionable style, with a hermitage, temple to the memory of Handel, and a music room. He spent a fortune on musical instruments and books of music^[5], both building up a private collection and endowing both the church at Wombourne and St. John's, Wolverhampton. Dying without issue in 1784, he left his property to a family friend, the Reverend Thomas Shaw, on condition he change his name to Hellier.

In 1851, Wombourne was described as a large village, "occupied chiefly by nailors, who work for the neighbouring manufacturers"^[6]. Nail-making remained important into the 20th century. The main landowners in the area by this time were John Wrottesley, 2nd Baron Wrottesley and Lord Ward, at this time the Reverend William Humble Ward, the tenth Baron, a relative of the Earl of Dudley. The Wards made their wealth not merely from land, but what lay under it: the coal and limestone of the West Midlands. Another important landowner, the Reverend William Dalton, was an Evangelical clergyman from Ulster, but he owed his wealth to marriage to the widow of a Bilston iron master^[7].

The modern village

Although the parish had a population approaching 2000 by the mid-19th century, the village itself remained quite small - essentially confined to the area around the present village green. The hamlets of Giggetty, Blakeley, Ounsdale, and the Bratch were quite separate from the village and were only absorbed into it as suburban housing spread from the mid-20th century. This changed the whole character and structure of the village.

The area around the green, the original village of Wombourne, evolved as the commercial and cultural centre. The green was surrounded by small, independent shops, which remain a distinctive feature of the village's commercial life. A new civic centre, housing local council services, was constructed near Lower End, just south west of the centre. Suburban housing grew to form a wide ring around it, absorbing most of the hamlets. Large housing developments of the 1960s and 1970s around Giggetty and Brickbridge, to the west, were followed by a still larger westward extension in the poolhouse estate of the 1980s, which absorbed the former Heath Mill. Meanwhile, light industry developed along the canal and the River Smestow, particularly beyond the main Bridgnorth Road, with industrial estates replacing former foundries. A new bypass was driven through to the south of the village in 1988, carrying Bridgnorth and Telford traffic around Wombourne and Himley, and clearly separating much of the industrial area from the residential section. Housing development continued into the new millennium, with building to the west of the canal between Ounsdale and the Bratch.

Today the village population works partly locally, and partly in the larger centres of Wolverhampton, the Black Country, Birmingham and Telford.

Amenities

The Vine, a pub on the edge of Wombourne village opposite the Police Station

The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal runs north-south through the western side of the village and Bratch Locks are located just to the north-west. Another popular local spot is the South Staffordshire Railway Walk which follows the path of a now disused railway which was in use in the 1950s and 60s mainly as a goods railway, but also as a passenger line for a few years. Wombourne village green, which resembles an archetypal 'English Village' as it is in the centre of the village adjacent to the church, regularly plays host to local cricket matches.

There are several shops located around the village green, including a bakery, butchers, pharmacy, opticians, osteopathy clinic, several hairdressers as well as two Indian restaurants. There are also two fish and chip shops, one in the village centre and one on common road by a smaller set of shops.

Wombourne has a Retained Fire Station run by Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service which is currently being refurbished. The Station houses one pumping appliance and is located on Giggety lane next to Wombourne Ambulance Station. The Ambulance Station is run by West Midlands Ambulance Service and is manned full time. Wombourne Police Station can be found on the High Street and is part of Staffordshire Police. Police officers work from police station 24/7 however Enquiry office staff are only available at certain times.

The Wom Brook Walk is a Local Nature Reserve entirely within the boundaries of the village. It stretches for about 2.6 km along both sides of the Wom Brook, traversing the village from east to west. It contains a mix of meadow and woodland. It was established after some years of work by a local conservation group, the Friends of Wom Brook^[8]. An important landmark in the development was a Staffordshire Wildlife Trust survey in 2004, which found an active colony of water voles. The voles, along with kingfishers, are sighted regularly and have proved an important focus in mobilising conservation efforts. The Nature Reserve was established in 2008 and the whole area is owned by South Staffordshire Council. A partnership between the council and Carillion plc has led to a range of improvements recently to the stream, bridges, paths and landscaping^[9]. This continues into 2009, with major work concentrated in the Giggetty section.

The Wom Brook Walk

Wom Brook at the Rookery footbridge, close to the eastern end of the walk.	Pool Dam, the site of a former watermill on the Wom Brook.	Ham Meadow, south-west of the village centre, through which flows the Wom Brook.	Lower End Bridge, just south-west of the village centre, marks the eastern edge of the Ham Meadow section.
The Wom Brook in Ham Meadow.	Sign at the intersection with the South staffordshire Railway Walk, the approximate mid-point of the Wom Brook Walk.	The Wom Brook along the lower part of the walk, in the Giggetty Estate	Footbridge on lower section of the walk, at Long Ford, below the Poolhouse Estate.

Governance

Wombourne is part of a two-tier local government structure, typical of rural county areas in England.

• It is situated within the district of South Staffordshire. This is based in Codsall, to the north of Wombourne, although it has district offices locally. It was established in 1974 by the merging of Seisdon Rural District, to which Wombourne had belonged, with Cannock Rural District. Wombourne consists of three district council wards, each represented by three councillors: Wombourne North and Lower Penn; Wombourne South West; Wombourne South East.

• South Staffordshire itself is contained within the county of Staffordshire. This was established as an administrative county in 1889. Wombourne constitutes a single division in County Council elections: South Staffordshire - Wombourne.

Wombourne also has a parish council. This was originally established in 1894 and took its present form in 1974.

Wombourne is part of the South Staffordshire (UK Parliament constituency), which is not coterminous with the district of the same name. It is also part of the large West Midlands (European Parliament constituency), which has seven MEPs.

Before the local government reforms of the 19th century, the local parish or vestry was both a civil and an ecclesiastical unit within the Seisdon Hundred of the historic county of Staffordshire. In Victorian times, it became part of the Seisdon Poor Law Union.

Politics

Wombourne's Member of Parliament is Sir Patrick Cormack, who represents the South Staffordshire (UK Parliament constituency) in the House of Commons. He is a Conservative. In elections to the European Parliament, Wombourne is part of the very large West Midlands constituency which is represented by a total of seven MEPs: 3 Conservative, 2 Labour, 1 Liberal Democrat and 1 UK Independence Party. All nine of Wombourn's district councillors are Conservative and the district council is Conservative-controlled.

Transport

National Express West Midlands bus routes 254, 255 and 256 serve Wombourne along with Staffordshire CC sponsored route 584 (operated by Choice Travel. There used to be a rail line but this closed to passenger services in 1932 . Also this area is near the main A449 road.

Schools

There are four primary schools in Wombourne; Westfield, St. Bernadettes R.C, Blakeley Heath and St. Benedict Biscop. There is also a secondary school, Ounsdale High School, that takes many of the local primary schools pupils on. Students also come from local areas on coach and bus services to the school. There is also Cherry Tree's special school and Adult Education centres operating in several locations around the village, including Ounsdale High School and the Library.

Around Wombourne

Sainsbury's supermarket bid has been accepted to create the village's first supermarket. They beat Tesco who were also trying to create a supermarket just yards from Sainsbury's. Tesco were also bidding to create Wombourne's first supermarket, but have now accepted defeat and have withdrawn the application.

References

Further reading

• May Griffiths. Around Pattingham & Wombourne in Old Photographs. 1992
• May Griffiths. Wombourne What Was. 1990

External links

• Wombourne.net Local Website for Wombourne
• Staffordshire Past Track Maps, photos and historic documents for all areas of the county.
• Genuki page for Wombourne, with links to local history resources.
• South Staffordshire District Council