Brewood, Staffordshire

Description
Brewood (pronounced Brood), a small town and a parish in Staffordshire, in the petty sessional division of Penkridge. The town stands on an eminence near Watheng Street and the river Penk, and on the Birmingham and Liverpool Canal, 2 1/2 miles WNW of Four Ashes station on the L. & N.W.R., 4 1/2 SW by S of Penkridge, 4 1/2 N of Codsall station, 8 from Wolverhampton, its market town, 11 from Stafford, and 134 1/2 from London. There is a post, money order, and telegraph office under Stafford. It formerly had a weekly market, and still has a fair on 19 Sept. There is a library and reading-room, and a bank. The parish includes also the liberties of Chillington, Somerford, Engleton, Horsebrook, Coven, Kiddermore-Green, and Hattons and Gunstone. Acreage, 12,152; population of the civil parish, 2667; of the ecclesiastical, 1590. Before the Conquest Brewood was a residence of the Bishops of the See of Mercia, and continued such until the 13th century. The last bishop resident was Roger de Weseham, who died there in 1258. Chillington Hall has been since the reign of Henry II. the seat of the Giffard family. The present mansion, which stands in an extensive well-wooded park, was built in the 18th century on the ruins of the old house, which was partially destroyed after a siege sustained against the Parliamentarian forces in the Civil War. Queen Elizabeth visited Chillington in 1575. Brewood Hall was the seat of the Fowkes and Plimley families. Somerford Hall, another mansion in this parish, was the seat of the Barbors, and now belongs to the Monckton family. Two nunneries, Cistercian and Benedictine, were founded in the parish, the former in the reign of Richard I. or of John; they were known as the White Ladies and the Black Ladies, and they figure under these names in the narrative of Charles II.'s concealment in the neighbouring locality of Boscobel, after the battle of Worcestershire. The Black Ladies, in an excellent state of preservation, is now a farmhouse; the White Ladies, a ruin, has almost disappeared. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; net value, £293 with residence. Patron, the Bishop of Lichfield. The church is chiefly Perpendicular, and was restored in 1879; it has a handsome tower and spire, and contains many ancient monuments to the Giffard, Monckton, Plimley, and other families. Kiddemore Green is included in Bishopswood ecclesiastical parish, and Coven is also a separate benefice. There are Roman Catholic, Congregational, Primitive Methodist, and Wesleyan chapels. There is a grammar school, founded by Dr. Knightley in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and at which Bishop Hurd and Sir E. Littleton were educated. The trades of lockmaking, mailing, brewing, and tanning, formerly carried on, have almost entirely died out owing to want of railway facilities.