Note
- There are various spellings in old references such as 'Blakley',
'Blackly', 'Blakele', and 'Blakly', but the commonest spelling
'Blakeley' is used here. There is also an extant 'Blakesley
Hall' at Yardley in Birmingham, a half-timbered house in the
care of Birmingham Museum Service. |
Blakeley
Grange
There
is no record of the building of Blakeley Hall which was a grange
of Hales Owen Abbey from the 13th to the 16th century. The building
may have been erected by the Abbey, which was founded in 1216, or
it may have existed before the Abbey and simply been taken over
by the Abbot. The Pipe Rolls of Henry II record payments of 28s
6d from the farm at Oldbury to the exchequer from 1166 to 1173:
this may have been the farm associated with Blakeley Hall, but this
is not stated.
'Blakeley'
appears as both a place name and a personal name at least as early
as 1270, when the people of Walloxhall reported Ranulph of Blakeley
for carrying off some of the Abbot's fences at Blakeley [1].
In a Lyttleton document dated 1291, Blakeley is first mentioned
as a grange of the Abbey [2]. By 1302
there was a mill at Blakeley, and the miller there, with other millers
in the manor, was asked to swear to new rules for the grinding of
malt. [3]
In
1339 John Hawket was licensed to have mass said in his private chapel
at Blakeley Grange [4]. Four years
later the grange was let by the Abbot to John Wallockshall, subject
to various conditions, including one about taking water from the
'Stour': Blakeley Grange was close to the headwaters of the 'Tame',
not the 'Stour', but the stream may have been named differently
in the 1300s [5]. In 1414, John Porter,
Vicar of Kidderminster, was granted five granges, including Blakeley,
on a sixty-year lease. [6] These references
present a very sketchy picture of Blakeley Grange when it was held
by the Abbey, but it was clearly a place of some importance and
probably the 'eyes' of the Abbot in the Oldbury area, since he was
based four miles away at Halesowen Abbey itself.
When
the Abbey was surrendered to Henry VIII in 1538, Blakeley Grange
passed as part of Hales Owen Manor to Sir John Dudley. In 1557 his
son, Richard Dudley, separated Oldbury Manor from the remainder
of Hales Owen Manor, selling the main part, but keeping Oldbury
Manor for himself. As one of the largest houses in the new manor,
Blakeley Grange became the manor house for Oldbury. The Dudleys
and their immediate heirs, the Robsarts, did not use Blakeley Hall
as a house for themselves, and let it out with the remains of the
demesne lands around it as a farm. Lyttleton papers suggest that
Edward Banburye was the lessee in 1630. [7]
Blakeley
Hall
In
1633, Charles Cornwallis bought the manor, and the family seems
to have spent some time in Oldbury, probably at Blakeley Hall. His
father-in-law, Edward Colmore, is described as being 'of Blakely
Hall' in his will of 1640. [See article
001 for details of the descent of the manor]
Subsequent
Lords and Ladies of the Manor were absentee landlords, with the
Hall and its surrounding lands again leased out as a farm. An entry
in the Halesowen Parish Registers for 19th September 1701 records
the burial of 'John Hopkins of Blackley Hall', suggesting he was
an early tenant.
There
are no records of the house apart from an indenture of 1713 transferring
it from William Fetherston to his son-in-law William Addington.[8]
'Blackley Hall' [sic] was described as being surrounded by barns,
stable buildings, garden, orchard and appurtenances, and a string
of fields: Barne Croft, Moore Rough, Blackley, Grove Close, the
Pool Tayle Close, Hill Leasow, Lower Blackley and Great Meadow.
Some of the fields could be identified on the Tithe Map 130 years
later. With it went the '… water Corne Mills, commonly called
Oldbury Mills, and the Mill Pool…' and two closes near the mill.
|
Map
based on the Tithe Apportionment Map for Oldbury, 1843, showing
the site of the moat that enclosed the origingal Blakeley
Hall, the site of the farmhouse built around 1775 as 'Blakeley
Hall Farm', and the mill on the opposite side of the canal
as the buildings at parcel L200. [Redrawn by T Daniels - this
is clearly legible at a screen magnification of 150%]
|
In
1772 the first canal arrived, intended to carry coal and goods between
Birmingham and the Black Country. It was a contour canal built by
James Brindley, and its line brought it within about 150 yards of
Blakeley Hall. Canal company documents record the transfer of land
from 'Frances Wright and another' in an indenture dated 31 August
1772, less than a month before the new canal was opened. Shortly
afterwards, the old building was demolished and a new three-storey
Georgian farmhouse erected close to the toll gate on the recently
turnpiked road from Birmingham to Dudley. [9]
|
Blakeley
Hall Farm, ca 1900, looking from Birmingham Road towards the
site of Blakeley Hall
|
There
are no plans or descriptions of the old Hall, except a reference
in Reeves' 'History of West Bromwich' as "a fourteenth century
half-timbered building with a moat round it". He claims to have
seen the moat full of water in March 1829. The 1843 Tithe Apportionment
plan for Oldbury shows an apparently empty, roughly square moat.
Hutton writing originally in 1783 says of the Hall: "Five miles
north west of Birmingham, is Blakeley Hall, the manor house of Oldbury.
If we see a veritable edifice without a moat, we cannot from thence
conclude, it was never the residence of a gentleman, but wherever
we find one we may conclude it was … The present building seems
about three hundred years old … In 1769, the Birmingham Canal passing
over the premises, robbed the trench of its water." [10]
The 1857 Bates map of Oldbury and later Ordnance survey maps show
the new buildings of Blakeley Hall Farm but no indication of the
moat, suggesting it may have been ploughed out in the 1840s and
50s.
The
Bailiff's House
A
second building associated with the manor was the house used by
the bailiffs, situated on the main highway in Oldbury town between
the Old Court House and the Wesley Chapel in Church Street. Little
is known about the origins of the building, which was latterly termed
'The Manor House'. It was demolished around1904, by which time it
had become a lodging house.
McKean
[11] quotes an article on the Manor
House from the "Birmingham Weekly Post, 5th August 1899:
|
The
'Old Manor House' around 1900
|
|
"The
Old Manor House, which is situated in one of the busiest parts of
the town of Oldbury, is a very ancient building, and bears traces
of having at one time occupied an important place among the family
mansions, which centruries ago were to be found studded about the
beautiful tract of country known as the Stour Valley. Standing back
from the main road from Halesowen to West Bromwich a convenient
distance, and by the side of the Old Court House, it may escape
the notice of most of the people who frequent that locality. Probably
early in the eighteenth century it took its rank amongst the chief
houses of the district, and in the early part of this century [the
eighteenth] was the residence of a medical man named Cooper,
who was very popular in the district. The old house was surrounded
by extensive pleasure grounds and an orchard; but all these have
been stripped away by thehand of the builder, and are now occupied
by the working classes. For at least fifty years the house has been
used as a common lodging-house. It is supposed that it was, for
a time at least, associated with the old County Court. In the latter
building debtors were formerly imprisoned for debt, and the debtors
used to be supplied with food from the Old Manor House. On one occasion,
during a Colliers' riot in the Black Country, the mob attacked both
the Court buildings and the Manor House, and the prisoners were
liberated and escaped the penalty of their indebtedness."
References
1
|
|
Amphlett,
John, 'Court Rolls of the Manor of Hales 1270-1307',
(1912), Worcestershire Historical Society, p 11 |
2
|
|
Nash
(1), p 527 from Tanner manuscript in Bodleian Library quoted
in Roth, H. L. (1887). Bibliography and chronology of Hales
Owen. Index Society. |
3
|
|
Amphlett
op. cit., p 443 |
4
|
|
Nash
(1) p 521, quoted in Roth vide supra |
5
|
|
Lyttleton
Charter 122 |
6
|
|
Lyttleton
Charter 273 |
7
|
|
Birmingham
City Archives: MS/3279/351747 |
8
|
|
McKean,
Rev H, 'Picturesque Oldbury', (1900), p 73-4 |
9
|
|
McKean,
op. cit. pp 73-4 |
10
|
|
Hutton,
William, 'The History of Birmingham', (1836, 6th Edition),
p470 |
11
|
|
McKean,
op. cit. pp 63-4 |
This
article © Dr Terry Daniels 2008 - contact
for permission to reproduce
|