This book is a real gem! David Robbie has produced a finely detailed, and meticulously researched account of the historic and charming village of Great Haywood in Staffordshire, designated a Conservation Area in 1969, and possessing numerous Grade I &II Listed Buildings and Monuments. This substantial work is delightfully readable and packed with fascinating stories and descriptions of life in an English village over the centuries. Liberally illustrated with archive photographs, drawings and maps, with extensive quotes from original sources, it can be read straight through or its sections (Past, Present, People and Places) dipped into.
The detailed history sections take us from the archaeological remains of Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages via the first (probable) human settlement by Angles in C6th, up until the present day. The village was surrounded by what later became Mercia, the largest and most powerful of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. The renowned Staffordshire Hoard, the largest selection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork yet found, was discovered nearby in 2009. The village appears in the Domesday Book as “Haiwode”, the ‘Great’ being added in C15th (Heywood Magna). Lively accounts are given of the progress over the centuries of farming and food production in the village, leisure and social activities, insights into the lives of agricultural workers, and the work of many rural craftsmen and women, including wheelwrights, blacksmiths, saddlers, stone masons, brick makers, and those working on the canals, highways and rivers, and later the roads and railways. The geographical location of Great Haywood was key to its development, being at the junction of the Trent & Mersey and The Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canals, the Rivers Trent & Sow, a staging post on the Great North Road running from London to Chester. Chester was the main port for Ireland until the silting up of the Dee and the improvement of the London to Holyhead Road (Watling Street) by Thomas Telford in the early 19th century. The new route took traffic away from Great Haywood. This road was one of the most important and busiest stretches of road in the country, especially in the days of coach and horses. This nationally central position of the village in past times saw various monarchs, powerful lords, and military troops either staying in the village or passing through. Thus it was involved in important events during the reigns of Henry II, Richard II and Henry IV, Henry VI, Henry Tudor, and also during the Wars of the Roses, the English Civil War and the Jacobite Rebellion.
Such a location made the village an important centre for trade and commerce, which declined in the mid C19th, after the advent of the motor car and the railways. The latter consisted then of the London and North Western Railway and the North Staffordshire Railway. These later became branches of the current West Coast Mainline. The recently planned HS2 would have passed though Great Haywood until part of the route was cancelled. From the C20th onwards, the village saw an increase in tourism and leisure activities, especially on its canals and rivers, nearby Cannock Chase, and the adjacent Shugborough Estate. This magnificent Estate (now owned by the National Trust), is linked, over the River Trent to the village, by the oldest and longest remaining pack horse bridge in England; said in legend to have been built by Robert Devereux for Elizabeth 1 when she visited, but more likely to have been to enable his family to access the Chase for hunting. Shugborough is the ancient seat of the Anson family since 1624. During the C18th and C19th much common land around the village was enclosed and acquired by the Ansons, who thus expanded their estate. The mansion house contains quantities of artefacts and treasures, especially of Grecian and Oriental origin, brought back by the first, and much travelled, Thomas Anson. He had links with Charles Darwin, James Brindley, Matthew Boulton and Josiah Wedgewood. Fascinatingly, some pieces of the latter’s huge dinner service, made for Catherine the Great of Russia, were decorated with views of Shugborough landscapes! Thomas’ brother George, Lord Anson, First Lord of the Admiralty, became the second Englishman after Francis Drake to circumnavigate the world, amassing a fortune which helped transform Shugborough from a modest country house to one of the grandest estates in the country. Becoming Earls of Lichfield in 1831, more recently Patrick Lichfield, the penultimate and 5th Earl, was the famous royal and society
photographer. The Anson family have been intimately involved with the village and its life over the centuries. Various ‘follies’ and sculptures have been erected in the Shugborough parkland, including the mysterious Shepherd’s Monument, which contains cryptic inscriptions and symbols, never satisfactorily deciphered (despite the best efforts of Josiah Wedgwood, Charles Darwin and the ‘Enigma’ code-breakers of Bletchley Park, among others). Legend links the code to the Knights Templar and the putative whereabouts of the Holy Grail. During WW2, the park housed a large American Military Hospital with over 1,000 beds, specialising in, and leading treatment of what is now known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Post war it became a POW camp, housing a number of notorious German war criminals.
The adjacent and ancient royal hunting ‘Forest of Cank’ once covered a much larger area of the county, which now, as Cannock Chase, is England’s smallest Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. By C16th its trees were much used to make charcoal for local iron manufacture. Sadly, in addition to damage from sheep grazing by Commoners, the unquenchable demand for charcoal to feed local forges and blast furnaces turned much of the ancient forest into heathland; so that, by C17th the furnaces were closed due to lack of fuel! The Chase was used for military training during both World Wars. Nowadays it is a mix of forest and heath, with some of the very ancient oak trees still remaining. The Chase is an immensely popular recreational resource.
It was on Cannock Chase, during WW1 that J.R.R. Tolkien, world famous author of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, underwent military training, prior to his going to fight on the Somme. Thousands of troops were billeted in the vast camps sited here. His wife Edith lodged in the village in 1916, where Tolkien could visit her on foot or by bicycle. Indeed their nuptial mass was said at the local Catholic Church of St John the Baptist. Ronald and his wife were finally able to be together later that year on his return from battle. During his time at Great Haywood (called ‘Tavrobel’ in his writings), he began, probably in early 1917, to write the very first book of his legendarium, set in Middle-earth – ‘The Book of Lost Tales’, completing the stories of, ‘The Cottage of Lost Play’ and the ‘Fall of Gondolin’. Here Ronald also worked on his invented languages, including Elvish. His writings were very much influenced by the happy time he and Edith spent in the village, where their first son John was conceived. Extensive detail of his sojourn here is given in this book, some never before published, which will be of particular interest to the world-wide Tolkien community.
Other notable people who have lived in the village include the literary giant Dr Samuel Johnson, and the notorious poisoner, Dr William Palmer. Rich accounts are also given from the 1881 census covering details of the inhabitants, buildings, businesses and facilities at that time. Later, the lives of all the dead from both World Wars are documented, as are the lives of numerous noteworthy village people. A C19th story is told about a crocodile, escaped perhaps from a passing fair and menagerie, which was found in a culvert and later, possibly, killed, although some recount that it was merely restrained!
Thus this expansive work of social history will be of interest not only to local people and historians, but to a much wider public; indeed, anyone wishing to read intricate accounts of life in a rural village over many centuries could do worse than start here.
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