Hagley Historical and Field Society

Our May meeting is a Social Evening with admission by ticket only. There will be refreshments followed by the showing of ‘Videos of Old Hagley’.

‘Videos’ will include the Queen’s Visit to Hagley in 1957, Betty Hill’s video of Hagley to celebrate the 2000 millennuim and the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977.

Commences 8pm at St Saviour’s Church Hall, DY9 0NS. The ticket price is £6.50. Please contact us to check availability. 

Annual membership £10.

This outing follows on from our November 2013 meeting ‘Churchill Forge’ by Pauline and Geoff Hayward.

We meet at the Forge at 10.30am for a tour which will last about an hour.   Afterwards lunch is at the Old House at Home in Blakedown.

The cost of the tour is £4.

We meet at 10am at Carters Furniture Store car park for a 2 hour canal walk.  Our guide will be Melvyn Thompson from the Museum of Carpet who will take us as far as Limekiln Bridge.  Maximum 30 participants.

Afterwards lunch is at the Watermill (Stourport Road) where light meals are under £5 and main meals are two for the price of one.

The cost of the walk is £3.

Colin Wooldridge is a respected local author and historian, who in collaboration with one of our members, Pat Dunn, has produced a series of books showing the past and present of Lye and Wollescote. He was the speaker for our March meeting and his subject was ‘Reminiscences of Hagley and the Surrounding Area’.  He showed us a selection of the ‘then’ and ‘now’ photographs of our area which he has collected over the past 20 years. His presentation, interspersed with Black Country humour, was well received and brought back memories to many of our members who have had a long association with Hagley.

There is currently much media coverage of the centenary of the start of First World War. This has concentrated mainly on the causes and horrors of the war. However, little has been said about how this war affected the daily lives people in rural Britain and how they coped with food shortages, rising prices and the anxiety of having loved ones fighting abroad and perhaps not returning. So, drawing on material from the Hagley Parish Magazines of the period, we are publishing a book in May. It will show how Hagley people rose to these challenges by fund raising, volunteering for territorial service, keeping up community spirits with local entertainments and growing additional food in the newly created allotments.        

Our next meeting on Tuesday 6^th May at 8pm, is a social event with admission by ticket only. There will be refreshments followed by the showing of ‘Videos of Old Hagley’. Please contact us to check ticket availability.

To mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, many towns and villages are reviewing the state of their monuments and the existence of documents which record the efforts and sacrifices made by their forbears during this conflict. The Society wishes to record the attitudes, activities and contributions of the people of Hagley during this war as recorded in the pages of the ‘Hagley Parish Magazines’ published throughout the period.

 For interest, here is an extract from the diary of the Hagley Parish Magazine for September 1914:

 …… “A meeting was held on Sunday afternoon, August 9^th at the Hall Barn to consider how best Hagley could help in ‘the current crisis’. The Rector opened with a prayer, Lord Cobham  who presided, described the situation and explained the movement that was going forward in Stourbridge to provide hospital arrangements should they prove necessary. He proposed that a collection should be made called ‘The Hagley War Fund’. This was unanimously agreed by all present and £63 (£6,155 today) was collected. Mr. Downing consented to be Treasurer. Some of the money was going to the Red Cross and a Ladies Committee had been formed to deal with the money and the arrangement of the work, most of which had already been done. A guarantee fund had also been raised to meet the cost of maintaining the hospital if required.

             Lady Cobham had set up the Queen Mary’s Needlework Guild and said she would be very glad to accept any garments for distribution to the destitute. The Queen wished there to be collecting centres and had asked Lady Cobham to undertake the centre for Worcestershire. Distribution was to be made either by a committee or through the Needlework Guild to ‘the impoverished parishes of Worcestershire and Staffordshire’.

             Hagley Scouts had been founded two years earlier and on August 14^th a meeting of the District Committee for the Hagley Scouts Association was held at the Hall where Lord Cobham presided. Matters were discussed and arrangements made ‘as to the employment and use of the Scouts at the present time, in guarding important places needing protection and for carrying messages’. Other matters were still under consideration.”………

 Due to painstaking research by Don Freeth on the Hagley War Memorial, we have a good knowledge of the villagers who died in the conflict but we have incomplete records of those who served and survived. To supplement this research we would be interested to hear of any names, stories, diaries, letters or pictures which your family might have of Hagley relatives or friends who served or were involved on the ‘home front’. This will help add to the story of Hagley’s involvement. We can be contacted via our website hhfs.org.uk or the Secretary on 01562 884820.