Hagley Historical and Field Society

Please note that there is a change of date for our March meeting. It will be held on Friday 7th and NOT the usual ‘First’ Tuesday of the month.

Our March meeting is a presentation by Colin Wooldridge on the topic ‘Reminiscences of Hagley and the Surrounding Area’.

Commences 8pm at St Saviour’s Church Hall, DY9 0NS. Visitors £2, including refreshments. Annual membership £10.

Our coach leaves Webbs Garden Centre at 10.00am and the village car park at 10.05am.

First stop is the restored Pump Rooms which are now occupied by Tenbury Town Council.  Our guided tour of the unusual building includes the well and a recreated bathroom.

We then walk a short distance to the recently restored art deco Regal cinema where we shall  tour the auditorium and museum.  There will then be a sandwich buffet with tea or coffee followed by a film.  We return to Hagley for about 5.00pm. 

The cost is £27 which includes coach, donations, lunch, film and tips.  Car parking has been arranged at Webbs Garden Centre at a cost of £1 per car, to be collected on the day.

The Social Evening will take place in St Saviour’s Church Hall, starting at 8.00pm.

Refreshments will be followed by videos of old Hagley.

Admission by ticket only, price £6.50.

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.

The private journal of ten year old Emily Pepys reveals her as ‘vocal and intelligent beyond her years’ and was written at her family home, Hartlebury Castle, in 1844. So said our speaker this month, Diana Clutterbuck as she outlined Emily’s life as a Bishop’s daughter and later as wife to Rev. Hon. William Henry Lyttelton, which gives her the connection with Hagley. Sadly, she died young but is still remembered through the ‘Emily Lyttelton Fund’ created in her memory for local nursing purposes.

We have a number of outings planned for the spring:

Coach Outing to Tenbury Wells – Thursday 10th April. We will have a guided visit around the restored Pump Rooms. Afterwards, we will visit the art deco Regal Cinema for a tour of the auditorium and museum. There will be a sandwich buffet with tea or coffee, followed by an appropriate film.

Following the well received presentation on Churchill Forge at last November’s meeting, there will be a car outing to the Forge on Tuesday 20th May. Further details will be available soon.

Car Outing to Canal Towpath Walk, Kidderminster – Saturday 14th June. Further details will be available soon.

Non-members are welcome to contact us either at one of our meetings or via our website to see if there are places available.

The April meeting on Tuesday 1st April sees Dr Gillian White presenting ‘Mary, Queen of Scots’. Visitors are most welcome at all our events – see website for details and contacts.

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.