Hagley Historical and Field Society

Our next meeting at St Saviour’s Church Hall is on Tuesday 5^th June 2018 at 8.00pm when we will have a presentation by Dr Gillian White entitled “Nicholas Hilliard and the Art of the Miniature”. Nicholas Hilliard was an Elizabethan goldsmith best known for his small oval portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I. Gillian White has visited us a number of times and we can be certain of a very entertaining evening. 

Commences 8pm at St Saviour’s Church Hall, DY9 0NS. Visitors are most welcome at all our events – see Home page for details.  Annual membership £10

The Belne Brook rises in the valley between Walton and Romsley Hills and flows westward for some nine miles to join the River Stour on the south side of Kidderminster where it is known as Hoo Brook. It had a large influence on the economic activity in our area supporting 25 mills from at least the 13^th century, gradually switching from corn milling to metal grinding as the industrial revolution took hold.

Our speaker this month, Tim Booth, informed us that the man who laid the foundation for Belbroughton’s supremacy in scythe making was Isaac Nash who brought Black Country expertise into the village. Nash served his apprenticeship as a forger and plater in Dudley before moving to Belbroughton to take over Newtown Forge in 1840.

At this time the Belbroughton mills worked in combination, one doing the forging or plating and another, the grinding and polishing. Isaac Nash was the first to integrate these processes by taking over neighbouring mills so that he could combine the whole process. By the 1880s Nash owned or rented some eleven mills and forges in the area employing more than one hundred workers.

Our next meeting at St Saviour’s Church Hall is on Tuesday 5^th June 2018 at 8.00pm when we will have a presentation by Dr Gillian White entitled “Nicholas Hilliard and the Art of the Miniature”. Nicholas Hilliard was an Elizabethan goldsmith best known for his small oval portrait miniatures of members of the courts of Elizabeth I and James I. Gillian White has visited us a number of times and we can be certain of a very entertaining evening. Visitors are most welcome at all our events – see hhfs.org.uk for details and contacts.

The idea for this new publication was originally developed by the late Dr Peter Bloore, who lived in Middlefield Lane. He was a member of Hagley Historical and Field Society and also Hagley Parish Archivist. His widow offered the file to the Archive Group and they decided that they would continue his research and aim at publishing a summary of his work plus contributions from people, who lived or had lived in the Lane or had first hand knowledge of the residents. The results are now available as an illustrated book of fifty-two pages.

Middlefield Lane front

Middlefield Lane back

The book is priced at £4 and can be purchased from Happy Families or can be ordered online from Hagley History and Field Society.

The book “Hagley Miscellanea” by John-Homery Folkes, the architect of St.Saviour’s Hall, was first published in 1974. It was for private circulation and only 25 copies were printed. Forty years later it is considered sufficiently interesting to merit this reprint. The author (born 1906) has gathered a wide range of reminiscences that together give a picture of Hagley’s inhabitants, houses, industries, celebrations and entertainments in the century and more before the explosion of house-building in the 1960s.

The book includes: the early days of the railway station; the building of St. Saviour’s church and planning the cemetery; houses large and small; an attempt at encroachment in Church Street; the Rifle Corps and the Range; the nursemaid question!; Hagley celebrities; the Sunday postal delivery and church attendance and an eyewitness account of the fire at Hagley Hall on Christmas Eve 1925. The “Illustrations” section includes the programme for the Coronation Celebration of June 1911.

The book is priced at £5 and can be purchased from Happy Families or can be ordered online from Hagley History and Field Society.

The Society has now launched a new book entitled ‘Hagley: A Village at War 1914 – 1918’, researched and written by local author and member, Pat Dunn. It is based on the ‘Hagley Parish Magazines’ of the period and describes how the people of Hagley dealt with the problems presented by the Great War on the Home Front. The people and places featured on the front cover of June’s issue of the Hagley Village News feature in the book along with many others.

The book is priced at £4 and can be purchased at the Hagley Library or ordered online. Click on the book cover below to view the first few pages.