Patrick Comerford
On my bus journeys from Stafford and Rugeley to Lichfield this week and last week, I stopped off at Wolseley Bridge to visit the Wolseley Arms and the Wolseley Centre. But I also spent time this week and last in Rugeley in a return visit to a town I had known well in my late teens and early 20s.
As I was recalling yesterday, I had written a number of features for the Rugeley Mercury and the Lichfield Mercury as I was setting out on a career in journalism in the early 1970s. In those youthful years I had many friends in Rugeley and neighbouring Brereton, and they often brought me on Sundays to folk masses with the Dominicans at Spode House or Hawkesyard, about two miles east of Brereton.
There were distant family links too, I like to imagine. Anne Comberford, the youngest sister of William Comberford of Tamworth and Wednesbury who took part in the siege of Lichfield during the English civil war, married Benjamin Rugeley in 1634. He was a younger brother of Colonel Simon Rugeley (1598-1666), an important Parliamentarian leader during the civil war.
Benjamin Rugeley lived at Dunstall in Tatenhill, north-east of Lichfield. He was a younger son of Richard Rugeley (1564-1623) of Shenstone and his wife Mary Rugeley, daughter and co-heir of Thomas Rugeley (1539-1623) of Hawkesyard in Armitage.
Benjamin’s brother, Colonel Simon Rugeley of Shenstone and Tatenhill, inherited Hawkesyard but sold it to Sir Richard Skeffington (1590-1647) of Fisherwick, MP for Tamworth and Staffordshire, a second cousin of the Comberfords of Comberford Hall, and whose son, Sir John Skeffington (1632-1695), eventually acquired Comberford Hall.
Anne’s niece, Dorothy Colman, married Thomas Chetwynd (1561-1633) of Rugeley, ancestor of the Chetwynd baronets.
Rugeley is on the north-east edge of Cannock Chase and close to the River Trent. It is about half-way between Lichfield, 13 km (8 miles) to the south, and Stafford, 16 km (10 miles) to the north-west, and has a population of about 26,000.
‘Rugelei’ was established by the Anglo-Saxons on a low ridge on a lea or clearing above the flood plain of the River Trent. William I confiscated the area from Edwin, son of Earl Aelfgar of Mercia, after a rebellion in 1071, and it is named in the Domesday Book (1086).
Rugeley was considered royal land and Cannock Chase was considered a royal forest. Richard the Lionheart sold Rugeley to the Bishop of Lichfield in 1189. Rugeley was still relatively small at this point. Rugeley had grown significantly by 1259 when Henry III granted a charter with the right to hold a weekly market and an annual three-day fair around Saint Augustine’s Day in early June. A weekly outdoor market continues to be held in the town.
The town thrived in the Middle Ages on iron workings and was also a site of glass manufacturing. During the Industrial Revolution the economy of Rugeley benefited first from the Trent and Mersey Canal and then from the arrival of the railway.
When Rugeley was held by the king as part of the confiscated lands of the Earls of Mercia. Richard I granted it to the Bishop of Lichfield in 1189 along with Cannock. By 1228 the overlordship of Brereton seems to have been held by the Bishop of Lichfield, and it descended with the manor of Rugeley until at least 1555.
The Dean and Chapter of Lichfield Cathedral, as rectors of Rugeley, leased the estate to Henry Puys in 1359. The estate had passed to Thomas Meverell by 1517, and it was inherited by his son Lewis Meverell who died in 1532.
Lewis Meverell’s daughter Mary married John Chetwynd of Ingestre and the house and lands passed in 1614 to his son Thomas Chetwynd (1561-1633) of Rugeley, who married Dorothy Colman, a niece of William Comberford and Anne (Comberford) Rugeley. The Chetwynd family derived their wealth chiefly from the local iron industry.
Rugeley was hit with two disastrous fires, in 1646 and again in 1709, There was a second disaster in 1709, when the Rising Brook that runs through Rugeley broke its banks and flooded the town that year. But the town survived these disasters and Rugeley was described in 1747 as ‘a handsome clean well-built town of exceeding pleasant and healthful situation’.
The Rugeley estate descended through generations of the Chetwynd family until it was sold as the ‘Manor’ of Rugeley in 1768 Thomas Anson of Shugborough, later Viscount Anson and ancestor of the Earls of Lichfield. The ‘ancient timber house’ that once belonged to the Chetwynd and Anson family, stood opposite the parish church and close to Anson Street and Market Street.
Rugeley was described in 1834 as ‘the largest and handsomest market town in the Cuttlestone hundred’ in Stafforshire. For hundreds of years, Rugeley was an agricultural community and held regular sheep, cattle and horse fairs. This reached its peak in the mid-19th century and lasted until the 1930s. To this day, a street in the town centre in called Horsefair.
During my afternoon visit, I failed to recognise any of the pubs I might have known with my friends in Rugeley in the early 1970s. But there were other familiar sights, and I recognised some of my old friends’ former family homes.
Rugeley Town Hall was built at the corner of the Market Place and Anson Street on the site of the Shoulder of Mutton Inn. The site was provided by the lord of the manor, Thomas Anson, 2nd Earl of Lichfield, whose seat was at Shugborough Hall. The town hall was designed by William Tadman-Foulkes in the Gothic Revival style and opened in 1879.
For 80 years, from 1894 to 1974, the town had its own town council, Rugeley Urban District Council, based at Rugeley Town Hall. The town hall was largely demolished in 1978 and the tall clock tower is all that remains of the building.
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Across the street from the former town hall, Landor House dates from 1649, when it was the residence of Erasmus Landor, a mercer. The earliest features are the doorway, cornice and enriched keystones, the two wings are later. Robert Landor made alterations in 1733, including a new frontage, and it was sold by his grandson, the poet Walter Savage Landor. in 1808. By 1892 it was a branch of the National and Provincial Bank, later part of the NatWest Bank, which closed its Rugeley branch in September 2017.
Lower Hall, the former residence of the Chetwynds, was demolished before 1800. It possibly stood on the site of the Old Post Office (1910), which is now joined to the former Rugeley Foresters Jubilee Hall and Institute, built in 1909.
The Penny Bank on Anson Street was first built in 1817 and was rebuilt in 1844 and again in 1995.
Rugeley was a centre of industrial scale deep-shaft coal mining from the 1950s. The Lea Hall Colliery opened in July 1960 and was the first modern coal mine opened by the National Coal Board. The Central Electricity Generating Board built the two Rugeley power stations, Rugeley A and Rugeley B, and Rugeley became a major centre for electricity generation. As a consequence, the town grew quickly in the 1960s.
Rugeley power station was shut in 2016. The cooling towers, which had dominated the surrounding landscape for miles around for decades, were demolished in stages in 2021. After the power station and the colliery closed, rail freight through Rugeley was also cut back and Rugeley suffered a rise in unemployment.
The Globe Island memorial at the junction of Western Springs Road, Brereton Hill and Hagley Road, has four 9-ft concrete statues recalling the town’s mining heritage and industrial past. The sculptures were installed in 2015 and depict miners from the Brereton and Lea Hall Collieries.
he Four Sculptures show feature different figures: the Brereton Miner represents early miners with a pike and cap; the Rescue Miner faces towards the former Hednesford mine rescue station; the Lea Hall Miner represents the later, modern era of mining; and the Family or Community Statue focuses on the role of the community.
Many families in Rugeley have links to the former mining communities, and as former mining towns, Rugeley and Brereton suffer from a level of social deprivation. Following many years of demolition and regeneration a number of large industrial units have been built on the Towers Business Park, and in recent years, with the new popularity of canals, the Trent and Mersey Canal has brought additional tourism to the area.
During my visits to Rugeley and Brereton in recent days, I also went for walks along the Trent and Mersey Canal in Rugeley and Armitage, and I went to see some of the churches, including the former church, primarily the tower and chancel of the former church, now known locally as the ‘Old Chancel’; Saint Augustine’s Church, built in 1822-1823 to replace the mediaeval parish church; Saint Joseph and Saint Etheldreda, the Gothic Revival Catholic church designed by Charles Hansom and built in 1849-1851; Saint Michael's Church in Brereton; the Methodist Church in Brereton; and the former Dominican Chapel at Spode House or Hawkesyard Hall, near Armitage.
But more about the churches of Rugeley, hopefully, in the days to come – and perhaps some stories about the canal and the pubs, and about some gruesome murders in the area too, one involving the Chetwynd family, and the others ending in burials in the churchyards.
