Patrick Comerford
My 10-mile trek through the countryside and along narrow country lanes in south Staffordshire last week, starting and ending in Tamworth, took me through Wigginton, Comberford, Coton and Hopwas – villages, hamlets and forgotten places on the edges of Tamworth and mostly in the area of Lichfield District Council.
My first stop was in Wigginton, a village in the civil parish of Wigginton and Hopwas, about two or three miles north of Tamworth and seven miles east of Lichfield. I was there mainly to see Saint Leonard’s Church and to reacquaint myself with the history of Wigginton and its centuries-long links with the Comberford family.
As well as Saint Leonard’s Church, the Grade II listed church I described in a posting yesterday (3 May 2026), Wigginton has a school, a pub (the Old Crown), and an interesting war memorial on the small village green below the church, at the junction with Comberford Lane.
The name Wigginton is believed to come from Old English, meaning ‘Wicga's Farm’. The village lies on the Portway, a medieval trade route possibly used to transport salt from the River Mease at Edingale to Tamworth.
In church life in the past, Wigginton was a chapelry attached to Saint Editha’s Parish and Collegiate Church in Tamworth. For civil government purposes it had been a township – the township was more than just the village, and included the hamlets of Comberford and Coton, although Coton is now part of the borough of Tamworth.
Within the modern village is a shrunken mediaeval village, visible as a series of pronounced earthworks to the north end of the village, and a mediaeval ridge and furrow still to be seen in the surrounding fields.
To the south-west of the village is the former site, now ploughed out, of a probable once known as ‘Robin Hood’s Butt’. There have been several finds of archaeological interest near the village. To the north-west, in a flat area once called the ‘Money Lands’, human bones and ancient coins, thought to be Roman, were found in the 18th century.
But while Robin Hood may have had no real historical connections with Wigginton, the Manor of Wigginton which had been in the hands of the Nevilles since soon after the Norman Conquest, and the Comberford family and their descendants had real interests in Wigginton for centuries, from the beginning of the 12th century until the late 18th century.
During the reign of Henry I (1100-1135), Alanus de Comberford held lands at Wigginton and Comberford near Tamworth and in Chesterfield and Shenstone near Lichfield. A generation or two later, Alanus de Comberford was dominus de Comberford in 1166 and died before 1183. He received a grant of the manor and lands of Wigginton from Thomas fitzRobert, who may have been a nephew of Hugh Flamvile.
Philip Marmion was granted the Lordship of the Manor of Wigginton in the 1260s and of both the Staffordshire and Warwickshire sides of Tamworth for life. However, by royal command, the lordship of the Staffordshire half of Tamworth and the manor of Wigginton were returned to the descendants of Henry de Hastings in 1285.
Alan de Comberford, son of Alan de Comberford, claimed Wigginton Manor in 1278 but he was sued by the Marmion family for £10 in damages caused in fields in Coton and Wigginton, both within a mile of Comberford.
Roger de Comberford, Lord of Comberford, was living in 1256, and in 1266 he was at an inquisition in Tamworth on the extent of the king’s manor in Wigginton and Tamworth. In 1286, Roger de Cumberford and five others were accused by Philip Marmion of entering his Manor of Wigginton, breaking open his houses, cutting down his trees and carrying off goods and chattels. None of the defendants appeared at the court hearing in Bristol, and the Sheriff was ordered to arrest them.
Richard Comberford, who succeeded to the Comberford estates on the death of his brother John de Comberford, was living in 1386, when he authorised his seal to be used on behalf of Wigginton.
Thomas Comberford (1472-1532), who succeeded to the family estates in Comberford and Wigginton, was admitted to membership of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist in Lichfield in 1495. In 1514, he secured full rights over the manor of Wigginton in 1512, along with a mill, land and rentals in Wigginton, Hopwas, Coton, Comberford and Tamworth.
When Thomas Comberford died in 1532, his estates included the Manor of Wigginton with large tracts of land in Wigginton, Hopwas, Coton, Comberford and Tamworth and the Manor of Comberford, held of their heirs of Lord Abergavenny by fealty.
Between 1553 and 1555, the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford, took an action against Humphrey Cumberford, seeking rent from the Manors of Wigginton and Comberford of £29 a year first given to the Masters, Fellows and Scholars of Christ Church by the heirs of George Neville, Lord Abergavenny. Christ Church was originally founded by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1525, was refounded by Henry VIII in 1532, and was renamed Christ Church in 1546, when the college chapel also became the cathedral of the Diocese of Oxford.
The Nevilles of Abergavenny sold Wigginton Manor to Thomas Comberford during the reign of Philip and Mary (1553-1558). He held the Manor of Comberford in perpetuity from the heirs of George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, with a ground rent of £29 payable annually to ‘the masters, fellows and scholars of Christ’s College, Oxford,’ that is, Christ Church, Oxford, who had acquired the right to this charge from Roland Hill. This estate included the Manor of Comberford and lands in Hopwas, Wigginton, Coton, Chesterfield, Tamworth and Comberford.
Thomas Comberford, his wife Dorothy, and his son and heir, William, were holding the Manors of Comberford, Wigginton and Wednesbury in 1592. His son, William Comberford, moved to the Moat House in Tamworth, and attempted to assert his rights as Lord of the Manor of the Staffordshire part of the town, on the grounds that Tamworth and Wigginton had once been joined when they were held by the Hastings family and that he was the Lord of the Manor of Wigginton.
William bolstered his claims by pointing out that as Lord of the Manor of Wigginton he had received the fee farm rent of 100 shillings from the bailiffs of Tamworth in equal quarterly sums of 25 shillings, that he held the court leet of Wigginton in Tamworth’s Staffordshire town hall, and that he and his son, Humphrey Comberford, had asserted their right to proclaim fairs in the town.
However, after a prolonged three-year lawsuit taken by the bailiffs of Tamworth, his claim was rejected, he was refused the right to proclaim the fairs and the Court of Chancery issued an injunction against him in 1599, ordering him not to call himself Lord of the Manor of Tamworth again.
While William Comberford was involved in this dispute with the Ferrers family over political, family and religious affairs in Tamworth, he was also the subject of legal action by the Dean and Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford, who took him to court in 1602, demanding £29 a year from the Manors of Wigginton and Comberford and lands and tenements in Wigginton, Comberford, Hopwas, Coton and Tamworth.
The Dean and Chapter of Christ Church continued their legal actions seeking £29 a year from the Manors of Wigginton and Comberford, taking William Comberford to court again in 1629.
In 1636, William Comberford made a sublease for 16 years to Sir John Curzon of all his Staffordshire lands with a mortgage of £1,000. The legal documents specifically mentions the manors of Wednesbury, Wigginton and Comberford. By 1649, William Comberford was in a position to claim back his lands, but he was heavily in debt. In 1650, he sold the manors of Bolehall and Perrycrofts to Francis Curzon, paying off his debts and using lands in Tamworth, Coton, Hopwas, Comberford, Wiggington and Bolehall as security.
After he English Civil War, Robert Comberford and his brother John Comberford leased the Manor of Comberford and Wigginton and other property in Staffordshire to John Birch, William Bromwich and John Hopkins in 1664 for 20 years. The lease may have been a form of mortgage or a trust for the benefit of his wife Catherine Comberford and their two daughters, Mary and Ann, for despite this lease Robert and his family continued to live at Comberford Hall.
Catherine Comberford continued to live at Comberford Hall until she died in 1718. Her will, written in Latin, was made on 18 January 1716 and shows Catherine still held land in Wigginton, a cottage in Hopwas, and some property in Cawford Meadow, Tamworth, which she divided between her granddaughters, Catherine Brooke and Mary Grosvenor, wife of Sherrington Grosvenor of Tamworth.
A descendant of this branch of the family, Sherrington Grosvenor, was living in Langley, Buckinghamshire in 1771, when he leased his last remaining lands in Comberford and Wigginton to John Millington of Tamworth.
The last tenuous link the descendants of the Comberford family had with Wigginton came to an end in 1771, six year before Saint Leonard’s Church was built or rebuilt on the site of the mediaeval chapel in Wigginton. Howard Francis Paget of Elford, was the lord of the manor in the 1890s.
Wigginton, with Comberford and Syerscote, were formed into a church parish in the Diocese of Lichfield on 14 March 1856. The population of Wigginton township was 670 in 1861, when it covered an area of 1,400 ha (3,470 acres). The figure included the residents of the Tamworth workhouse, which at that time lay within the township.
The township became a civil parish in 1866 and part of Tamworth Rural District in 1894. Then, 40 years later, in 1934, it became part of Lichfield Rural District, when the parish of Hopwas Hays was merged with Wigginton, while parts of Wigginton were moved to Fisherwick and Harlaston. The new parish was renamed Wigginton and Hopwas in 1993.
The Grade II listed buildings in Wigginton village include two or three houses and Saint Leonard’s Church.
The village War Memorial, below the church on the small village green at the junction with Comberford Lane, includes a memorial to Samuel Parkes (1815-1864), a Wigginton-born private in the 4th Light Dragoons who was decorated with the Victoria Cross for his part in the Charge of the Light Brigade, when he saved the life of Trumpeter Hugh Crawford.
From the War Memorial, I set off along Comberford Lane and Wigginton Lane on to Comberford, to visit Comberford Hall, to search yet again for the site of the old manor house, to walk by the banks of the River Tame, and to look for the site of Comberford Windmill. But these are stories for another day, hopefully.
