30 Facts About Brewood

The name Pennocrucium is clearly associated with Penkridge, the town and parish north of Brewood, which is separated from it by the line of Watling Street, and these important remains do lie just outside the parish boundary.

The history of Brewood really begins with the Anglo-Saxon settlement, when it emerged as a village within Mercia.

At the Domesday survey, in 1086, Brewood fell within the Cuttlestone Hundred of Staffordshire.

Brewood was assessed for tax purposes as 5 hides, the hide being notionally an area of 120 acres, although at this time it had become simply a unit of tax liability, irrespective of actual area.

Shortly after deforestation, in 1221, a charter for a Friday market at Brewood was granted to the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield by King Henry III, suggesting considerable growth and increased prosperity since the Domesday survey.

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In 1382 the burgesses of Stafford tried to get Brewood's markets suppressed, claiming that they had been unlicensed for twenty years and injured their trade.

The priory of St Mary, Brewood, generally known as Blackladies, was a Benedictine house, to the west of the village.

Brewood conferred the right to elect their own prioress and decreed that their flocks and herds were to be free of tithes.

Brewood somehow persuaded the nuns of Blackladies to let him impose a tithe on sheep and lambs that belonged to other people but were kept on their land – a long-standing matter of dispute between the parish and the nunnery.

Brewood exchanged parcels of land with John de Horsbrok to rationalise the vicarage lands, and arranged to pay John and his successors the small annual rent of 3d.

Brewood was the centre of an essentially agricultural community throughout the Middle Ages and well into modern times.

Bishop's land in Brewood was farmed on a three-field system in the 14th century, and probably much earlier.

In 1851, William White reported that Brewood parish contained 6718 acres of arable land, 4040 of pasturage, and 1090 of woods, etc.

Brewood was, in fact, the centre of considerable, and often noisome, industry from an early date.

The lord of the manor of Brewood was letting out a forge by 1485 and there was probably iron production and working in the woodlands – a pattern very similar to that in nearby areas where rivers ran close by woods that could supply charcoal, as along the Smestow and the Stour.

Brewood was five times Sheriff of Staffordshire and was appointed Ranger of the Seven Hays of the Forest of Cank, i e Cannock Chase.

Brewood was already a major landowner in the area, a nabob whose fortune came from his adventures and trading deals in India.

Brewood's wealth gave him great influence and he was able to reshape the landscape to his requirements.

Network of alliances and patronage among the gentry of Brewood played a pivotal role in the escape of Charles II after his defeat by Parliamentary forces at the Battle of Worcester in 1651.

Brewood was accompanied in the oak by another recusant Catholic native of Brewood, Colonel William Careless of Broom Hall.

Catholic community at Brewood used the chapel at Chillington for baptisms and weddings from about 1721, but it was demolished to make way for the enlargement of the house around 1786.

An extension of the railway from Bushbury to Brewood was in the planning stage in 1874, but it never happened.

Between 1831 and 1901, the population of Brewood fell from almost 3800 to just over 2500 a reduction of about a third – perhaps a little exaggerated by the presence of migrant navvies at the earlier date.

Brewood acquired a coach stop, on the London to Liverpool run, only later, and that needed extra horses to get it over the bad road through Bishops Wood to Watling Street.

Brewood is considered a village in modern-times although its roots of a market town are still evident and it shares a similar status to nearby Penkridge which is considered a town more than a large village.

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The majority of the muddy or stony lanes that had isolated so much of the parish, including Brewood itself, yielded to tarmac between the wars or shortly after.

Road building gathered pace after World War II and Brewood was to find itself at a favoured corner of the motorway network – albeit after long delays in planning and execution.

Today, Brewood still retains amenities ranging from small local businesses to agricultural and other industrial estates.

Brewood is part of a two-tier system of local government, with an additional parish community council.

Brewood had been a part of Cannock Rural District since 1894, and was included in its predecessor, the Cannock Rural Sanitary District from its inception in 1875.