Castle Bromwich History Archives

Castle Bromwich Lord dies at Bosworth alongside Richard III

March 23, 2015 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

The remarkable discovery in 2012 of the skeleton of King Richard III, beneath a car park in Leicester, has provoked renewed interest in the Battle of Bosworth of 1485.

Although Richard III is the most famous casualty at Bosworth Field, over a thousand supporters of Richard and Henry Tudor also lost their lives in the fighting. Among the dead was the lord of the manor of Castle Bromwich.

Sir Walter Devereaux Inherits His Wife’s Titles

Walter Devereux's Coat of Arms (1485) — Walter Devereux’s Coat of Arms (1485)

Walter Devereux and Anne Ferrers were married in 1444. Walter’s father was the Chancellor of Ireland; Anne’s father was one of the landed gentry whose many estates included the manor of Castle Bromwich. On their wedding day Walter Devereux was 13 years old and Anne was just 7. When Anne’s father died at the age of 38, his titles passed to his daughter. She too died young at only 34 and her lands and titles, including the lordship of Castle Bromwich, then passed to Sir Walter.

This was the time of Wars of the Roses. The houses of York and Lancaster and their supporters were battling for the crown. Walter Devereux was an active Yorkist supporter. Indeed, for his bravery at the Battle of Towton, he had been knighted by King Edward IV on the battlefield in driving snow on Palm Sunday 1461.

The Battle Of Bosworth

Now, on a Monday morning 24 years later, Sir Walter sat astride his horse in a Leicestershire field alongside Edward’s brother, Richard, king for just two years. The date was August 22nd 1485.

12,000 of Richard’s men were prepared for battle near the village of Market Bosworth. Sir Walter had with him his own men, many of them tenants of his manors summoned to support the Yorkist cause. Numbered among them on that fateful day may well have been Castle Bromwich men.

Richard’s large army held a good position on the top of Ambion Hill, while his Lancastrian challenger, Henry Tudor, with a force less than half that of the King’s, was positioned in the marshy valley below. However, Henry had with him skilled Welsh longbowmen. Their deadly arrows injured and killed many of the Yorkist army, even before the battle had begun. Then the opposing forces met and the battle raged for three hours. Hundreds on both sides were injured or killed. And among those to die was Sir Walter Devereux fighting alongside the King.

Richard and Sir Walter are Killed

To cut a complicated story short: Richard decided to end the battle by killing Henry Tudor himself. Charging directly at him, he killed Henry’s standard-bearer Sir Percival Thirlwall and came to within a sword’s length of Henry. However, he was thrown from his horse by Henry’s bodyguard, losing his helmet as he fell. Fighting manfully, he died from several vicious blows to the head. The Yorkist army fled.

Richard’s crown was found in a bush near where he had fallen and Henry Tudor had himself crowned then and there on the battlefield, King Henry VII.

Richard’s body was stripped naked, thrown across a donkey and paraded round the field of battle, before being taken to Leicester to be displayed to the public. Henry wanted there to be no doubt as to the death of the Yorkist king. Richard’s body was taken to the Greyfriars’ church in Leicester before being buried in an unmarked grave where it lay for 527 years before being discovered.

As for Sir Walter Devereux, his body was one of a thousand others that were later taken to nearby St James’ church at Dadlington and there buried in a mass grave. The burial is unmarked and the exact location in unknown.

John Devereux Receives His Father’s Estates

Henry’s retribution against the supporters of the dead king was to confiscate their lands and titles. But, as chance would have it, Sir Walter’s son, John Devereux had been a boyhood friend of Henry Tudor and so his father’s estates and titles were given back to him, including the manor of Castle Bromwich.

The extent of Sir Walter’s connection with Castle Bromwich is not known. Landed gentry such as he had lands across the country and more than one residence. However, it may be that the church at Castle Bromwich was rebuilt during his time.

From the 12th to the 15th century, Castle Bromwich had only a small stone chapel, the size of the present chancel. Around the middle of the 15th century a large timber-framed church was added to this, making up roughly the area of the present nave. This may well have been at the instigation of Sir Walter, a clear and outward sign that the manor had passed from the Ferrers family to the Devereux.

Connection With Castle Bromwich Remains

The present heir of Sir Walter, is the Viscount Hereford. Although the Devereux family sold the lordship of the manor to Sir Orlando Bridgeman in 1710, Viscount Hereford is the 16th baronet of Castle Bromwich and is the patron of the Castle Bromwich Bell Restoration Project, an ambitious scheme to renovate and augment the bell installation.

(For more information, visit the bellringers’ website – http://cbbells.webs.com.)

From the single bell that rang out in the 15th century, the ringers hope to have a peal of eight in place in the near future.

Two Accidents At Castle Bromwich

February 25, 2015 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

The First World War saw the deaths of many young recruits who were training to be pilots at Castle Bromwich airfield. These were the very early days of aviation and knowledge and understanding of flight was in its infancy.

There was also a very great urgency to get pilots to the Front to fight the German invaders. Safety measures then were not what they are now. Indeed the engineers working on the planes and those training the new pilots had themselves little experience of aeroplanes and aviation.

2nd Lieutenant David Billings

Not all of the young pilots were British. They came to Castle Bromwich from the countries of the British Empire and some of them died and were buried here far from home.

2nd Lieutenant David Billings was of Canadian origin, although at the time of his training in England, his father was a church minister in Chicago, USA. Surprisingly, the squadron to which Billings was attached was the 71st, a unit that had been set up in 1916 as part of the Australian Flying Corps in Melbourne, Australia, after which it was stationed at Castle Bromwich.

In September the following year Lieutenant Billings fell to his death. Part of the training of the Royal Flying Corps was aerial acrobatics.

While his Avro training plane was upside down, Billings’ safety straps broke and he fell out of the plane and was killed outright when he hit the ground. His aircraft crashed into a wood near Water Orton.

David Kitto Billings was buried in Castle Bromwich graveyard and is commemorated in the Canadian Book of Remembrance in the Peace Tower in Ottawa.

When the War ended, sadly the deaths at Castle Bromwich airfield did not.

Edwin Hayne DSC

1919 Edwin Tufnell Hayne — Edwin Hayne DSC

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1895, Edwin Hayne joined the Royal Navy Air Service in 1916. He was posted to France in 1917 with the No.3 Naval Squadron and flew Sopwith Camels, a fighter plane noted for its manoeuvrability.

Hayne became his squadron’s top ace with a record of downing 15 German planes in the air between August 1917 and June 1918. On one of his first sorties in August 1917, he attacked a German airfield and put a whole flight of aircraft out of action with his machine gun.

In 30th November 1917 Hayne carried out 48 special missions. Flying at low altitude he inflicted heavy casualties on enemy troops and transport.

Edwin Hayne was later awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

After the end of the First World War, Hayne continued to fly with RAF.

1919 Edwin Hayne Bristol_F2 — Bristol F2

In April 1919 he took off from Castle Bromwich in a Bristol F2 with a passenger, Major Maurice Perrin, on board. When the aircraft’s engine stalled, he turned to come back in to land but the plane crashed killing Edwin Hayne on impact; the Major died later in hospital.

Edwin Tufnell Hayne is buried in a private grave in Castle Bromwich graveyard.

The inscription reads: Faced danger and passed from the sight of men by the path of duty and self sacrifice.

Acknowledgements: This article has been developed from research by Terrie Knibb and the Castle Bromwich Youth & Community Partnership. For more information about the Castle Bromwich Graveyard Project go to http://castlebromwichgraveyard.co.uk/

Castle Bromwich Lords of the Manor – a link with the Middle Ages

May 5, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

Some local people may be surprised to learn that a modern suburb on the edge of Birmingham still has a lord of the manor. Although the powers and privileges once enjoyed by the medieval lords are long gone, Richard Bridgeman, the 7th Earl of Bradford is nonetheless the lord of the manor of Castle Bromwich.

Lord of the Manor

Unlike the peerage, the title of lord of the manor is not a hereditary one. It may be bequeathed in an individual’s will or may be bought and sold. There were certainly Anglo-Saxon lords of the manor before Norman Conquest, but the feudal system proper was developed from the time of William the Conqueror.

William placed the King at the top of the pyramid with all land and power invested in him. Owing service to him was a large number of overlords who had rights usually over a number of manors. They were then owed service by lords of the manor who paid their dues in cash or kind or, as the King demanded, by supplying knights and men for battle. The inhabitants of the manors then owed onerous dues of payment in labour or in kind (livestock, crops, etc) as well as charges for use of the manorial mill or bakery, for grazing pasture pigs on manorial woodland, and payments on marriage or death. Remnants of the system lasted until the Victorian era.

The de Bromwich family

After the Norman Conquest Castle Bromwich was a sub-manor of Aston. The overlord was the Baron of Dudley, Ansculf de Picquiny, a lieutenant of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. This was one of Ansculf’s many holdings.

Ansculf gave the manor to (presumably) one of his trusted followers, probably one of the knights who had accompanied him at the Battle of Hastings. Ralph was recorded as the lord of (Castle Bromwich) in the Domesday Book in 1086.

The present system of surnames did not exist in the middle Ages. People were given tags to distinguish them from others with the same Christian name. People who had moved from their place of birth and the nobility who were associated with a particular place often took the place name as their ‘surname’.

Sometime during the 12th century the manorial family took de (of) Bromwich as their surname. In 1168 Wido de Bramewic is mentioned, in 1185 Alan de Bromwych and in 1287 both Henry de Chastel de Bromwych and Robert de Brumwyk. This is assumed to be father-to-son descent, but the relationships are uncertain.

De la Roche and Ferrers

Three generations after Robert, Isabella de Bromwich inherited the manor. In about 1350 she was married to Sir John de la Roche, a wealthy Pembrokeshire landowner.

Their son Thomas de la Roche married Elizabeth, the daughter of Thomas de Bermingham thus acquiring additional property locally. On the death of his father he inherited lands in Wales and also in Ireland. Thomas was succeeded by his two daughters, Ellen, the younger, receiving Castle Bromwich manor. She was the wife of Sir Edmund Ferrers of Chartley, Staffordshire, a noteworthy knight who had fought at the battle of Agincourt with Henry V.

The Devereux family

When Sir Edmund Ferrers died in 1435 he was succeeded by his son William Ferrers. The latter was succeeded in 1450 by his daughter Anne Ferrers, the wide of Sir Walter Devereux of Weobley in Herefordshire. He was aged 13 at the time of their marriage; she was 6 years old. A strong supporter of the House of York, he was created Lord Ferrers by Edward IV after the Battle of Towton (Wars of the Roses) in 1461. Sir Walter was killed in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth fighting for the last Yorkist king, Richard III. As a result all of his lands, including the manor of Castle Bromwich, were seized by the victorious Henry VII. However, these were later restored to his son John Devereux.

The Devereux Tomb at Aston Parish Church — The Devereux Tomb at
Aston Parish Church

The manor then passed down through the Devereux family. In 1549 Walter Devereux was created Viscount of Hereford and in 1611 his son, Sir Edward Devereux, was created 1st Baronet of Castle Bromwich by King James I. He is attributed with building the first Castle Bromwich Hall. (Evidence does, however, suggest that a medieval predecessor may have stood on the same site). Sir Edward is buried with his Catherine beneath an elaborate monument at Aston church.

The manor then descended, though not straightforwardly, to Anne Devereux who sold both the manor and the hall in 1657 to Sir Orlando Bridgeman. Some parcels of land in Castle Bromwich were passed down through the Devereux family, but the remainder was finally sold in 1712, when a bankrupt linen-draper, George Devereux of Shoreditch sold the last holding of his family. The baronetcy of Castle Bromwich continued to the 9th baronet, Sir Edward Devereux. On his death in 1783 in Montgomeryshire, the title became extinct.

Arms of de la Roche, Ferrers, , Ferrers impaling Bermingham, Ferrers quartered with Devereux, Devereux — Arms of de la Roche, Ferrers, Ferrers impaling Bermingham, Ferrers quartered with Devereux, Devereux.

The Bridgeman family

Sir Orlando Bridgeman was a lawyer who held a number of important national posts. A Royalist supporter, he nonetheless successfully survived the uncertainties of the English Civil Wars. Orlando rose under Charles II to become the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, one of the great offices of state.

Orlando had bought Castle Bromwich manor and hall for his son in 1657, Sir John Bridgeman I; it may have been a wedding present. Although a qualified barrister, it was to his father’s regret that he never practised. He lived at Castle Bromwich Hall until his death in 1710 at the age of 80. He is buried in Aston church, and is commemorated with his wife Mary by an elaborate tablet which describes him as ‘a pattern of Christian Piety, a tender Husband, a most affectionate Father, a steady friend, Liberal to the poor and kind to his neighbours.’

002b Lords of the Manor 1a john brdigeman II — Sir John Bridgeman II

His son, Sir John Bridgeman II, also a qualified barrister, inherited in 1710 and subsequently extended and enlarged the hall to its present state. Sir John also had the medieval timber church and its Norman stone chancel encased in brick in the fashionable Renaissance style.

When in 1762 Sir Henry Bridgeman, grandson of the latter, inherited Weston Park, Shropshire from his uncle, he moved the household to this much grander residence making it the family seat. In 1794 Sir Henry was created Baron Bradford by King George III and in 1815 his son Orlando, 2nd Baron Bradford, was created 1st Earl of Bradford.

After the family’s move to Weston-under-Lizard, Castle Bromwich Hall was usually let. However, George, 4th Earl of Bradford spent most of his married life there and his widow, the Dowager Countess, Lady Ida lived here until her death in 1936.

The Rt Hon. Richard Bridgeman, 7th Earl of Bradford.

The hall was then let as offices, remaining in the family until 1969 when it was sold. It has now been carefully restored as a hotel.

The present Lord Bradford, Richard Bridgeman, the 7th Earl, is now the lord of the manor and the patron of the living of Castle Bromwich church.

Castle Bromwich in the Domesday Book – or is it?

May 2, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

002a CB at Domesday Book entry — The Bromwich entry in the Domesday Book. Image free to use from Domesday Online – domesdaymap.co.uk – Credits: Professor John Palmer of Hull University, George Slater and Anna Powell-Smith.

It is not absolutely certain that the Bromwich found in William the Conqueror’s Domesday Survey of 1086 is Castle Bromwich. A manor appears as Bramewice amongst the Northamptonshire entries; this is a mistake as there is no manor of that name in the county.

It is argued by some that the entry refers to West Bromwich which is not found in the Staffordshire entries. They argue that Castle Bromwich is unlikely to have had an entry of its own as historically it belonged to Aston manor. However, West Bromwich itself belonged to Handsworth. Furthermore, Castle Bromwich’s neighbour Water Orton is also found in the Northamptonshire entries and it too was part of Aston.

The Domesday Book was, in effect, an assessment of property for tax purposes. It was compiled with remarkable speed, in less than a year, and is written in abbreviated Latin. The entry for Castle Bromwich may be translated as:

Ralph holds 3 hides from William. There is land for 3 ploughteams. In the demesne 1 ploughteam, 10 villeins and 3 bordars have 3 ploughteams. Woodland 1 league long and half a league wide. The value was and is 40 shillings. Brictwin held it.

The Domesday Book – Some Explanation

Ralph holds 3 hides from William.
Ralph was the Norman lord in 1086. It is likely that he had been given the manor soon after William’s success at Hasting in 1066. Ralph was the tenant of William Fitzansculf, who was the overlord of Castle Bromwich. With his seat at Dudley Castle, William Fitzansculf was directly answerable to the King. Fitzansculf had inherited a large number of manors and overlordships from his father who had died shortly before the Doomsday Survey. It is probable that Ralph had been a captain with William and / or his father at Hastings and Castle Bromwich was his reward.

A hide was a measure of land and was usually reckoned as 120 acres. In Anglo-Saxon times it was originally understood to be the area of land sufficient to support a family, but was later used to calculate a household’s tax liability. Prior to the Norman Conquest the hide was a variable measure of area, depending on the suitability of the land for agriculture. During the Norman period it generally became standardised as 120 acres.

002a CB at Domesday castle conjectural-1 — Possible appearance of Bromwich Castle at Domesday.
Image by David Adams from Castle Bromwich and its Church: A Brief History 2013, a booklet sponsored by Halls Garden Centre – http://www.hallsgardencentre.com

There is land for 3 ploughteams.
An Anglo-Saxon ploughteam usually comprised 8 oxen. However, the term is used in the Domesday Book as a measure of land; a ploughland was the area of land that could be cultivated by one ploughteam. The cultivated land consisted of a number of very large open fields which ran down from the Hall estate to the River Cole at Bucklands End. The traditional crop rotation was to have one field growing peas and beans, a second used for cereal crops and a third lying fallow grazed by livestock. Each field was divided into strips with villagers having a number of strips in each field. This was to ensure that, in theory, everyone had an equal share of good and poor land.

In the demesne 1 ploughteam.
The term demesne referred to the land that the lord of the manor held privately. Each household owed service to the lord and members of the family were obliged to spend time cultivating the lord’s fields.

10 villeins and 3 bordars have 3 ploughteams.
No serfs are recorded in Castle Bromwich in the Domesday Book. They were the lowest class of people and the term equates to slave. Villein was the next class up and comprised the vast bulk of medieval society. They were peasants tied to the manor who rented land from the lord and paid in kind i.e. they gave the lord a percentage of their produce and / or laboured on the lord’s demesne. Villeins generally farmed enough land to be self-sufficient.

The term bordar is usually translated as cottager or smallholder. They were more free than villeins and would have a house and a small amount of land freely rented from the lord. As they might not have land enough to be self-sufficient, they often subsisted either by working on the land of others, or by having a marketable skill. Craftsmen such as blacksmiths, wheelwrights and coopers, were classified as bordars.

At Castle Bromwich there was land for 3 ploughteams and there were 3 ploughteams; all the available arable land was being farmed.

Woodland 1 league long and half a league wide.
Woodland was a valuable resource in medieval England. Trees were used for timber, coppiced trees provided a continuous supply of fencing materials, fallen branches provided firewood, there were a variety of different edible plants and woodland provided pasture for livestock.
A league was 1.5 miles, so the woodland here measured ¾ square mile in area, not necessarily all in one place. Remnants of ancient woodland survive on the north side of the M6 motorway in Castle Bromwich.

The value was and is 40 shillings.
40 shillings is manor’s value for tax purposes. Two values are given in the Domesday listings; the first at the time of King Edward, then the current value in 1086. The Anglo-Saxon king before the successful invasion of William of Normandy was King Harold. However, William held that he had been promised the throne of England by Harold’s predecessor, Edward the Confessor. Harold, who reigned for less than a year, was not recognised as king by William. Because of the disruption caused by the Norman Conquest, the value of many manors was lower by 1086 than it had been 20 years previously. In the case of Castle Bromwich, the value remained the same.

Brictwin held it.
Domesday entries begin with the name of the current lord of the manor, invariably a Norman, and end with the name of the previous lord, invariably an Anglo-Saxon. The manor now held by the Norman Ralph was formerly in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon Brictwin. Few Anglo-Saxons continued to hold onto their lands after 1066. While peasant life must have continued much the same after the Conquest, the quality of life for most of the surviving Anglo-Saxon nobility must have been dramatically worse.

No priest is mentioned. Castle Bromwich church was very likely here at that time but was a chapel of Aston, where the Domesday Book does list a priest. Although the population was small, the priest had responsibility for an area west to east from Deritend to after Water Orton and north to south from Erdington to Bucklands End.

In the Birmingham area the manors were sparsely populated and poor. Birmingham itself, with only some 50 inhabitants, was one of the poorest.

Conjectural drawing of the first Castle Bromwich church in the Norman period based on Henry Beighton’s drawing of the church before encasement - from William Dugdale 1730 Antiquities of Warwickshire. — Conjectural drawing of the first Castle Bromwich church in the Norman period based on Henry Beighton’s drawing of the church before encasement – from William Dugdale 1730 Antiquities of Warwickshire.

Castle Bromwich – a part of Aston

Manors had generally more than one centre of population, though often these were tiny hamlets. Castle Bromwich was part of the large manor of Aston, which had settlements at Bordesley, Deritend, Duddeston, Heybarnes, Little Bromwich, Park Hall, Saltley, Ward End and Water Orton. With less than a dozen families in Castle Bromwich, a few would have their cottages on the Chester Road near Castle Bromwich Hall, while the others were scattered thinly across the manor.

In the whole of the Birmingham area there was only a population of some 1000 people; Warwickshire had perhaps 24,000, with a majority on the better agricultural lands in the south of the county.

At Domesday the Forest of Arden still covered much of the county north of Stratford-on-Avon and 20% of the Birmingham area was still woodland. Only 10% was ploughland, most of which consisted of open strip fields. The large remaining area was not unused but was uncultivated consisting of common grazing land, meadows, streams and waste.

Redcoats at the Bradford Arms

April 4, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

This story set in Castle Bromwich is told by the Rector of Sutton Coldfield in a book about his own family history. In 1883 Rev William Kirkpatrick Riland Bedford described an event which occurred during the ’45. This was the Jacobite rising of 1745, when Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, tried to regain the British throne for the House of Stuart. Charles Edward Stuart was subsequently decisively defeated by the Duke of Cumberland at the Battle of Culloden in Scotland.

Sailing from France, Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland and raised his standard at a gathering of the Highland clans. He then marched south with an army of some 6000 Highlanders to claim the throne of England from the House of Hanover.

The Duke of Cumberland was the younger son of George II and the most able general in the English army. At the time he was fighting the French in Flanders in the War of the Austrian Succession, but was quickly brought back to deal with the Jacobite uprising.

It was December 1745 when a regiment of Cumberland’s army marched through Castle Bromwich. They were on their way to face the Young Pretender’s rebel Highland army in Scotland. The Redcoat soldiers had made their way from the south of England via Stonebridge and along the Chester Road.

019b Redcoats - Bradford Arms-1 — The Bradford Arms on the Chester Road.

While the troops made their camp on Hodge Hill Common, some of the officers spent the night in comfort at the Bradford Arms. This coaching inn on the Chester Road still thrives to this day.

The officers spent an evening of revelry and consumed a great deal of alcohol. And so it was late the next day, when they were at last in a condition fit to travel. They mounted their horses and rode along the Chester road in the direction of Tamworth to catch up with the regiment of which they had charge.

(Their route took them through Castle Bromwich village, down the steep hill, now only a footpath, to the crossing of the River Tame and to the Tyburn. They then followed Eachelhurst Road through Walmley and along Withy Hill Road to Bassetts Pole.)

Ten miles further on, when they reached Bassett’s Pole, the officer in charge discovered his sword to be missing. Realising that he must have left it at the Bradford Arms, he retraced his steps to recover it.

That officer must have been blessed with a good sense of humour. Well over an hour later, he arrived back at the Bradford Arms to find that he had indeed left his sword there. He laughed and declared that he had enjoyed the episode so much that, as long as he should live, he would pay for a banquet to be held there on the anniversary of the day that he had ridden off to fight for King and Country – without his sword.

And, by all accounts, the officer was true to his promise. The Rector of Sutton attested to the fact that there were in Castle Bromwich people who could remember being told the story by witnesses to the event.

*There is another less jolly tale told in Castle Bromwich probably referring to the same occasion when the Redcoats marched against the Jacobites.

As was usual, the regiment sent an advanced guard to ascertain the best route forward. There were maps at that time, but they lacked detail, were often inaccurate and showed few roads.

When the guard arrived from Castle Bromwich at the Tyburn, they asked directions of a man standing outside the Tyburn House Inn. The poor man had no roof to his mouth and the soldiers could not understand anything he said. Denounced him as a spy, the hapless man was taken to the commanding officer, who immediately ordered him to be shot. The order was carried out instantly. The man’s head was struck off and his body was thrown into a ditch at Eachelhurst near Pype Hayes. The head was stuck on a halberd and carried as far as New Shipton just north of Walmley, where the soldiers threw it up into a tree.

Strange to say, in 1827, the body and head of the poor fellow were both found within weeks of each other. The remains of the body were discovered when the Eachelhurst meadows were being drained and, when an ancient oak was felled near New Shipton Farm, the skull found to be embedded in the branches.