Dennis Williams
Gone but not forgotten
Just come back from an old pal's house in Edgbaston. Opposite the Church and Gorlf club dontcha know....
The street map of Edgbaston has been said to resemble the genealogical tree of the Gough-Calthorpes. The first of the family in Birmingham was Sir Henry Gough, who bought Perry Hall in 1669, and whose forefathers back through Tudor times were wealthy wool merchants in Wolverhampton, and lords of the manor of Oldfallings.
Henry Gough 1748-1798
Perry Hall
Perry Hall
Sir Henry had sixteen children. He also had a younger brother, Richard, an eminent East India merchant who was knighted by George I and who in 1717 bought for £25,000 the lordship of Edgbaston from Bridget, Lady Fauconberg, co-heiress of the Middlemore Estate. Four times Sir Richard Gough made the journey to China and India, taking as his secretary on one of the voyages 11-year-old Harry, sixth son of Sir Henry. This infant prodigy stayed in the East and prospered to such good effect that when his uncle bought the Edgbaston lordship he was able himself to pay £13,600 for the remainder of the Middlemore Estate, including land in Ladywood and a 25-acre farm where Gough Street now runs into Suffolk Street near the new Holloway Circus.
On his part of the Middlemore Estate Sir Richard rebuilt Edgbaston Hall in 1717-18. Edgbaston parish then consisted of some sixty scattered houses and farms, and, as was so often the case, the farmers left their names in the new roads when their land was developed. Such names in the Edgbaston area are Harrison's Road, Wheeley's Road, and Pritchatt's Road.
Sir Richard was succeeded by his son Henry, who was created a baronet, and took as his second wife Barbara Calthorpe, only daughter of Reynolds Calthorpe of Elvetham. It was their son, Henry, who inherited his uncle's estates in I788, and became the first Lord Calthorpe. Both he and his father preserved the residential quality of Edgbaston by refusing to allow the building of factories along the Worcester-Birmingham Canal through their territory. Them Clathorpe's were recently fatured as descendents of Richard III, after they dug him up from that Car Park in Leicester..
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/ ... -tree.html
Antway, we all know that Birmingham is a down-to-earth place. So many of its wealthy families have had such recent and close connection with industry that they tend towards ostentation rather than old-fashioned snobbery. One of the few snobbish manifestations in the city is the pronunciation of 'Edg-bar-ston' for 'Edg-bass-ton' in the name of the modish suburb of bygone days. It began in Domesday Book as Celboldestone and progressed as Edgboldeston (1160), Egboldston (1184), and Eggesbaston (1503). The first comprehensible link with the Birmingham of today was the marriage of Isabel, last of her line and heiress of Sir Richard de Edgbaston, to Thomas Middlemore, with whose descendants the manor was to remain for 300 years. Legend has it that during the absence of Sir Richard at the Scottish Wars of the fourteenth century Middlemore rode to Edgbaston to pay court to Isabel, arriving in the nick of time to save her from robbers who were attacking her in the woods around Edgbaston Hall. E. Marston Rudland tells the story in his Ballads of Old Birmingham, finishing with the wedding of Thomas and Isabel:
And the goodly fief of Edgbaston
With the fief of the Middlemore's is one.
In 1500 Richard Middlemore added a north aisle to the small chapel known to have stood near Edgbaston Hall in 1340, and his widow Margerie added the tower. Their son, Humphrey, a Carthusian monk, suffered martyrdom in 1535, a victim of the anti-Romish zeal of Bluebeard Henry VIII. A window in the south aisle depicts the building of the tower and Humphrey being led to execution.
During the Civil War the Richard Middlemore of the day was a Royalist and papist, so Edgbaston Hall was sequestrated in 1644 and occupied by Colonel John Fox, a tinker from WaIsall, who marched in with sixteen men, soon to be reinforced by 200 Birmingham metal workers. They stripped the roof from the church to fortify the hall and melted down the lead for bullets.
After the Restoration of the Stuarts the Middlemores were again in favour, and in 1683 Royal Patents were granted for collecting money throughout the Midland counties for the rebuilding of Edgbaston Church. But with the end of the Stuarts, and amid the rejoicing at the coming of William of Orange in 1688, the Birmingham mob burned down Edgbaston Hall lest it become a sanctuary for Roman Catholics. Mary Middlemore, granddaughter of Richard, had married Sir John Gage, and one of their two daughters, Bridget, married Thomas Belasyse, Viscount Fauconberg. In 1717 they sold the Manor of Edgbaston to Sir Richard Gough, who rebuilt Edgbaston Hall and later put the church in perfect repair.
His descendants became the Calthorpes, who remained Lords of Edgbaston, though from 1786 to 1791 the new hall was the home of Dr. William Withering, a founder of the General Hospital in Birmingham. Sir James Smith, the first Lord Mayor of Birmingham, lived at Edgbaston Hall from 1908 to 1932, it subsequently becoming the club house of Edgbaston Golf Club.
Edgbaston Church, dedicated to St. Bartholemew, who appears gaunt beneath his fig tree in a new west window, continued to undergo alterations after the 1725 restoration by Sir Richard Gough, and in 1885 descendants of the former lords of the manor, the brothers William, Richard, and James Middlemore, built the present chancel.
Edgbaston Old Church
Alongside several memorials to the Goughs and the Calthorpes is one to Dr. Gabriel de Lys, exiled from France as a child, and founder of Birmingham Deaf and Dumb Institution; and another to Henry Porter, whose widow, Sarah, married Dr. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer. Near a yew tree in the western end of the churchyard lies Joseph Henry Shorthouse (1834-1903), the Birmingham author of the famous historical novel John Inglesant. Edgbaston Church has its mystery-the seeming 777 carved in an oval above the north entrance presumably in the post-Civil War restoration. Conjecture associates this with a capital M for Middlemore, either there badly worn before Fox's desecration and copied blindly by the restoring masons, or an M carved there by them, of which only the deep strokes have remained.
The street map of Edgbaston has been said to resemble the genealogical tree of the Gough-Calthorpes. The first of the family in Birmingham was Sir Henry Gough, who bought Perry Hall in 1669, and whose forefathers back through Tudor times were wealthy wool merchants in Wolverhampton, and lords of the manor of Oldfallings.
Henry Gough 1748-1798
Perry Hall
Perry Hall
Sir Henry had sixteen children. He also had a younger brother, Richard, an eminent East India merchant who was knighted by George I and who in 1717 bought for £25,000 the lordship of Edgbaston from Bridget, Lady Fauconberg, co-heiress of the Middlemore Estate. Four times Sir Richard Gough made the journey to China and India, taking as his secretary on one of the voyages 11-year-old Harry, sixth son of Sir Henry. This infant prodigy stayed in the East and prospered to such good effect that when his uncle bought the Edgbaston lordship he was able himself to pay £13,600 for the remainder of the Middlemore Estate, including land in Ladywood and a 25-acre farm where Gough Street now runs into Suffolk Street near the new Holloway Circus.
On his part of the Middlemore Estate Sir Richard rebuilt Edgbaston Hall in 1717-18. Edgbaston parish then consisted of some sixty scattered houses and farms, and, as was so often the case, the farmers left their names in the new roads when their land was developed. Such names in the Edgbaston area are Harrison's Road, Wheeley's Road, and Pritchatt's Road.
Sir Richard was succeeded by his son Henry, who was created a baronet, and took as his second wife Barbara Calthorpe, only daughter of Reynolds Calthorpe of Elvetham. It was their son, Henry, who inherited his uncle's estates in I788, and became the first Lord Calthorpe. Both he and his father preserved the residential quality of Edgbaston by refusing to allow the building of factories along the Worcester-Birmingham Canal through their territory. Them Clathorpe's were recently fatured as descendents of Richard III, after they dug him up from that Car Park in Leicester..
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/ ... -tree.html
Antway, we all know that Birmingham is a down-to-earth place. So many of its wealthy families have had such recent and close connection with industry that they tend towards ostentation rather than old-fashioned snobbery. One of the few snobbish manifestations in the city is the pronunciation of 'Edg-bar-ston' for 'Edg-bass-ton' in the name of the modish suburb of bygone days. It began in Domesday Book as Celboldestone and progressed as Edgboldeston (1160), Egboldston (1184), and Eggesbaston (1503). The first comprehensible link with the Birmingham of today was the marriage of Isabel, last of her line and heiress of Sir Richard de Edgbaston, to Thomas Middlemore, with whose descendants the manor was to remain for 300 years. Legend has it that during the absence of Sir Richard at the Scottish Wars of the fourteenth century Middlemore rode to Edgbaston to pay court to Isabel, arriving in the nick of time to save her from robbers who were attacking her in the woods around Edgbaston Hall. E. Marston Rudland tells the story in his Ballads of Old Birmingham, finishing with the wedding of Thomas and Isabel:
And the goodly fief of Edgbaston
With the fief of the Middlemore's is one.
In 1500 Richard Middlemore added a north aisle to the small chapel known to have stood near Edgbaston Hall in 1340, and his widow Margerie added the tower. Their son, Humphrey, a Carthusian monk, suffered martyrdom in 1535, a victim of the anti-Romish zeal of Bluebeard Henry VIII. A window in the south aisle depicts the building of the tower and Humphrey being led to execution.
During the Civil War the Richard Middlemore of the day was a Royalist and papist, so Edgbaston Hall was sequestrated in 1644 and occupied by Colonel John Fox, a tinker from WaIsall, who marched in with sixteen men, soon to be reinforced by 200 Birmingham metal workers. They stripped the roof from the church to fortify the hall and melted down the lead for bullets.
After the Restoration of the Stuarts the Middlemores were again in favour, and in 1683 Royal Patents were granted for collecting money throughout the Midland counties for the rebuilding of Edgbaston Church. But with the end of the Stuarts, and amid the rejoicing at the coming of William of Orange in 1688, the Birmingham mob burned down Edgbaston Hall lest it become a sanctuary for Roman Catholics. Mary Middlemore, granddaughter of Richard, had married Sir John Gage, and one of their two daughters, Bridget, married Thomas Belasyse, Viscount Fauconberg. In 1717 they sold the Manor of Edgbaston to Sir Richard Gough, who rebuilt Edgbaston Hall and later put the church in perfect repair.
His descendants became the Calthorpes, who remained Lords of Edgbaston, though from 1786 to 1791 the new hall was the home of Dr. William Withering, a founder of the General Hospital in Birmingham. Sir James Smith, the first Lord Mayor of Birmingham, lived at Edgbaston Hall from 1908 to 1932, it subsequently becoming the club house of Edgbaston Golf Club.
Edgbaston Church, dedicated to St. Bartholemew, who appears gaunt beneath his fig tree in a new west window, continued to undergo alterations after the 1725 restoration by Sir Richard Gough, and in 1885 descendants of the former lords of the manor, the brothers William, Richard, and James Middlemore, built the present chancel.
Edgbaston Old Church
Alongside several memorials to the Goughs and the Calthorpes is one to Dr. Gabriel de Lys, exiled from France as a child, and founder of Birmingham Deaf and Dumb Institution; and another to Henry Porter, whose widow, Sarah, married Dr. Samuel Johnson, the lexicographer. Near a yew tree in the western end of the churchyard lies Joseph Henry Shorthouse (1834-1903), the Birmingham author of the famous historical novel John Inglesant. Edgbaston Church has its mystery-the seeming 777 carved in an oval above the north entrance presumably in the post-Civil War restoration. Conjecture associates this with a capital M for Middlemore, either there badly worn before Fox's desecration and copied blindly by the restoring masons, or an M carved there by them, of which only the deep strokes have remained.
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