Penkridge ( ) is a village and civil parish in South Staffordshire District in Staffordshire, England. It is to the south of Stafford, north of Wolverhampton, west of Cannock, east of Telford and south-east of Newport.
The wealthiest establishment in Penkridge in the Middle Ages, its collegiate church building survived the abolition of the chantries and is the tallest structure in the village centre. The parish is crossed towards its eastern border by the M6 motorway and a separate junction north of the M6 Toll between the West Midlands and Stoke-on-Trent. Penkridge has a railway station on the West Coast Main Line railway next to the Grade I listed medieval church. Penkridge Viaduct and the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal are to either side of Market Street and the Old Market Square and are among its landmarks.
Definition Penkridge is a parish unit within the East Cuttleston HundredWhite, William (1851) History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire of Staffordshire. Its boundaries have varied considerably over the centuries. The ancient parish of Penkridge, defined in 1551, although it existed in much the same form throughout the Middle Ages, was made up of four distinct townships: Penkridge itself, Coppenhall, Dunston, and Stretton. As a place with its own institutions of local government, the parish was also known as Penkridge Borough.Penkridge Borough at A Vision of Britain Through Time.
Penkridge became a civil parish in the 1830s and in 1866 was shorn of the three smaller townships, which became separate parishes. It was constituted as a parish of four distinct constablewicks: Penkridge, Levedale, Pillaton, and Whiston. In 1934, the civil parish exchanged some territory with the surrounding parishes to rationalise the boundaries, acquiring the whole of the former civil parish of Kinvaston in the process. The civil parish was the merger of the following settlements or entirely farmed manors:
Bickford Congreve Drayton Gailey Levedale Longridge Lyne Hill Mitton Otherton.Victoria County History: Staffordshire: Volume 5, East Cuttlestone Hundred, 16, Penkridge – Introduction and manors. Penkridge Pillaton Whiston
Location
Penkridge is in the district of South Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire. It is between Stafford, 5 miles (8 km) to the north and Wolverhampton, south, and lies mostly on the east bank of the River Penk.
The development of Penkridge has been closely linked to its relationship to major routes. The village of Penkridge lies on the medieval route between the county towns of Stafford and Worcester, which also passed through Wolverhampton. The Penkridge section became part of the major stagecoach routes linking London and Birmingham with Manchester and Liverpool and is now subsumed into the A449 road. Just to the south, at Gailey, this route crosses the historically still more important Watling Street, now the A5 road, which linked London to Chester, Wales, and ultimately Ireland. The village was also bisected by the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal from 1770. Today Penkridge is grazed on its eastern side by the M6 motorway, the main route between London and the north-west of England and Glasgow.
Etymology The popular etymology of the village's name derives it from the River Penk, which flows through it. It was assumed that since the village could be said to stand on a ridge by the Penk, it must derive its name from the river. However, this is to reverse the true derivation. The name of the village, or something like it, is attested many centuries before that of the river. The name "Penk" is actually a back-formationAyto, John & Crofton, Ian (2005) Brewer's Britain and Ireland. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson , p. 864. from the name of the village.
The occupying Romans gave their fort in the area the Latin form Pennocrucium.Itinerarium Antonini Augusti et Hierosolymitarum, ediderunt G. Parthey et M. Pinder. Berlin (Berolini: Impensis Friderici Nicolai), 1848 (Iter Britannarium, Iter II, "Pennocrucio") Cameron argues that this, like similar Latinized Celtic names, was passed by the native British directly, orally in its Celtic form, to the later Anglo-Saxon occupiers—not through the medium of Latin.Cameron, Kenneth (1996) English Place Names. London: Batsford , p.33. Thus the name Pennocrucium attests the origins of the name Penkridge, but is not its direct origin. In the indigenous Celtic, the name of the village was almost certainly penn-crug, meaning "the head (or end) of the ridge", or "chief hill or mound", and pronounced roughly penkrik. In very early times of Anglian settlement the inhabitants of the district were known as the Pencersæte. In 958, a charter uses the form Pencric for the settlement.The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, S667 This is obviously close to the modern "Penkridge", and both are closer in pronunciation to the Celtic root than to the Latinized form.
The name might reflect the village's location at the terminus of the long ridge of land running along the east side of the river. However, this ridge is not actually very prominent and few visitors would perceive Penkridge as a hill town. Modern toponymists have become convinced that the hill in question was more likely a tumulus—prominent in pre-Roman and Roman times, and perhaps much later. Brewer comments that "none is evident in the locality". However, Margaret Gelling, predisposed to find direct evidence for toponyms in the local landscape, has proposed a precise location for the mound, now destroyed by ploughing, that gave both the village and, ultimately, the river their names.Gelling, Margaret (1984) Place-Names in the Landscape. London: J. M. Dent , p. 138 This was a tumulus at Rowley Hill Farm, Ordnance Survey reference GR90251180, approximately , which was still prominent in the 18th century and still discernible in the early 20th. It would have directly overlooked the outlying Roman camp, across the Penk and just north of Pennocrucium on Watling Street, the remains of which are clearly visible in satellite photographs. Certainly, it makes more sense to look for the hill in question in the immediate vicinity of the ancient settlement than that of the modern village, which is well to the north of it. The Rowley Hill tumulus is well documented, and was clearly an extremely important landmark for several millennia.
Governance
Penkridge is part of the Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge parliament constituency, currently represented by the Conservative Gavin Williamson. However, Penkridge area is a part of South Staffordshire district.
Penkridge is covered by a Non-metropolitan county two-tier system of local government: The District Council, which forms the lower tier, is South Staffordshire, based in Codsall. Penkridge is divided among three wards for elections to the district council: Penkridge North East and Acton Trussell; Penkridge West; Penkridge South East. Before the Local Government Act 1972 brought about the 1974 reform of local government in England and Wales, Penkridge was part of Cannock Rural District. The upper tier is the non-metropolitan county, colloquially shire county, of Staffordshire. Penkridge constitutes a single electoral division of the county. All of Penkridge's councillors are currently Conservative.
History
Early settlement Early occupation of the area around Penkridge has been confirmed by the presence of a Bronze or Iron Age barrow at nearby Rowley Hill.Victoria County History of Staffordshire, pp.192-3, 376 A significant settlement in this vicinity has existed since pre-Roman times, with its original location being at the intersection of the River Penk and what became the Roman military road known as Watling Street (today's A5 trunk road). This would place it between Water Eaton and Gailey, about SSW of the village. The Roman settlement of Pennocrucium and earlier settlements were in the Penkridge area, but not on the same site as present village of Penkridge.
Medieval Penkridge
Anglo-Saxon origins
The village of Penkridge dates back at least to the early Middle Ages, when the area was part of Mercia, although the foundation date is unknown. King Edgar in 958, described it as a "famous place",The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, S667 Edgar says he is in loco famoso qui dicitur Pencric. so it was already of importance by then. In the Tudor period, it was claimed that the founder of the collegiate church of St. Michael at Penkridge was King Eadred (946-55), King Edgar's uncle,Victoria County History: Staffordshire: Volume 3, 34: The College of St. Michael, Penkridge. which seems plausible.
The importance of the church
Penkridge's church was of central importance to the village from Anglo-Saxon times and the Norman Conquest did not change this. It was of a special status. It was a collegiate church: a church served by a community of priests, known as a chapter. The members were known as canons. They were not monks, but secular clergy. In 1086 the Domesday survey found that most of the farm land at Penkridge was held from the king by the nine priests of St. Michael's, who had six slaves and seven villeins working for them. It was a chapel royal – a place set aside by the monarchs for their own use – generally to pray and to offer mass for their souls. This made it completely independent of the local Bishop of Lichfield – an institution called a Royal Peculiar. In 1280 Penkridge even shut its doors on the Archbishop of Canterbury, when he tried to carry out a tour of inspection (known as a canonical visitation). It was organised like a cathedral chapter. This happened during the 12th century, probably during the Anarchy of Stephen's reign. The reorganised chapter was headed by a Dean. The other canons each received a particular estate to live off, called a prebend, and were known as prebendaries. It was headed by the Archbishop of Dublin from 1226. This was because in 1215 King John gave to Archbishop Henry of London, one of his most trusted administrators, the right to appoint the dean of Penkridge. He made himself dean on the next vacancy, and subsequent archbishops of Dublin automatically became deans of Penkridge.VCH: Staffordshire: Volume 3: 34
The collegiate church was the most important local institution for most of Penkridge's history: economically powerful and architecturally dominant. All the people of the parish had to be buried there, at considerable cost, so it was where the local magnates installed their memorials. Its area of jurisdiction defined Penkridge parish, which was also the main unit of local government until late Victorian times.
The dean and many of the canons were absentees, so they appointed vicars to act for them locally. The focus of worship was prayer and masses on behalf of the dead, not care for the living. Two priests were employed solely to serve in chantries for the monarch and for the Virgin Mary. By the 16th century, the people of Penkridge themselves subscribed to pay a morrow priest to celebrate a daily mass, so that they could worship. Pastoral care and preaching were not taken seriously until the 16th century or later.
The grip of the forest