Birmingham Places Archives - Page 4 of 12

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.

The Sad Story of the Rushton Boys

March 10, 2015 by William Dargue 3 Comments

On 10th April 1860 Joseph Rushton and his younger brother George, aged 15 and 12 respectively, were returning from Castle Bromwich station with a handcart full of coal. Their large family lived in a small cottage at Bucklands End and every one of them had a household job to help out. Wheelwright George Rushton and his wife Ann had eleven children and, although the oldest had now left home, there were still six to care for, three of them younger than George.

The boys had spent all day planting potatoes for a local farmer and then, about 5 o’clock, they had to walk the 1½ miles to the station and back to get coal for the fire at the cottage. It had been a long day. Ahead of them was the steep Mill Hill up past Castle Bromwich church and the lads were tired and hungry.

They passed over the bridge by Twamley’s Mill. (This stood upstream of the Chester Road bridge over the River Tame on a site now underneath the M6 motorway viaduct.) Looking over the stone parapet of the bridge, the boys noticed a floury bread-like substance on the projecting ledge a metre below them. Joseph, being the tallest, scrambled over and passed the substance to his brother and the two boys satisfied their hunger. They then made their way up the hill to Castle Bromwich.

The Boys Become Ill

By the time Joseph and George had reached the church they had started to vomit and continued to do so. They were getting weaker by the minute and could barely walk. It was nearly 8 o’clock in the evening and getting dark when Thomas Spursbury was making his way home after bird nesting with Alfred, one of the younger brothers of the Rushton boys.

Joseph and George were now so weak that they had to be supported the rest of the way home. By the time they got to the cottage they were unable to speak.

Their worried parents assumed it was something their sons had eaten that had caused their illness and made them drink a little brandy and gave them some home-made remedies. But the boys grew worse and drifted in and out of consciousness, still vomiting and suffering convulsions.

At midnight George died, screaming and in great pain.

A Doctor Is Summoned

Poor families did not call a doctor unless they really had to. But now George Senior had no choice. He set off to walk the six miles to Coleshill in the dark to find Mr Bailey, the surgeon, in the hope of saving Joseph.

But long before the doctor arrived, Joseph too had died. Mr Bailey ordered that the boys’ vomit be kept for forensic examination and, having officially confirmed the deaths of the two boys, he left the family to their grief.

The next morning, father George went out with neighbours to retrace the route the lads would have take from Castle Bromwich station. They found traces of a bread-like substance which was sent to the surgeon at Coleshill as evidence for the inquest.

An Inquest Is Convened

The inquest was convened four days later at The Castle Inn with the Warwickshire coroner in the chair; respected local schoolmaster John Blewitt was the foreman of the jury. Having been sworn in, the jurors went over to Bucklands End to view the bodies of the boys.

When the jury returned to the Castle, George Rushton sorrowfully described the events of that tragic night. Coroner Carter then adjourned the inquest for a week to allow time for the contents of the boys’ stomachs to be examined along with the substance that George and his neighbours had found.

Local People Suspect Poisoning

Although not given in evidence, local people at the inquest informally talked about the case. It was assumed the two lads had inadvertently taken poison. It was known that a rat catcher had been working around Castle Bromwich and that he had left by train on the day of their deaths. It may have been rat poison that had killed Joseph and George Rushton.

The following Saturday the jurors reconvened at The Castle Inn and Mr Carter resumed the inquest. A local coachman, James Wall gave evidence. On the morning in question he had walked along the Chester Road down to Castle Bromwich station with William Stanley, whom he knew. Stanley was catching the train to Dudley.

As the two crossed the bridge over the River Tame, James Wall saw Stanley empty a bag over the parapet of the bridge into the water. He had not discussed it with Stanley and had thought nothing of it. The inquest was adjourned yet again until the rat catcher William Stanley could be summoned.

The Rat Catcher Gives Evidence

Finally, on Monday 30th April the matter was resolved. William Stanley gave evidence to the jury. He was a farmer near Stafford but also travelled around destroying vermin. On 10th April he had been in Castle Bromwich laying poison to kill rats. The substances he used were arsenic and barium carbonate mixed with flour and bran.

When he had finished his work laying poison, he had inspected the rat holes and collected any surplus poison in a bag for safety’s sake. He did not want to carry this on the train and so had disposed of it safely, so he thought, by throwing it over the bridge to be washed away by the river. Little did he know there was a ledge projecting out about a foot on the other side of the parapet.

John Henry Trollope Bailey, the surgeon of Coleshill, then testified that arsenic had indeed been found in the contents of the boys’ stomachs and that the horrible manner of their deaths was commensurate with arsenic poisoning.

The Jury’s Verdict

The jury’s unanimous verdict was ‘Accidental Death’, but they recommended that William Stanley use extreme caution in the future to prevent a similar occurrence happening again.

Stanley was so deeply upset by the affair that he was unable to speak and the Coroner desisted from making further comment. Although he himself was the father of a large family, Stanley gave a gold sovereign to George Rushton and the jury were also generous in their contributions.

Joseph and George Rushton were buried in Castle Bromwich graveyard where they lie in an unmarked grave. Their father was to die only four years later at the age of 58.

Interestingly, at the time of the 1891 census Joseph and George’s younger brother Alfred Rushton was living in Bucklands End with his wife and four sons, very likely in the same cottage. He named his eldest son after himself, and his second son was called George.

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/

John Gibson – the Castle Bromwich Architect

March 10, 2015 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

John Gibson was the second son of yeoman farmer Richard Gibson who rented a substantial acreage on the Chester Road opposite Whateley Green and was described as a horse breeder, grazier, cattle dealer and chapman. In a document of 1834 Richard is described as a gentleman, showing him to be a man of local status, wealth and influence.

He must have been successful and he certainly had ideas for his son who was not baptised at the local parish church of St Mary & St Margaret, but at the prestigious St Philip’s church in Birmingham where an annual rental had to be paid to secure a pew.

John showed early academic promise and attended King Edward’s Grammar School in New Street. He also demonstrated an early talent for architecture, designing a hen house of ‘extraordinary beauty and classic design’.

Apprenticed to Joseph Hansom and Charles Barry

On leaving school Gibson trained for a while in a Birmingham builder’s practice and was then successful in obtaining apprenticeship with Joseph Hansom who was building Birmingham Town Hall. On Hansom’s bankruptcy after 1832, he completed the remaining years of his pupillage under Charles Barry in Westminster contributing to the drawings of the new Houses of Parliament.

After finishing his apprenticeship, Gibson stayed with Barry, still working of the Houses of Parliament, until 1844 when he won a competition to design the Glasgow branch of the National Bank of Scotland and he set up on his own account. The building was designed in Italian palazzo style and made Gibson’s reputation. (When the building was threatened with demolition under redevelopment plans in 1903, it was dismantled with 70,000 numbered stones taken some three miles to be rebuilt as Langside Public Halls.)

(In March 1847 John Gibson’s father was declared bankrupt in the Birmingham District Court; he may have been one of the many victims of the ‘Year of Panic’, a combination of agricultural problems and stock market uncertainty.)

A Prolific And Varied Career

Gibson was a prolific architect and designed many high status buildings across the country: churches, banks, company offices and country houses. Of note is the work he carried out for the Lucy family on the church and hall at Charlecote Park in the late 1840s and, unusually, the laying out of Cannon Hill Park in Birmingham in 1873, setting a standard for public parks which were then in their infancy.

In 1864 he began work with the National Provincial Bank, designing the head office in Threadneedle Street and many branches nationwide, including the one in Bennetts Hill, Birmingham. His last work was in 1883 after which he retired.

John Gibson's Grave — John Gibson’s Grave

In 1890 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Gibson died in December 1892 at his Westminster home and was buried beneath a very large monument in Kensal Green Cemetery, London.

Images:
National Provincial Bank, Bennetts Hill, Birmingham; image by Tiger on Geograph reusable under a Creative Commons licence.

John Gibson’s mausoleum at Kensal Green Cemetery; image by Stephen C Dickson reusable under a Creative Commons licence.

Death of an Actor

March 10, 2015 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

At the close of the 19th century the Smallwood family were the oldest wine merchants in Birmingham having traded for at least six generations. Specialising in fine and expensive wines, their premises in Lower Priory off Old Square dated back to the mid-17th century. Beneath the grand old house ‘their subterranean premises were honeycombed with catacombs containing grand old spirits and big bins of choice vintage and wines.’

Moving from Handsworth, the family had a large house built about 1850 in Castle Bromwich just beyond the Fox & Goose which they named Stechford Hall. (The building was demolished before 1950 and the site later made into Stechford Hall Park).

Chooses Acting rather than the Family Business

Ernest, born in 1859, was the youngest of the family. His elder brother had followed his father and grandfather into the wine trade, his uncle and cousins who lived at Southfields (now The Remembrance Club) were in law and accountancy.

But Ernest became an actor with the stage name Ernest Wood and had some success. Aged 37, he had lodgings in Kilburn Square, Brondesbury, a decent enough district and less than half an hour by omnibus to central London.

Falls From An Omnibus

Princess's Theatre. Oxford Street — Princess’s Theatre. Oxford Street

Three days before Christmas 1897 Smallwood boarded an omnibus in Oxford Street headed for his lodgings. He was not currently employed, although three weeks previously he had ended a run at the Princess’s Theatre in Oxford Street playing in Sutton Vane’s melodrama, ‘In Sight of St Paul’s’.

He climbed up beside the driver; fares were half-price on the open top and the weather was not particularly cold for the time of year.

Soon Smallwood began to feel faint and decided that he would get off the bus and take a cab the rest of the journey home. What caused him to fall is not known, but fall he did. He brushed against the driver and fell off the bus down to the road below.

Rushed to The Middlesex

The driver called the police and the unconscious Smallwood was taken to the Middlesex Hospital just half a mile away.

On regaining consciousness the following day, Ernest Smallwood found that he was paralysed from the waist down. His spine had been damaged in the fall from the top deck of the omnibus. His brother Joseph, the wine merchant was at his bedside having travelled down to London by train as soon as he was told of the accident.

The Inquest’s Verdict

Two days after Christmas Ernest Smallwood died. The inquest was held at Marylebone Coroner’s Court under Dr Danford Thomas. Death was the result of Ernest‘s fall from the bus, but what had caused the fall in the first place was never discovered. A verdict of ‘Accidental Death’ was returned.

Ernest’s body was brought back home and laid to rest in the family vault in Castle Bromwich graveyard.

An American Airman laid to rest 3500 miles from Home

March 4, 2015 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

His parents’ only child, Raymond Tenney Balch was born in 1894 in Newburyport Massachusetts and fell to his death from a training aircraft over Sutton Park just months before the end of the First World War.

He was educated locally at Newburyport, then in 1912 enrolled at the Phillips Academy, Andover, the oldest (and most prestigious) boarding school in the USA. After a short career in banking in Boston he signed up at the Naval Cadet School of Massachusetts graduating in 1917 as an Ensign. He was assigned to the 9th Deck Division, but was unable to go into active service for medical reasons.

Forced to Enlist in Canada

Disappointed but undeterred, Balch travelled to Toronto where he enlisted with the newly formed Royal Flying Corps Canada, undertaking training at Bayside in Canada and at Fort Worth, Texas, during the winter months.

He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in November of 1917 and in December of that year was sent to Castle Bromwich for further training before joining the Great War on the mainland of Europe.

Joins No.74 Training Squadron

Raymond Balch was assigned to the No.74 Training Squadron at Castle Bromwich aerodrome. In February the next year he won his First-Class Pilot’s licence and was promoted to First Lieutenant on 1st April 1918.

1918 Raymond Balch Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a — A Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a

On 25 May 25 1918, two days before his transfer to the Front, he took his aircraft out for aerial manoeuvres and target practice over Sutton Park. The plane was an RAF SE5a which had come into prominence towards the end of the War.

Balch pulled out of a dive over the park on his way back to Castle Bromwich airfield, the aircraft broke up. Balch was thrown to the ground and killed.

The SE5a was prone to have gear system problems, and it was not unknown for the propeller and sometimes the entire gearbox to break loose from the engine and airframe in flight.

Lieutenant Balch was 23 years old when he was killed and one of 85 students of Phillips Academy who died in service during the First World War.

He was buried in Castle Bromwich graveyard close by the new gate. On 4 August 2014 a vigil took place at Castle Bromwich Church led by Rev Gavin Douglas to commemorate the centenary of the declaration of hostilities between Britain and Germany. The service started at the grave of Lt Raymond Tenney Balch.

Remembered in Massachusetts and Castle Bromwich

‘The Municipal History of Essex County in Massachusetts’ of 1922 lists Balch’s achievements ending with the words, ‘He was of that fine manly type, honourable and devoted to duty, modest in manner, but with the courage to face any test coming in the line of duty. Long may his memory be kept green, this young man who died for others, the supreme test of manhood.’

In 1922 the Phillips Academy in Andover built a memorial tower to commemorate the sacrifice of the students who had given their lives during the First World War. The Honor Roll includes the name of R T Balch. The tower was hung with a carillon of 19 bells cast by John Taylor’s bell foundry in Loughborough.Fitting then, that it will be Taylor’s who are to carry put the restoration work and the casting of two new bells at St Mary & St Margaret’s church just across the road from the grave of the brave lieutenant.