Penkridge

A college with unusual authority

St Michael’s was a royal free chapel, probably founded under King Eadred in the tenth century. It was served by a college of clergy rather than a monastic community. King John granted the right of appointment to the deanery to the Archbishop of Dublin in 1215; from 1259 until the Reformation, the archbishop and dean were the same person. Penkridge’s religious organisation consequently reached well beyond the local diocese. ^[3]

The college was dissolved in 1548, but its separate ecclesiastical jurisdiction survived until 1858. The present parish church is itself a record of repeated change: red sandstone construction of the thirteenth century, fourteenth-century additions and extensive sixteenth-century alterations. J. A. Chatwin restored it in 1881. Its medieval institution and its surviving masonry therefore have different chronologies. ^{[3] [4]}

The market was never a simple continuous story

A fair is recorded before September 1215. Henry III granted Andrew le Blund a Thursday market on 23 May 1244, and later confirmations show the value attached to trading rights. Competition could produce conflict: in 1377 the market was challenged as detrimental to the burgesses of Stafford. Although it survived into the sixteenth century, it had fallen out of use by 1584. ^[5]

Horse trading gave Penkridge a different commercial reputation. Horsefair and the Horse and Jockey preserve its memory in the townscape. The parish history recalls the annual arrival of dealers, jockeys and owners and Daniel Defoe’s enthusiastic notice in 1724. The later cattle auction and the present stall markets belong to changing forms of exchange, rather than proof that one identical market operated without interruption. ^{[2] [8]}

Work beside the river and canal

Agriculture was fundamental, but Penkridge also made iron. By the seventeenth century it had a foundry, and forges occupied former mill sites along the Penk. The conservation appraisal identifies iron manufacture as its principal industry until the early nineteenth century. Water powered work as well as shaping the valley through which routes converged. ^[7]

The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal opened in 1772. Sir Edward Littleton encouraged its passage through his estates and used it to move goods including wheat. A wharf existed beside Cannock Road by 1831; boats were reported calling several times daily in 1834. This was a working waterfront serving local produce and longer-distance freight. ^[6]

Canal buildings preserve the division of labour around the waterway. A lock keeper’s cottage survives at Penkridge Bridge, together with the wharfinger’s house. The Boat Inn and Cross Keys served the boating community; cottages north of the bridge, historically reached only from the canal, probably housed canal workers. The waterway supported homes and hospitality as well as traffic. ^[6]

Inns, railways and a road through the centre

The eighteenth-century Littleton Arms stood on former church land. It hosted estate rent days, tax payments, magistrates and social gatherings, alongside its coaching trade. Travellers, tenants and local government met in a building associated with the family that dominated Penkridge for centuries. ^[2]

The Grand Junction Railway opened on 4 July 1837, with a station behind the church. A surviving goods shed north of the centre recalls its commercial traffic. The railway added another route beside the north–south road and canal. ^[6]

Road improvement had a more destructive effect on the old centre. In the 1930s, widening and straightening Clay Street removed older buildings and intensified the division between the church side and the trading streets. Around Crown Bridge, the former triangular group of shops and houses gave way to open road space. Movement through Penkridge changed the place it served. ^[7]