Madeley: Local government

LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

As a member of the liberty of Wenlock priory the manor was subject to the twice yearly leet of Bourton hundred (fn. 1) which, in the 1660s, 1670s, and earlier 1680s, regularly fined Madeley offenders against the assize of bread and of ale. (fn. 2) Other offences fined in the 1670s included assault, receiving strangers, (fn. 3) and keeping swine unyoked and unringed. (fn. 4) Bourton's jurisdiction over strays was maintained (fn. 5) as late as 1690 (fn. 6) but by the early 18th century the only fines imposed seem to have been those for default of suit. (fn. 7) Exaction of suit ceased in 1735. (fn. 8)

Manor court records survive for 1334, 1344, 1379-80, 1403, 1411, 1420, 1431, 1449, 1677, 1715-23, 1816, 1839-44, 1846, and 1852. (fn. 9) The court leet (fn. 10) originated in the twice yearly great tourns or hundreds held for Madeley new town by 1320; there were also three-weekly 'little hundreds' for the new town. In the 14th century a court for unfree tenants (curia bondorum) was held, often on the same days as the new town courts. By 1411, possibly in 1380, (fn. 11) the curia bondorum and the new town's little court seem to have merged; the great hundred was still said to be held for the new town in 1411 but simply for Madeley by 1420. Meetings of the little courts on other than great court days were not recorded after 1379. Distinct meetings of the little court, or court baron, appear to have ceased by 1677 and may have ceased much earlier. Recorded meetings of the great court were in April, May, or June and October, November or December in the 14th, 15th, 17th, (fn. 12) 18th, and 19th centuries. By 1715 meetings seem to have been only annual, (fn. 13) and they evidently ceased in the 1870s. (fn. 14)

Division of work between the courts in the 14th and 15th centuries (fn. 15) was rough, depending probably on the status of persons. The curia bondorum, later the little court, seems to have been the main forum for agricultural and tenurial regulation, and the woodwards invariably presented there. Aletasters were probably chosen in the little court in 1380 and 1411 (fn. 16) but infractions of the assize of ale were presented in all three courts. Only in the new town great hundred were more serious offences (fn. 17) presented.

In the late 17th and early 18th century the court laid pains for a wide range of nuisances, encroachments, trespasses, trading and other petty offences, receiving inmates, breaches of the peace, and fornication (lairwite); in 1677 a felony (sheep stealing) was presented and there were several presentments for resorting to litigation before recourse to the churchwardens and constable. (fn. 18)

Suit of court was reserved when the manorial estate was broken up in the early 18th century. (fn. 19) By the 19th century, however, particular nuisances came before the court only occasionally. Fines levied on traders with deficient weights in 1816 were given to the poor in bread, but almost all recorded 19th-century presentments were formal and general: those of common victuallers, butchers, bakers, and defaulting suitors. (fn. 20)

The court evidently met in a public house in Madeley town in the early 18th century (fn. 21) but later at Madeley Wood (fn. 22) or Ironbridge, in the Tontine inn by 1839. (fn. 23) W. R. Anstice, agent and kinsman of the lords of the manor, was the last steward, occurring from 1846, and in his time the court finally became merely 'an excuse for guzzling and dissipation'. (fn. 24)

There were other manorial officers besides the constables, aletasters, and woodwards already mentioned. By 1320 burgage tenants in the new town were obliged to serve as reeve or beadle to keep the market and fairs. (fn. 25) Two reeves were elected at a court in 1380, one of them for Coalbrookdale. (fn. 26) A constable of the lower town (i.e. the new town) was chosen and sworn in court in the late 17th and early 18th century (fn. 27) but the constables of the upper and lower towns were then paid from the parish rates. (fn. 28)

The lower town's inhabitants were presented at the manor court in 1677 for not providing stocks, pillory, 'tumble stool', and shooting butts. (fn. 29) By 1783, however, the vestry was ordering the repair of stocks, (fn. 30) evidently at Madeley Wood. (fn. 31) In 1847 the manorial pound was on the south side of Park Street, east of its junction with Park Lane. In 1935 it was said to be productive of 'nuisances'. (fn. 32)

The vestry's importance grew from the mid 17th century when it was levying rates. The early rates were for specific purposes: such was the £8 collected c. 1661 for the 'setting forth' of a child left on the parish. A poor rate was levied regularly in the later 17th century, and the two overseers merged some small charity incomes with it. Relief was mainly in pensions and sick and clothing grants. The poor were being badged by 1705 (fn. 33) and put to work with hemp by 1718. (fn. 34)

The vicar was distributing the charities by 1759, (fn. 35) and in 1766 the poor were being farmed, those receiving indoor relief housed at Madeley Wood by the contractor; pauper children aged seven or more were to be apprenticed at parish expense. (fn. 36) Local distress was experienced in the 1770s and 1780s, (fn. 37) and from 1783 the vestry was nominating parishioners to take apprentices. (fn. 38) In 1781-2, 1784-5, and finally in 1787 the parish resumed direct responsibility for all the poor. By 1784 there was a workhouse where ablebodied paupers were put to work; from 1787 it was governed by a salaried overseer under the direction of two senior overseers. (fn. 39) A new house of industry was built at the Brockholes c. 1796. (fn. 40)

Between 1816 and 1817 the poor rate levied by the parish doubled (fn. 41) and expenditure trebled, post-war distress reaching a peak in 1818. (fn. 42) All 'the poor' were out of work in 1817, when men were mending roads to keep them from 'idleness'. (fn. 43) By 1828 relief was administered by a select vestry; there were overseers for Madeley, Madeley Wood, and Coalbrookdale, and by 1834 the vestry clerk acted as assistant overseer. Richard Darby and his relatives were prominent as select vestrymen (fn. 44) and after 1836 as guardians of the Madeley union, in which the parish was included 1836-1930. (fn. 45) The union used the parish house of industry (fn. 46) until a union workhouse was built near Lincoln Hill in 1874. (fn. 47)

There were two highway surveyors from the later 17th century, (fn. 48) and by 1836 the vestry was employing a salaried surveyor who also collected the highway rate. The vestry ceased to concern itself with roads in 1880 when the parish became an urban sanitary district, (fn. 49) to whose board parish gas-lighting inspectors' powers also passed. (fn. 50) Madeley urban sanitary district was superseded by one covering the borough of Wenlock in 1889. (fn. 51)

From 1782 Madeley was in the jurisdiction of Broseley court of requests. (fn. 52) The court was superseded in 1847 by Madeley county court, (fn. 53) held at first in a court house adjoining the Royal Oak, from 1858 in a new building in High Street. (fn. 54) The court had bankruptcy jurisdiction from 1870 (fn. 55) but was abolished in 1950. (fn. 56)

Edward IV's charter of 1468 to Wenlock priory's town of Wenlock had included the whole of the priory liberty within a borough, and Madeley remained in the borough until 1966. (fn. 57) From 1889 the civil parish became one of the municipal borough's four wards and sanitary divisions, with its own district committee consisting of the nine Wenlock borough councillors elected for the ward and the aldermen living in it. (fn. 58) The committee appointed subcommittees (fn. 59) and acted as the local authority in the district until 1966. It was virtually autonomous, wielding the powers of a district council, notably with regard to public health and housing, and eventually coming to misconceive itself as one. (fn. 60) By the 1940s Labour councillors were prominent on the committee, (fn. 61) which, from the late 1950s, was beginning to feel that socially and politically Madeley ward had more in common with Dawley urban district to the north than with the other wards of Wenlock borough. (fn. 62) In 1963 all the parish except the western extremity beyond Coalbrookdale and Sunniside was included in the designated area of Dawley (from 1968 Telford) new town. (fn. 63) On the dissolution of Wenlock M.B. in 1966 Madeley C.P. was included in Dawley C.P. and U.D., (fn. 64) merged in the district of the Wrekin in 1974. (fn. 65)

Wenlock municipal offices were gradually concentrated in Ironbridge. The old dispensary at the corner of Church Hill and High Street was known as the Municipal Buildings by c. 1900. (fn. 66) In course of time the rates, borough surveyor's, and housing offices were accommodated there. (fn. 67) The district committee met in the workhouse board room from 1889 but the committee and its subcommittees used Ironbridge police court room and Madeley Hall barn in the 1950s. From 1957 the committee used Southside, Church Hill, (fn. 68) where offices were provided for Wenlock's town clerk, borough surveyor (moving from the Municipal Buildings), and public health inspector (moving from Broseley). In 1966 Southside passed to Dawley U.D.C. and accommodated its clerk, public health inspector, and housing department until new municipal offices were opened in Dawley in 1968. (fn. 69)

PUBLIC SERVICES.

Unwholesome water supplies and the drinking of polluted Severn water contributed to the virulence of the 1832 cholera epidemic in Ironbridge and Madeley Wood. (fn. 70) The poorer classes' houses long remained without good water (fn. 71) and c. 1880 water from the Severn, into which sewage discharged, was still being hawked around Madeley Wood and Lincoln Hill. (fn. 72) Ironbridge was partly supplied by iron mains from a spring at Sutton Hill in the earlier 1890s. (fn. 73) Otherwise the parish drew from local wells and springs until, c. 1902, the Madeley & Broseley Water Works Co. began to supply all parts from a well at Harrington, a reservoir being built on the disused Meadow pit mound. (fn. 74)

Sewage disposal was haphazard until the later 1930s and unsatisfactory for thirty years more. In the 19th century, as Madeley Wood and Ironbridge were developed, increasing amounts of sewage were discharged into large brick culverts originally built to carry storm water downhill to the Severn. (fn. 75) Mortality rates were high in the parish in the mid 1860s, (fn. 76) and Ironbridge, Madeley Wood, and Madeley low town became notorious for fever. (fn. 77) Other areas too were affected: in 1856 fever carried off five of the vicar of Madeley's children in ten days. (fn. 78) Measures against diphtheria epidemics (fn. 79) were necessary until the 1940s, (fn. 80) when cases of scarlet fever and paratyphoid were still occasionally reported. (fn. 81) By 1879 nuisances and 'abominations' from night-soil accumulation were frequent in the parish's densely inhabited districts. (fn. 82) In the 1880s, after the formation of an urban sanitary district, scavenging became more systematic (fn. 83) and at first boys, probably the scavenger's, were used to clean the culverts (fn. 84) which were still partly uncovered in the early 20th century. (fn. 85) Madeley's pollution of the Severn was regarded as 'most serious' in 1911 (fn. 86) but the district committee, disagreeing, refused to prepare a sewerage scheme, alleging that its cost would complete the parish's 'ruin'. (fn. 87) Minor streams also were increasingly polluted as housing extended. In 1929 the Coalbrookdale Co.'s alarm at the district committee's plan to put sewage into the brook caused the committee to redirect the sewerage for its Coalbrookdale housing to the river. (fn. 88) At the other end of the parish the Washbrook had become a sewer by the early 1930s. (fn. 89) Disposal works in the Washbrook valley near Station Road and an outfall above Brockholes were built to serve Madeley town and the council housing around Hill Top in the years 1935-7, when government grants became available. (fn. 90) A scheme to serve Aqueduct and the eastern side of the parish, however, was deferred in 1939 and realized only in 1961 (fn. 91) with completion of the Cuckoo Oak works, soon extended for the first stage of Dawley new town's development. Ironbridge and Coalport were not served by any works, and Coalbrookdale had a small works adequate only for Sunniside. Pollution of the Severn with inadequately treated or raw sewage continued during the 1970s. Telford development corporation's disposal works at Gitchfield (in Broseley) became operational in 1970 but the drainage of Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale was completed by trunk sewers only c. 1980. (fn. 92)

Ironbridge dispensary opened in 1828. In its first half century c. 1,100 cases a year were dealt with. A building, erected on land acquired by the Wenlock Franchise Savings Bank trustees in 1829, ceased to be used as a savings bank before 1870 and as the dispensary in the earlier 1880s. Thereafter the thousand or so patients attended practitioners' surgeries instead, and the building was sold in 1906. (fn. 93) A child-welfare centre was opened in Ironbridge by voluntary effort in 1918, (fn. 94) others in Madeley, Sutton Hill, and Woodside by the county council in 1956, 1968, and 1969. (fn. 95) In 1932 the Ironbridge publicassistance institution (the former union workhouse), claimed as one of the three best in the county, was designated as suitable for chronic sick and epileptics. (fn. 96) By 1939 three quarters of its inmates were in sick wards. (fn. 97) Known as the Beeches Hospital from c. 1948, (fn. 98) it became a long-stay hospital under the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. (fn. 99)

In 1801 the vestry decided to acquire a hearse and resolved that poor parishioners have the use of it free. (fn. 100) The district committee laid out a public cemetery near Castle Green 1942-3. (fn. 101)

Ironbridge and Coalbrookdale were supplied with gas from the Ironbridge Gas Light Co.'s works, built in 1839 near the Madeley Wood Co.'s coke hearth. (fn. 102) Madeley gas works, Hill's Lane, was built in 1852 by a company of local shareholders formed the previous year. The Ironbridge company acquired the Madeley company in 1923, and gas was still made at Ironbridge in 1939; the works closed in 1958. (fn. 103) Electricity became available from 1931 and was used for public lighting from 1934. (fn. 104)

There was a post office at Ironbridge by 1828, one at Madeley by 1842, others in Coalbrookdale and Coalport by 1856. (fn. 105) John Randall, Madeley's postmaster 1881-1910, was followed by his daughters 1910-39; (fn. 106) his son was postmaster at Ironbridge c. 1900-1912. (fn. 107)

A lock-up in Market Place, Ironbridge, (fn. 108) was built probably in 1842. (fn. 109) It was replaced by a police station, with court room and cells, built in Waterloo Street in 1862; (fn. 110) that closed in turn to be replaced by one in Dale End (formerly Eastfield) House, which closed c. 1975; c. 1980 there were sub-stations in Brookside, Ironbridge, Madeley, and Woodside. (fn. 111)

The need of a fire engine in Ironbridge was felt in 1869, (fn. 112) and a twelve-strong volunteer brigade was formed in 1886. The fire station was in Waterloo Street (fn. 113) until the 1940s (fn. 114) when it moved to Dale End; (fn. 115) the Dale End station closed in 1980, when Telford central fire station opened at Stafford Park. (fn. 116) A new fire and ambulance station at Cuckoo Oak opened in 1972. (fn. 117)