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Revision as of 09:44, 17 October 2010
Human settlement in England
Brewood (Template:Pron-en) was once a town, but now a village, in South Staffordshire, England. Located at grid reference SJ883088, it lies near the River Penk, eight miles north of Wolverhampton city centre and eleven miles south of the county town of Stafford. Some three miles to the west of Brewood is the border with the county of Shropshire. The village name is pronounced "brood", despite the spelling.
Brewood today
The current parish of Brewood and Coven has a population of around 7,500 in four distinct villages (Brewood, Coven, Bishop's Wood and Coven Heath). The Shropshire Union Canal passes through the western edge of Brewood (and over Stretton Aqueduct), the River Penk flows along the eastern edge and Belvide Reservoir, which feeds the canal, is nearby.
Brewood has four schools:
- St. Mary & St. Chad's Church of England (VC) First School, with around 150 pupils
- Brewood Middle School, with about four hundred students. Originally Brewood Grammar School, founded mid 15th century
- St Mary's Catholic Primary School, with some 90 children on the roll
- St Dominic's school
There is a Brewood Civic Society and a Rotary Club of Brewood. Brewood is also the home of the Brewood Singers. The village came second in the South Staffordshire Best Kept Village 2005 challenge and has won the competition numerous times.
George Harrison once attended a wedding in Brewood, a popular destination for society Midlands weddings. It is something of a mecca for seventies music: Roy Wood of Wizzard educated his daughter Holly Wood at a nearby school and Jim Lea of Slade lives on the outskirts. More recently, excitement was caused when Jas Mann of Babylon Zoo was rumoured to have bought a house near the church. Martin Gilks, drummer of the British pop band The Wonder Stuff, grew up in Brewood. Siân Reeves, British actress most famous for playing the character Sydney Henshall in the Manchester-based television drama Cutting It, grew up in Brewood.
History
The old Roman road, Watling Street, stretching from Londinium across the Roman Province of Britannia Superior to Wroxeter and later Chester, runs one mile to the north of the village as the A5.
The Norman Domesday Book documented the village as 'Breude'. The name possibly originates from the Celtic Brythonic language 'bre' for hill and Anglo Saxon Old English language 'wuda' meaning wood.
A market charter was granted to Brewood by King Henry III, in 1221. There was an annual Brewood Wake.
Richard Hurd, later a Bishop of Worcester, was educated at Brewood Grammar School by William Budworth.
Near the village is Boscobel House, said to have been one of the numerous places in England to have sheltered King Charles II.
Churches
The Anglican church is Saint Mary the Virgin and Saint Chad; built of sandstone between 1150 and 1250, on the site of an earlier wooden Mercian church. "Thorough" restoration was carried out in the late 1870s. The noted tower and spire have a peal of eight bells.
Two strong examples of 'Early English' church building are to be found here. Firstly, the Roman Catholic church of 1840, built in Brewood under the direction of Pugin. Secondly, the fine church nearby at Bishops Wood.
Further reading
- M.W. Greenslade & Margaret Midgley. A History of Brewood. 1981, Staffordshire County Library.
- David Horovitz. Brewood. 1988. ISBN 1-85421-011-4
- Adrienne Whitehouse, Brewood and Penkridge in Old Photographs. 1988. ISBN 0-86299-519-1