Bagnall

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Date:1086 - 2015 (c.)

Description:Bagnall is a picturesque village situated in an elevated position, 229 metres above sea level and about three miles north-west of Hanley. It is still very rural and has a walled green in the centre of the old village. There is an ancient market cross although there is no record of the village ever having had a market charter. Local tradition says that farmers came to sell their produce at the cross during the time of plague in 1666.

The name Bagnall probably derives from ‘Badeca’s wood’ or ‘Badeca’s nook’, Badeca being a personal name and ‘halh’ meaning a remote hollow or nook. In the Domesday Book Bagnall was part of the manor of Endon (Enedun) which was described then as wasteland. There were various forms of the name during the Middle Ages, such as Baginholt and Badegenhall.

In 1532 there were seven families listed in ‘Bagenold’. The Hearth Tax returns of 1666 indicate 19 households assessed for the tax at that time. Both Bagnall Hall, home of the Murrall family, and Greenway Hall, which belonged to the Bradshaws, had four hearths and were the largest houses in the village. They are also two of the oldest in Bagnall. By 1851 the population of the village had risen to 219 with farming as the predominant occupation.

A curate is recorded at Bagnall in 1593. The original church was small and barn-like and was described in the late18th century as ‘a most miserable structure of stone and in a ruinous state’. This building was effectively replaced by the present parish church of St Chad dating mainly from 1834. The chancel was added between 1879 and 1881. The stained glass east window was constructed from Amiens glass, donated by the Reverend SH Owen. A new pulpit was dedicated in 1919 as a war memorial to the Bagnall men who lost their lives in the First World War.

By 1818 there were two schools in Bagnall, one a day school and one a Sunday School. Despite this rather inadequate provision, it was not until 1874 that a new school was provided for the village by Stoke on Trent School Board. This school served the village children until its destruction by fire in 1969. The decision not to rebuild a school in the village was taken in the same year.

Bagnall’s rural position made it ideal for an isolation hospital which was opened in 1890, with a new building being put up in 1906. At first the hospital was for smallpox patients but it was later changed to become a hospital for the treatment of children with tuberculosis. In 1959 there was a further change when it became a hospital for mentally handicapped patients and known as The Highlands.

Bagnall’s soil supports the cultivation of rhododendrons and the village is renowned for its famous rhododendron nursery at Martins Hill.

Stanley Pool, to the north-east of the village, was built 1783-1787 to serve as a feeder reservoir for the Caldon Canal.

Nearby Tompkin is said to take its name from Tom’s Skin. This is a sad story of a drummer boy said to have been skinned alive, either by Roundheads at the time of the Civil War, or a century later at the time of the Jacobite Rebellion by the local squire in revenge with the intention of using the skin to make a drum.