Essington

Move your pointing device over the image to zoom to detail. If using a mouse click on the image to toggle zoom.
When in zoom mode use + or - keys to adjust level of image zoom.

Date:1086 - 2015 (c.)

Description:Essington is situated about four miles north east of Wolverhampton. Despite its modern appearance, it has a much older history. The name has three elements and derives from the Anglo-Saxon name of ‘Esne’, the word ‘inga’ which denotes possession and ‘tun’ meaning homestead or farmstead. So Essington means ‘the homestead of Esne’s people’. Esne was probably a man of some rank.

In the Domesday Book of 1086, Essington is recorded as ‘Eseningetone’. The manor belonged to the William Fitz Ansculf, one of the middling landowners in the county, who also owned land around Penn and Sedgley. The manor was large enough to support six ploughs. There were 15 villeins (tenants who held land in return for labour services), two bordars (smallholders who had brought land into cultivation on the edges of the village) and two serfs. The total value of the manor was only 20 shillings.

There were a number of moated sites at Essington dating from the Middle Ages, notably Moat House, which is now a water-filled earthwork. A moated site at The Hollies was filled up in 1896. Other sites were located at Essington Hall Farm and Prestwood.

By the time of the Hearth Tax assessment of 1666, a total of 35 households were assessed as liable for the payment of the tax, the largest house with seven hearths belonging to Mrs Jane Beardmore. A further 29 households were listed being to poor to pay the tax.

The present parish church was built in 1933 and is dedicated to St John. The brick is pale in colour and the design was by Wood and Kendrick. Prior to this there was an iron church which was a chapel of ease to St Mary’s, Bushbury. Before the iron church was built, services were conducted in the National School, which was licensed for the purpose. A Wesleyan chapel was built in the village in 1883, replacing an earlier chapel of 1834.

The principal industry in Essington was coal mining. There is evidence of mining here in the 17th century and clusters of pits were in existence in the early 19th century. In 1851, however, it was noted rather oddly that the coal mines were exhausted. Despite this assertion, coal mining continued in Essington in the later 19th century and the large Hilton Main Colliery, which opened in 1924, was the last to close in the area. The soil is clay and this led to the development of a number of brick and tile making businesses. There is also a roundhouse windmill, or rather its remains, built originally in 1681 and the only post mill left in Staffordshire.

A transport network developed to support the coal industry. The Wyrley and Essington Canal was built in 1797 to transport the coal from the mining areas of Great Wyrley, Willenhall and Bloxwich and so help to open up the Cannock Chase coalfield. There were two later branches, the Daw End Branch and the Lord Hay’s Branch and both these became disused in 1954.

The canal was supplemented by railway construction in the 19th century with a railway connecting the Essington pits with the Lord Hay’s Branch Canal. In the 1860s the construction of a railway to connect Holly Bank and Essington Collieries with the Wyrley Bank Branch Canal improved communications further. Later with the opening of Hilton Main Colliery, the LNWR put into effect a scheme to build a line between Holly Bank and Blackhalve. This enabled the colliery to build its local line to join it.

Schools were opened in Essington in 1846, enlarged in 1872, 1888 and again in 1902 and in 1912 for infants only.