A tale of two parishes with just over 4 miles in between
KINGSWINFORD and Oldswinford are two ancient parishes in the south-west of the Black Country, just over four miles apart.
Their shared name, (the swinford part) derives from swineford, a ford for the crossing of pigs. In Kingswinford’s case they were the king’s swine, it being an ancient demesne of the crown. Both settlements were created during a stage in the Black Counry’s history when the landscape was dominated by woodland and the inhabitants of both parishes would have had no desire or reason to travel between the two villages. They would have kept themselves to themselves, living off the land and treating any travellers passing through with the utmost suspicion. Their very name describes the living as poor with pigs left to their own devices to roam the woodland, within the confines of paddocks, and becoming the staple diet for food and the use of skins for clothing and other purposes. It was a very rudimentary lifestyle.
The parish church of St Mary, Kingswinford, dates back to the 11th century, although much of the main body of the building is from the 17th century. St Mary’s Oldwsinford is a much earlier edifice with a church building occupying its current location since at least the 10th century. Today the oldest part of the building is the tower, built in the late 1400s, and from the 16th century until 1982 it was graced by a spire. For most of its early history St Mary’s was the only place of worship for the people of Stourbridge, Lye and Wollescote, until St Thomas’s was opened in 1735 for the people of Stourbridge.
Like most Black Country settlements Kingswinford remained very much a rural based community until the onset of industrialisation. The following is an extract from White’s Staffordshire Directory for 1834:
Numbers
“Kingswinford gives its name to a very extensive parish which comprises 7,315 acres of land and 15,156 inhabitants, though in 1801 they only amounted to 6,464 souls. The greater portion of this immensely increased population is at Brierley Hill, Wordsley, Brettell Lane, Brockmoor, Bromley, Delph, Shutt End and Wall Heath. In these villages and hamlets are many extensive coal, iron and glass-works, a wire mill, nine potteries of stone and coarse black ware, several large brick and tile yards, and a number of chain and nail manufacturers. Kingswinford’s whole demeanour had changed from small isolated village to a parish that was increasing in numbers every year during the expansion of manufacturing and industrial sites in the 19th century.
Today Kingswinford and Oldswinford lie within the same borough of Dudley, but they used to belong to two distinct counties, Staffordshire and Worcestershire. For Oldswinford a lot of political changes took place during the Middle Ages which were all due to the changes of fortunes of its overlords. It is questionable whether these great feudal lords ever visited this quiet backwater of a manor, the supervision of the peasants’ customary service and the collection of dues and fines being left to their stewards. The Lyttelton family acquired the manor of Oldswinford in 1564 and were the dominant local family until the 17th century when, having fallen from favour and losing most of their wealth through involvement in the Gunpowder Plot and the Royalist and Roman Catholic causes in Stuart times, they were superseded by the Foleys, whose wealth was based on the rapidly expanding iron industry.