To my shame, some weeks ago reader Steve Hickman asked about the road changes around Stonall in the early part of last century, and ever since, I’ve had a post almost ready to go. My work, however, was eclipsed by the excellent commentary provided by Julian Ward-Davies who’s the outstanding amateur landscape historian behind popular, painstakingly researched and reasoned paper ‘The Lost Lake of Stonnall’. Well, Julian is back with a new, even more fascinating thesis. This man is a star of local historical writing and deserves all the exposure we can give him.
Stonnall is a picturesque village located to the south-west of Lichfield, to the north of Birmingham, to the east of Walsall and to the south of Brownhills. The village is divided into Upper and Lower Stonnall, representing the high and low ends of the valley that it occupies….
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Julian,
in your article about ‘The Stonnall Mysteries’ you show a drawing of a cottage with the caption ‘number 1 Stonnall’
Pure speculation and allowing for a lot of artistic license. Is it possible that this cottage was on the Stonnall triangle. My reasoning is :
1.if you compare what could be a early 18th century road with the path of the Road as it goes distinctly down into the village. Look on Google earth at the view from the Chester looking down the side of the triangle.
2.If you look at the 1834 map it shows the orientation of the building that was on the triangle about in the correct orientation
3.Grove hill as you suggest would be in the right place in the background, though drawn much higher than in reality.
4. I think the artist would have been drawing from a point about in the middle of the modern day Chester Road.
5. Artists often select a well known view that will be easily recognisable as this would as travellers went along the Chester Road.
We will never know but just a possibility
Steve
Steve, I think you may well be right and I have amended the article accordingly. The cottage seems to be an exact fit as far as the Tithe Map is concerned.
The article is a work in progress and if anybody has any information, stories, anecdotes, folklore, etc, then please contact me by one of the methods displayed at the end of the essay.
Many thanks to Bob for publicising the article.
Sorry, I got the URL of the article wrong in the last post. Please use this one instead:
http://www.q-trax.net/blog/The_Stonnall_Mysteries.html
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Just moved into , stable cottage , 1 lower farm , main st
has anyone got info on the above please
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