Wednesbury Hall

Wednesbury Hall is a former manor house along Manor House Road, Wednesbury in England.

History

The first building along Manor House Road was constructed by Sir John de Heronville between 1272 and 1285.

Following the death of Sir John de Heronville in 1315, a detailed survey of the manor house was recorded to facilitate the legal assignment of a dower to his widow, Juliana. Under medieval English common law, Juliana was legally assigned the private solar, the pantry, and the underlying cellar, while her third also included several utilitarian outbuildings such as the brewhouse, the bakery, and the cow house, alongside exactly half-shares of the central courtyard's water well and the estate dovecote. The remaining two-thirds of the property, including the Great Hall, the main kitchens, and the principal courtyards, passed to Henry de Heronville but he died one year later in 1316.

The estate was passed to the Beaumont family in 1410 when Henry Beaumont married Joan de Heronville. The ownership of Wednesbury Hall changed again shortly before 1446 when Joan de Heronville, heiress to the original medieval estate, married her second husband Sir Henry Beaumont. Their son, Henry Beaumont II, later expanded the family's regional influence by marrying the daughter of Lord Dudley and serving as High Sheriff of Staffordshire before his death in 1471. The Beaumont family's control of the estate ended with his son, John Beaumont, who died in 1502 leaving only three daughters. Because there was no male heir to inherit the entire estate, the family properties were split three ways among the sisters; Dorothy Beaumont inherited the Wednesbury portion and married Humphrey Comberford around , officially transferring the manor house to the Comberford family during the early 1520s.

Humphrey Comberford died in 1555; his eldest son, Thomas Comberford, demolished Wednesbury Hall in 1560, with the new building completed during the 1570s. Colonel William Comberford probably sold Wednesbury Manor in 1642 to raise money for the Royalist cause during the English Civil War. It first passed to a Parliamentarian named Gilpin, and the house was first let during 1650. Between 1657 and 1663, John Shelton Sr. purchased the property; Shelton had already previously purchased a property in Wednesbury from John Comberford of Handsworth in November or December 1599.John Shelton Jr. sold Wednesbury Hall to John Hoo in 1710 to pay off his debts. The manorial courts were still held at Wednesbury Hall as late as the 1750s, the dilapidated top story was removed in 1775 to allow for the building to become habitable again, and it was owned by the Hoo family until Thomas Hoo died in 1791 when the estate was split into two halves and given to John Ward and Sir Jervoise Clarke-Jervoise.

By 1834, Wednesbury Hall was in the possession of Sir Horace St Paul, and it was described as “a venerable brick mansion.” By the time Bagnall published his History of Wednesbury in 1854, it had been converted into a farmhouse, and by the 1880s, Frederick Hackwood described it in his book Wednesbury Ancient and Modern, it consisted of “small red bricks, heavy sandstone mullioned windows, very plain but somewhat high. Its open entrance porch had a seat on each side.”

The remaining ruins were demolished and levelled between 1889 and 1899. It was replaced with a housing estate during the 1930s.

Archaeology

Only the foundations of the building survive today underneath the housing estate, and it is widely accepted that the 13th century cellar has survived.