Hagley Hall, Rugeley

Description

By 1392 Thomas {Thomehorn} was holding a messuage with a half virgate in Rugeley, and since several of his buildings there had been destroyed by fire at some time before that year, he built himself a new house (novum manerium) consisting of a hall, four chambers, a chapel, a kitchen, two barns, a stable, an oxstall, a brewery, and a gatehouse with a drawbridge, felling 100 oaks within the bishop's chase of Cannock for the purpose as part of his right to timber for building, fencing, and fuel appurtenant to his tenement in Rugeley (S.H.C. xv. 53).
The 14th-century capital messuage probably occupied the low-lying site to the west of Crossley Stone where a large moat encircling an island is still in existence. The present Hagley Hall stands on high ground some 300 yds. farther west, the level falling away steeply on its south side to form a cliff above the Rising Brook. Sir Richard Weston (d. 1658) is said to have built the first house, at one time known as Bank Top, on this site. (VCH)

Comments

Gatehouse, who was for many years a resident of Rugeley, does not consider this was the supposed moated manor, in Elmore Park, suggested by the VCH and the Staffordshire HER record MST1799 at SK042180. This is a mill pond with a U shaped island in it not capable of housing a house as large as Thomas Thomehorn's Hall and four chambers (it has on it the foundations of a small Victorian summer house). The Hagley manor was called Bank Top and clearly lay where Hagley Hall lay (SK039180), on the top of the ridge from which Rugeley (pronounced locally as Rudgeley), derived its name. Gatehouse suspects the mention of a 'drawbridge' (what was the original text?) has mislead writers into thinking there must also have been a moat, rather than a dry ditch. The last remnants of Hagley Hall were demolished in the 1980s but this was a house much redeveloped and there was nothing of medieval date surviving.