- Great Haywood
Great Haywood (coord|52|48|N|2|00|W|)is a
village in centralStaffordshire ,England , just off the A51 about four miles fromRugeley .Great Haywood lies on the
River Trent , where the Trent is met by itstributary , theRiver Sow . The village is also the site of a significant junction of the English inlandcanal network,Haywood Junction , where theStaffordshire and Worcestershire Canal meets theTrent and Mersey Canal . The waters around the village are widely regarded by guidebooks as some of the most attractive on the network.There are two churches, each of which has an attached school. St. Stephen's was designed by
Thomas Trubshaw , and became the centre of aparish in 1858. St. John the Baptist'sCatholic church was originally built inTixall , about three miles away, as a private chapel to Tixall Hall, which was owned by the Aston family. When the estate was sold to Earl Talbot, the church was dismantled and rebuilt in Great Haywood. [("History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire")] The marks made on the blocks to allow reassembly can still be seen inside the church.There was originally a mill and a brewery in the village, but both have been closed down and demolished, commemorated by the names of the roads where they once stood (Mill Lane and Brewery Lane). Following a fatal automobile accident in 1905, the mill pond was drained and the road straightened.
The village was home to the newly married
Edith Tolkien , wife of famous authorJ. R. R. Tolkien , from March 1916 to February 1917. [("Great War" 2003, pg 134 & 231)] He stayed with her in hercottage (Cottage 1, Gipsy Green, on the Teddesley Park Estate) near the village during the winter of 1916, while recuperating fromtrench fever . [("Great War" 2003, pg 207)] The surrounding landscape was said to be an inspiration for his early literary works aboutMiddle-earth . At the cottage he began work on what would become "The Silmarillion ". Nearby is a place called Norbury, which may relate to the "Norbury of the Kings" that appears in "The Lord of the Rings ".Great Haywood was served by a
railway station which was opened by theNorth Staffordshire Railway onJune 6 ,1887 .In August 2002 advertisements were placed in the national press for an "
hermit " to take up residence on the Great Haywood Cliffs above the nearbyShugborough estate, ancestral home ofLord Lichfield . Fifty-five people applied, andAnsuman Biswas was chosen as hermit. Shugborough also serves as the headquarters of Staffordshire county's arts management team.Great Haywood is the site of Essex Bridge, one of the largest surviving
packhorse bridge s in the country which stands over the river Trent nearShugborough Hall . It bordersCannock Chase , designated an area of outstanding natural beauty since 1958.Notes
References
*cite book
author = White, William
year = 1851
title =History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire
location = Sheffield*"Great War": cite book
author = Garth, John
year = 2003
title =Tolkien and the Great War
location = London
publisher =HarperCollins
id = ISBN 0-00-711952-6
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.