Parish History

How Brereton got its name
Brereton is a Saxon name. At first, it was always written BREREDON. This is made up by two Saxon words meaning Briar-Hill or the hill where briars grow.

The First People to Live at Brereton

In Saxon times, nearby Rugeley was a small village. When the Doomsday Book was written in 1086 there were only nine families living there. These families had to produce enough food to feed themselves and so they ploughed a small area round their homes, grew hay in meadows near the River Trent and left the rest of the land to be common and forest where animals could be turned out to graze. Brereton, or the hill where the briars grew, was part of this common.

As the number of people in the area increased, more food had to be produced and some of the common was ploughed up. In the twelfth century, more families moved to the place on the common called Briar-Hill. There they built houses and began to clear and plough land.

More Recent Times

Before 1950, Brereton and Ravenhill had a mainly rural landscape with wide views over the Trent Valley, and the old Brereton Colliery hidden away on the edge of Cannock Chase. There were many tough times between the two world wars when there were few motor cars, when not every household had a ‘wireless’, and television was almost unheard of.

It was in the 1950s and 60s, however, that the local scene dramatically changed with the building of Lea Hall Colliery and the Power Station. This industry brought many newcomers to the area with the resulting housebuilding boom and a demand for new facilities. Brereton’s vicar at the time, the Reverend Cason, wrote in the Parish Magazine of November 1958: “More and more this area in which we live becomes urban and not rural; day by day the industrial engulfs the agricultural”.

Since those fast moving days many more changes have taken place, many bringing new challenges. Who could possibly have forecast that the modern colliery once on our doorstep, that was built to last 100 years and in its heyday had over 2,000 employees, would close almost without warning and now be but a memory? Similarly it was just this year [2016] that news broke that the Power Station is to close.

In unravelling the several and complex parish boundaries and their changes over the years, the parish reveals a few surprises: not many people know that Brereton’s first Civil Parish stretched for 40 years from the Trent to near Hednesford and included the large World War 1 ‘Rugeley Camp’ on Cannock Chase. In another snippet we find the wife of pottery magnate, Josiah Spode, lived out much of her long widowhood at Brereton.

H.M.S. Brereton

As one of a series of ‘Ton Class’ minesweepers/hunters named after place names ending in ton, the 360 tons H.M.S. Brereton is recorded as being named after Brereton, Staffordshire. Launched in 1953 as H.M.S. Red Beetle, it finally became, after anothermname change, H.M.S. Brereton in October 1961 and was one of the last all wooden minesweepers.

It was taken out of service on 17^th April 1991 and later scrapped, but a framed photograph of it hangs in the meeting room at St Michael’s Church.

June 2024 update

Brereton is situated just over one mile to the south east of Rugeley, close to Cannock Chase. The original village grew out of the development of the mining industry but it is now a very built-up area adjacent to Rugeley.

The name means ‘briery hill’, from the Anglo-Saxon ‘brer’ meaning brier or bramble and the Anglo-Saxon ‘dun’ meaning ‘hill’.

Brereton does not feature separately in the Domesday Book of 1086, although Rugeley is mentioned. However, it was certainly in existence by the 13th century when the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield held the overlordship.

In the Hearth Tax assessment of 1666 a total of 69 householders were assessed for tax and 37 people were exempt from payment because they were considered too poor to pay. The largest property was that of Henry Wattson who had 12 hearths. This may have been the property now known as Brereton Hall and Lanes End, which is known to have been in existence at the time of the Hearth Tax. The Hall contains some seventeenth century wall paintings.

Dr. Robert Plot mentions “the Red Lyon at Brereton”, in his book, “The Natural History of Staffordshire” published 1686. It was here that he was impressed with an instrument that he saw for removing gorse by the roots. The Hollybush Inn at Brereton Slade, would have been in existence at that time too. It was a timber-framed thatched building, part of which dated from the 16th century. It closed as an inn during the 1960’s and is now in private ownership.

Brereton House and The Cedar Tree were both built in the 18th century. Elizabeth Birch lived at Brereton House during the 1840’s and is remembered for her charitable work. She was responsible for establishing the Wesleyan School at Brereton and also for the building of six alms houses, which were to be occupied by poor widows over the age of fifty, who were expected to attend the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. The Reverend Edward Samson, who was Vicar of St. Michael’s Brereton, also built four cottages in 1904 for occupation by those in need.

Brereton’s industrial importance grew in the 19th century with the development of the coal industry and improvement in communications. The development of the Trent and Mersey Canal, and of the railway system played a large part in the growth of the area. By the middle of the 19th century, local landowners, such as the Marquess of Anglesey and Earl Talbot, later the Earl of Shrewsbury, had established coal-mining enterprises in Brereton. By 1841 Brereton Colliery was employing 227 persons. In the 1950s Lea Hall Colliery was the last colliery to be opened at Brereton. It supplied coal to the adjacent power station by conveyor belt but both closed in the 1990s.

The Church of St. Michael was built in Early English style in 1837 by Thomas Trubshaw, a local architect from Little Haywood. Sir George Gilbert Scott enlarged it in the 1870s. All the windows are stained glass.

Methodism was introduced to Brereton in 1806 by Thomas Gething, a colliery manager, whose home was registered as a meeting house. A Wesleyan chapel was opened a few years later and this was replaced by a new building in the late 19th century.

Brereton Free School, a Wesleyan school, was built in 1838 by Elizabeth Birch to teach poor children. The master had to be a member of the Wesleyan Methodist Society. In 1899, the Wesleyan school closed for a short time but was reopened a few years later on a larger site which was also owned by the trustees of the Wesleyan Chapel. In 1949 the school became controlled and by 1952 the school was known as the George Vickers Methodist Primary School, in recognition of George Vickers who was schoolmaster from 1853 to 1904.

A school at Brereton was built in the late 1820s, probably by Misses Elizabeth and Harriet Sneyd who were helping towards its maintenance in 1834. It became the National School for girls when the National School for boys and infants was built in Redbrook Lane in the 1840s. Both schools received additional financial support from the will of Rebecca Simpson in 1849, and additional charities in later years. By 1888 there were three National Schools, one for boys, one for girls and one for infants. In 1891 the girls school was rebuilt by the vicar of Brereton, the Reverend E. Samson.

Dr. Livingstone, the explorer, visited Brereton in 1864 and was invited by the Reverend J. S. Wetherall to give a lecture at the Girls School. As there was no map of Africa at the school, the vicar provided one and on it Dr Livingstone illustrated his travels. The map was cleaned and rehung in the new school by the Reverend E. Samson and attracted world-wide attention.

By 1951 the three schools had amalgamated within the girls’ school building and became Brereton Church of England Voluntary Primary School, Junior Mixed and Infants.