After the Norman invasion of 1066 it took a number of years to complete the conquest of the country. It was not till 1086 that the “Domesday” Book was compiled—written evidence of a settlement of the land question which, it was fondly hoped (and expressed in the name), would last till “Domesday”!

The Domesday Book was a great national land register in which was entered a record of every acre of land in England, its condition, its ownership, and annual value at that time. For on land ownership alone then depended not only the amount of the national revenue, but the strength of the national defences. Willenhall, wrongly written by the Domesday scribes as Winehala, is returned as being in the Hundred of Offlow, and having an area of 2,168 acres.

Of this acreage 3 hides belonged to the old domains of the Crown, like Bilston and Wednesbury (having formerly formed part of the dominions of the Saxon kings), while but two hides of Willenhall land belonged to Wolverhampton church. It is believed that the King’s manorial portion took with it Bentley, with its 1,650 acres.

Anyway, Willenhall having belonged originally to the ancient Mercian kings, and having been held in succession by all the Saxon kings of England to Edward the Confessor and Harold II., naturally passed as a royal manor, or rather, a portion thereof, into the hands of the Conqueror, being set down among the Crown lands as of “ancient demesne.”

The Domesday Book also sets down among the possessions of the Canons of Wolverhampton 2,200 acres in Wednesfield, 1,194 acres in Pelsall, both in the same Hundred; 3,396 acres in Wolverhampton, 3,912 acres in Arley, and 6,377 acres, a part of Bushbury, are set down in Seisdon Hundred; the Essington portion of Bushbury, once belonging to the Countess Godiva, is reckoned in Cuddlestone Hundred, in which are also given the four other portions of Wolverhampton, namely Hilton, Hatherton, Kinvaston, and Featherstone.

Since the eleventh century the boundaries of the Hundreds of Offlow and Cuddlestone have been altered. As to the Arley estate, that was lost to the canons ere another century had elapsed—by 1172 had escheated to the Crown.

The present-day acreage of Wolverhampton parish is no less than 17,449; made up of 3,396 acres in Wolverhampton proper, 1,845 in Bilston, and 1,650 in Bentley, a total of 6,891 acres in Seisdon Hundred; thus leaving 10,608 acres to constitute Hilton (two manors, since united into one) Hatherton, Kinvaston, Featherstone, and Hocintune. The last-named was a manor which, at that time, probably lay between Hilton and Hatherton, within Wolverhampton; the name is obsolete.

These ten estates, comprising Wolverhampton, Willenhall (part of), Arley (part of), Bushbury (part of), Hilton (part of), Pelsall, Wednesfield, Cote (near Penn), Haswic (near Newcastle), and Hocintune (now obsolete), were in 1086 held by the Canons of Wolverhampton under Sampson, the highly favoured royal Chaplain, to whom the Conqueror had presented this fief. For the purposes of comparison it may be mentioned that there were then eighteen holdings in Staffordshire, occupying 567 hides, and valued at about £516. Sampson’s fief extended to 26½ hides of this, and was estimated as being worth £8 2s. a year.

This Sampson, who has been incorrectly styled the first Dean of Wolverhampton, was a Canon of Bayeux, and though a king’s chaplain, was not ordained a priest till nine years after the Conqueror’s death, when Rufus made him Bishop of Worcester. Bishop Sampson subsequently gave the Church of Wolverhampton to his Cathedral Monastery of Worcester. He also held the neighbouring estates at Bilbrook and Tettenhall as the superior of the priests of Tettenhall College.

Willenhall, in the great survey, is recorded to have contained, as previously stated, three hides belonging to the King, and two hides belonging to the church—a hide of land in Saxon measurement was a variable quantity from 200 to 600 acres, according to the locality, but generally it was accounted so much as would serve to maintain a family—together with one acre of meadow, and a carucate (which was a measure of about 100 acres of “carved” land) employing three ploughs. The annual value of Willenhall is set down at 20s. The population consisted of eight families, or, as the return puts it, five bordars and three villeins.

A bordar, or boor, was a squatter living in a hut or cottage on the borders of a manor, having attached a little patch of land, the rent of which was paid to the lord of the manor in the shape of poultry, eggs, and small produce. A villein, or serf, was to all intents and purposes a slave, at the absolute disposal of the lord, except that he could not be detached from the soil on which he was born. While the bordar, or cottager, was resident in the manor more or less on sufferance, the villein was there of right, and was in that sense the superior of the bordar. The villein certainly might not go away from Willenhall, nor get married, nor buy and sell oxen, nor grind corn, without the express permission of the lord of the manor; yet he was not so badly off as all this would make it appear to our modern ideas. People seldom travelled in those days, money was little used, life was exceedingly primitive, and wants were very few and very simple.

Staffordshire at that time was in a chronic state of poverty, an insurrection in the county having been suppressed in 1069 with the Conqueror’s customary severity, thousands of the wretched hinds having been slaughtered, the county desolated and the Midlands depopulated.

Bilston was but a cluster of mud huts inhabited by swineherds; and it is probable Willenhall was a similar little centre of boor life in the next woodland clearing a little further along the purling brooklet, and near its junction with Beorgitha’s Stream, as the Tame was then called. The entire population of the county was purely agrarian, the villeins and boors altogether numbering about 2,800; or on an average of one labourer to each 167 acres of land registered in Domesday Book. The subsequent history of the two parts of Willenhall will have to be traced separately.

The two hides set down as ecclesiastical property have remained in the possession of the church throughout. Erdeswick, writing his history of this county in 1593, states that within the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter of Wolverhampton there were then “nine several leets, whereof eight belong to the church. The custos, lately called the Dean, is lord of the borough of Wolverhampton, Codsall, Hatherton, and Pelsall in com. Stafford; and of Lutley in com. Wigorn; hath all manner of privileges belonging to the View of Frankpledge (that is, the administration of criminal justice, &c.), to Felons’ goods, Deodands, Escheats, Marriage of Wards, and Clerks of the Weekly Markets, rated at £150 per annum, and in the total is valued worth £300 per annum.

“Each of the other portionaries (continues Erdeswick) have a several leet; whereof

“And the sacrist to attend them in capitulo, £40”—by no means a poor salary in those days for such duties as the secretarial and managerial work to a Chapter.

As to the three hides of Willenhall in the King’s Manor of Stow Heath, here is its later history as recorded by Dr. Vernon, a historiographer who made some additions to Sampson Erdeswick’s history:—

“In Willenhall is a manor called Stowheath, with a court baron and court leet. Several lands there held by copy from that lords thereof: four closes, called bundles, held of this manor, and were, in 1729, confirmed by John, Lord Gower, and Peter Giffard, lords of the manor of Stowheath; which four closes, with four others, were sold about 1748 by Mr. Lane to Admiral Anson, together with three tenements in Bloxwich, with all the manor lands, tithes, hall, and park, &c., called Bentley, adjoining to Willenhall, for £13,500.”

As to the adjoining hamlet, it may be mentioned that Domesday Book formally recorded the canons of Wolverhampton to possess “five hides of Wednesfelde; the arable land is three carucates; that there are six villeins, and six bordars, who have six carucates; and that there is a wood in which cattle are pastured, half a mile long and three furlongs broad.”

Such was life in Willenhall and Wednesfield at the Norman period, both places being then overshadowed in more senses than one by the severely protected royal preserves of Cannock Forest. We may picture the few hinds constituting the scanty population, tenanting cottages which were mere hovels, and most of them like Gurth—the swineherd of Scott’s “Ivanhoe”—wearing round their necks the iron collars, which were the badge of Saxon serfdom, and like him driving their herds into the woods each morning, and returning at nightfall with their charges grunting and gorged with beech-mast and acorns.

While to their lowly dome
The full-fed swine return’d with evening home;
Compell’d reluctant, to the several sties,
With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries.

The trade and callings of an English serf were as limited as his other opportunities in life; and others beside the swineherd found it in the adjacent woodlands. For there were certainly woodcutters and charcoal burners; and if the local iron ore were exploited, who shall say there were not then Willenhall smiths who fashioned bolts and bars, even if they had not arrived at the intricacies of locks and keys?

Here we are but emerging from the twilight of history.