The History of Pendeford

Pendeford Past

Introduction: Where is Pendeford?

Pendeford has meant different things to different people throughout its long history. It was simply home to its first few inhabitants as it is now to the thousands who live here. To William the Conqueror's surveyors it was just another manor to be recorded for their great Domesday Book. To the canal folk of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was the Rockin'. To Second World War trainee pilots it was the airfield. To aircraft workers it was the Boulton Paul factory. To hundreds of present day office workers it is the Birmingham Midshires Corporate Centre.

A map showing the location of Pendeford, on the northern edge of Wolverhampton.

So, just where is Pendeford? Again it depends on what period of history we are looking at. When most people nowadays speak of Pendeford they mean the area of housing development, now established for a quarter century, at Dovecotes and Pendeford on the outskirts of Wolverhampton. The original settlement, though, was further north, possibly near the location of the present Lower Pendeford Farm on Coven Lane or maybe on the hill where Pendeford Hall stood.

Pendeford has been part of several civil parishes - Wrottesley, Tettenhall and Bilbrook - because of boundary changes and is now part of the City of Wolverhampton.

All very confusing. For the purposes of this brief account of the history of the area a boundary has been chosen to take in historical and modern day Pendeford.

	Contents
1	Early Days - Farm and Forest
2	A Royal Interlude
3	The Mills
4	Pendeford Hall
5	Farms and Fields
6	A Local Farm Improver
7	The Canals Come
8	Barnhurst
9	A Nineteenth Century Miscellany
10	The Airport and Boulton Paul
11	Towards the Present
12	Acknowledgements and Bibliography

First Edition produced in May, 1996.
Pendeford Local History Group,

Phil Clayton
Ken Oliver

Pendeford Past continues to be updated and revised in view of further findings and more recent developments.

Phil Clayton, February, 2004


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