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JEFFCOCK ROAD (Penn Fields)
This road, which connects Bradmore Road with Lea Road, is named on early
maps as Pig Stye Lane.
The 1842 tithe map shows Near, Middle and Far Pigstye Lane pieces as
field names along the eastern side of the lane.
The General Cemetery Company opened the graveyard on Monday 10th
July 1850. The Road was shortly after renamed Cemetery Lane.
The company remained in private hands until the cemetery was transferred
to the Council by virtue of the Wolverhampton Corporation Act of 1936.
An interesting requirement of the Cemetery Clauses Act of 1847 was that
the Cemetery must be enclosed by “substantial walls or iron railings to
a height of eight feet at least”. To keep folk in or out?
The Road was renamed Jeffcock Road shortly after the death of Rev John
Thomas Jeffcock (1834-1895) who was the Rector of St Peter’s 1877-1895.
(Peter Hickman)
There were pig styes bordering the cemetery, off Cemetery Walk, at the
top end of Oak Street, until after World War 2. My mother
remembers them well. The built up estates of Victorian streets
seemed to end here, in a semi-rural backwater of vegetable plots and the
like.
(David Clare)
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