Hixon History Society

Our September meeting had a talk by David Wilkinson on Chartley Village, Castle and Hall.

Chartley was a settlement recorded in the Domesday Book in the Hundred of Pirehill and the county of Staffordshire.

Owned by Earl Algar, it had a recorded population of 9 villagers and 6 smallholders. The area was eight and a half plough teams (A ”ploughland” was the unit of area that could be cultivated by a single eight-oxen plough team in a year). Other resources were a 10 acre meadow and 1 x ½ league woodland. There were once two watermills on the estate, for grinding corn, which were served by two lakes and was originally a deer park. Today it is home for the Chartley cattle, which have been brought back from Scotland.

The Castle, motte and double bailey, (similar to Stafford Castle) was built by one of the Earls of Chester, about 1100, as a safe stop-over for their journeys to places such as Tutbury. It was rebuilt in 1220 by Ranulph de Blondeville, 4th Earl of Chester, who died in 1232. It then passed by marriage to William de Ferrers, 5th Earl of Derby. It remained in the Ferrers family until 1453, when it was passed to Walter Devereux, through his wife Anne de Ferrers. Through his wife, Walter also became Baron Ferrers of Chartley in 1461.

Walter Devereux, 8th Barron Ferrers of Chartley, died at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 fighting for the Yorkist Army (under Richard III) and his lands were confiscated by the Crown. Chartley Manor: Walter Devereux’s son, Walter (!) successfully appealed against attainment of his father’s lands, but in 1489, he decided to abandon the Castle as a place of residence, and build a new moated mansion nearby. 

The ownership passes down the generations through Viscounts, Earls and Barons. Walter Devereux, 10th Baron Ferrers of Chartley, 1st Viscount Hereford, and Lieutenant of Stafford, died in1558. He is buried at St. John’s Church, Stowe. Washington Shirley, the 5th Earl Ferrers and Deputy Lieutenant of Staffordshire died childless in 1778. Just a few years later, in 1781, the old manor house was destroyed by fire.

John Egginton