Stretton in 1817

Description from A Topographical History of Staffordshire by William Pitt (1817)

STRETTON.

Stretton is mentioned in the population returns for 1811, as a liberty belonging to the parish of Penkridge. At that time it contained 47 houses, 48 families; 118 males, 125 females: total, 243 persons.

The village of Stretton is about three quarters of a mile north of Watling Street-way, opposite Breewood. This place, now so obscure, is considered by several learned antiquaries as the real site of the ancient Roman station of Pennocrucium, as agreeing in the distance with the account given in the Itinerary of Antoninus.

These antiquaries suppose the name of the place to be derived from Street-way, but there are no vestiges of antiquity to confirm the fact. Mr. Dickenson, indeed, in 1796, found a tumulus on Roley Hill, in the vicinity of Stretton, which he considered as a very likely place to have been a military station, having the river Penk contiguous. Some small fragments of Roman implements have also been turned up by the plough, from time to time, in the neighbourhood.

The village contains several farm-houses, and smaller tenements, and a family-mansion of great antiquity. Stretton-hall is evidently a structure of the last century, and is built in a pleasant situation, with an extensive lawn in front, interspersed with plantations, an ancient wood to the north, and the church and village to the south. A high garden wall, sheltered with plantations, extends to the highway.

This village formerly belonged to the family of Conolly, of Ireland, from whom it was purchased about twenty years ago by the Hon. Edward Monckton, of Somerford. The upland is a strong marly loam, adapted to wheat and beans: the pasturage is good, and the hedge-row timber grows vigorously. The mansion is now occupied by a tenant. There is a mill on the Penk called Stretton mill.

The Church, which was originally erected as a chapel of ease to Penkridge, is dedicated to St. John. It now possesses its own rights of marriage and sepulture, and has no dependence on the mother church.