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Staffordshire town, 3 miles S of Wolverhampton. Situated midway between Wolverhampton and Dudley its prosperity was built upon the development of the coal and iron industries and lies at the heart of the area known as the Black Country.
Location map of Sedgley courtesy of Streetmap.co.uk
The poet, John Cornfield (1827-1878), was born in Cann Lane, Hurst Hill. Originally a brickmaker and pawnbroker he took an interest in local politics. Allan Chace, and other Poems was published in 1877.
Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1860-1929) called the town Sedgehill in her novels. Ellowes Hall, built from 1821 and demolished 1964, is featured as The Willows in The Farringdons, her novel of 1900 from which the following extracts are taken :-
In the middle of Sedgehill, which is in the middle of Mershire, which is in the middle of England, there lies a narrow ridge of high table-land, dividing, as by a straight line, the collieries and ironworks of the great coal district from the green and pleasant scenery of the western Midlands. Along the summit of this ridge runs the High Street of the bleak little town of Sedgehill...
Sedgehill High Street is nothing but a part of the great high road which leads from Silverhampton to Studley and Slipton and the other towns of the Black Country; but it calls itself Sedgehill High Street as it passes through the place, and so identifies itself with its environment, after the manner of caterpillars and polar bears and other similarly wise and adaptable beings...
The home of the Farringdons was called the Willows, and was separated by a carriage-drive of half a mile from the town...It was a handsome house inside, with wonderful oak staircases and Adams chimney-pieces.
Page created 1 October 2002 and last updated
9 March 2004
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