Coven

A Canal Pub with a Past

At The Anchor Inn, then trading as the Fox & Anchor, a stuffed fox with an anchor medallion hung above the bar in 2011. The pub stands beside the canal at Cross Green.

The building dates only to the 1960s, after the original burned down, but rustic beams and exposed floorboards give the rebuilt interior an older character.

John Durham was the first known landlord, recorded in 1834, long before the fire and rebuild.

Food and Drink Around Coven

The menu lists an 8oz sirloin and a 10oz rib-eye alongside other pub dishes and Sunday roasts. A rear patio overlooks the canal, while real fires and a weekly quiz add to the indoor setting.

The Rainbow, on Brewood Road, has a single room with a sectioned-off pool table and patio garden. It has no kitchen, while a burger van serves outside, and three changing real ales sit alongside Greene King Abbot.

On the A449, The Harrows Inn was refurbished in 2020 as a contemporary free house, with home-made food, changing real ales and a large beer garden with covered booths and a children’s play area. It won Wolverhampton’s Country Pub of the Year award before changing hands in 2023.

Towpaths and the Bront

Both canals are walkable from Coven. The Shropshire Union runs through the parish past a string of listed bridges; the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal skirts the village at Cross Green, where the towpath continues to Penkridge, eight miles away.

The Bront, a parish-owned wildlife area off Poplars Farm Way, has the River Penk running through it and is quieter than either canal.

Getting Here and Layers of Village History

Service 876 links Stafford, Penkridge, Brewood, Coven and Wolverhampton, and the A449 is the road approach. Four Ashes served the village until the 1950s; Bilbrook is now the nearest operating station, followed by Codsall and Penkridge.

Before St Paul's was built in 1857, Coven was a chapelry of Brewood without a church of its own. Edward Banks of Wolverhampton designed its south-west tower and spirelet, along with a 62ft by 24.5ft nave and a gallery that once seated 396.

The Homage on Brewood Road bears a 1679 date. Grade II-listed and built in limewashed brick, the former single dwelling is now two houses, with a central gabled porch and two casement windows that retain segmental heads.

From Domesday to Moseley Old Hall

Coven turns up in the Domesday Book as "Cove," worth 16 shillings a year and held by Robert of Stafford, with eight households recorded — small by 1086 standards.

In 1651, Charles II came through Coven Heath on the run from his defeat at Worcester, on his way to Moseley Old Hall, about 2.1 miles from Coven in a straight line with a longer road journey, where Thomas and Alice Whitgreave and the priest John Huddleston sheltered him.