Edingale

The Inn That Became Memory

The Black Horse Inn on Main Road is three buildings pretending to be one: a forge at the western end, a frontage about a century old, and an older inn tucked in behind. The Gadsby family ran it as blacksmiths and publicans from the 1830s; the Duggins family held it for more than sixty years after that. It closed around 2020, and a 2026 application to convert it into four homes has been approved. In its last years, as the Black Horse Inn Bar & Grill, it kept real ale alongside curries and a famous sizzling mixed grill — Tuesday was curry, rice and a pint for £8. A TripAdvisor reviewer called it "a village pub which offers the rare combination of well-kept beer with authentic Indian food."

That combination doesn't exist here any more. Edingale currently has no pub and no shop — the Old Post Office on Main Road closed in 1987, and a later refit turned up the bread ovens that proved it had once doubled as the village bakery. Win Hobley kept a shop at Lilac Cottage until the early 1940s; Moses Emery ran a grocery on Lullington Road until his death in 1931.

Three Ways to Meet the Mease

What the village does have is the river. The Mease runs through the parish to meet the Trent at Croxall, and three signed walks follow it: the Pessall Walk, a 4.5km loop to a bridge over Pessall Brook; the River Mease Walk, a figure-of-eight past the old Black Horse and the churchyard towards Harlaston; and the shorter Pingle Meadow walk from the Village Hall, along a hedgerow beside the river. Croxall Lakes, flooded gravel pits within the parish, have 142 recorded bird species, with otters along the banks.

A Church on Royal Ground

Holy Trinity Church was rebuilt in 1880–81 by Charles Lynam, replacing a Georgian building of 1736 on a site with a church recorded as far back as 1191. A small Saxon window, salvaged from whatever stood there before that, is built into the vestry, and the parish registers begin in 1575. The Domesday survey valued the Staffordshire portion of the village at forty shillings; by 1086 it belonged directly to King William I, one of the Mercian manors he kept for himself after putting down the 1068 rebellion.

Shire Horses and a Cold War Shelter

The farming history is more recent, and stranger. E J "Jos" Holland farmed Edingale House Farm from 1909 to 1986, breeding shire horses that carried the Edingale name as far as America — a stallion called Edingale Mascot, 18.3 hands, was exported to the United States in 1984. When Holland's stock was auctioned that March, around 4,000 people came to watch. He was appointed MBE in 1983 and died three years later, aged 96. A private nuclear bunker built behind Forge Cottage by Joe Golubic in 1963 is now a bungalow called Joe's Cave.

Village Life and the Road South

The Village Hall, built in 1977, hosts a toddler group and youth club; Edingale Swifts, the football club founded by Black Horse landlord Alfred Edward Duggins, won the league and cup double in 2015–16. Tamworth is seven miles south by the A513, over the Tame at the Grade II* Chetwynd Bridge; Harlaston, two miles off, still has its own shop and pub. Arthur Rowley served fifty-three years as parish councillor, long enough that he and his wife Gladys were invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace.