Pattingham

High Street Pubs

Eleven High Street is the Pigot Arms, a restored oak-beamed village pub. A six-figure restoration ended with locals cutting the ribbon. The name honours the 1st Baron Pigot, who bought neighbouring Patshull Hall in 1765; the family also owned a diamond valued at £30,000. The bar serves Timothy Taylor Landlord, with a garden for outdoor seating.

Fifteen High Street, a few doors along, is the Crown Bar & Kitchen. Sunday roasts, steak and kidney pie, and scampi and chips are among its pub dishes. Dogs are welcome in the bar and garden.

The Fox is on Bridgnorth Road in Shipley, about 1.8 miles from Pattingham in a straight line; the road journey is longer. Pattingham itself has two High Street pubs.

Norman Stone and Domesday

St Chad's Church stands on a site dedicated to a Saxon bishop; its oldest visible fabric is late twelfth century, including the Norman nave arches. The fourteenth-century tower sits wholly inside the building, an unusual arrangement. Sir George Gilbert Scott remodelled the church between 1856 and 1871 and added the spire. The two medieval Mass clocks are scratched into the outside of the south wall around 1350; inside are a paten inscribed simply "PATYNGHAM," and parish registers dating to 1559.

Domesday Book records fourteen households here — three villagers, ten smallholders, one priest — worth £3 to the lord, the same figure in 1086 as in 1066, when the lord was Earl Algar.

Gold and the Great Fire

In 1700, a labourer ploughing a field west of the church turned up a Bronze Age gold torc weighing three pounds two ounces, with a four-foot circumference, among the heaviest ever recorded in Britain. It was later melted down, so it survives only on paper.

The Great Fire of Pattingham struck on 10 September 1677, eleven years after London's, destroying a locksmith's workshop, two houses, and the church entirely bar its steeple and outer walls. The damage came to £3,309 13s 4d, and the King contributed to the rebuild.

Paths and Playing Fields

Footpaths lead out to Patshull Park, the Capability Brown estate with its 75-acre lake, well stocked for fishing, and on to Badger Dingle and Ackleton, following Snowdon Brook through woodland and parkland most of the way. The estate has extended its Millennium footpaths with the local council to provide a route away from Westbeech Road.

The Playing Fields have two tennis courts, a football pitch, a league-size netball court and a free play area. The Village Hall opposite the parish church has hosted clubs for all ages since the current hall was built in 1966.

Connections and the Carillon

Wolverhampton is to the east and Bridgnorth to the west; the 10A bus connects Pattingham to Wolverhampton via Compton and Tettenhall Wood. There is no station in the village itself.

The carillon, a mechanical chime box with its own timer, is distinct from the church clock and rings three times a day over a village that spent most of its history farming and has spent the last sixty years commuting instead.