Badger is a village and civil parish in Shropshire, England, about six miles north-east of Bridgnorth. The parish had a population of 134 according to the 2001 census, falling to 126 at the 2011 census.
Badger Parish is at grid map reference SO 768 995. The boundaries of the parish contain the village of Badger, one side of Badger Dingle, and Badger Heath Farm. It is approximately 2.7 km at its widest point.
The village and its surroundings, particularly the Dingle, are considered a visitor attraction. In their present form they owe much to deliberate planning and landscaping in the 18th century.
Etymology Badger has its origin in the Old English language of the Anglo-Saxons. It has no connection with the mammal, spelled similarly: as late as the 1870s, the alternative spelling Bagsore was current.John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870–72) at A Vision of Britain Through Time The late Margaret Gelling, a specialist in Midland toponyms, formerly based at the University of Birmingham separates it into two separate elements:
The first element in the name, Bæcg, is an Anglo-Saxon personal name – perhaps one of the Angles who came to settle in the evolving kingdom of Mercia, and shared with Beckbury.
The second element, ofer signifies a hill spur.Gelling, Margaret (1984) Place-Names in the Landscape. London: J. M. Dent , 259. In a detailed discussion of this latter term,Gelling (1984), p.173-179 Gelling admits that it is a conjectural reconstruction of a word that never occurs separately, but is a common part of place-names, with the main concentration being in Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Shropshire and Herefordshire. It has often been construed simply as a hill or ridge, but Gelling's detailed examination of sites suggests a more precise significance: that the place is on or close to a long, narrow ridge, perhaps jutting from a larger ridge. At Badger, "the settlement lies to the E. of an appropriate hill-spur.".Gelling (1984), p.176 There is indeed a spur, rising up behind Badger Farm, with a slope to the south-east enfolding the village and running down to the Dingle, while the western slope descends to the River Worfe.
History
Medieval origins As its name suggests, the origins of the village of Badger seem to lie in the Anglo-Saxon period. The first real evidence comes from the Domesday survey of 1086, which compared the situation at that point with that before the Norman Conquest. The entry translates: "Osbern, son of Richard, holds BADGER from Earl Roger, and Robert from him. Bruning held it; he was a free man. 1/2 hide which pays tax. Land for 2 ploughs. In lordship 1 plough; 4 smallholders with 1 plough. Woodland for fattening 30 pigs. The value was 7s; now 10s." This indicates the pre-Conquest Anglo-Saxon owner was Bruning, who got 10s. a year from it. It had since fallen in value, like most northern and Midland villages, and belonged to Roger de Montgomerie, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. Osbern fitz Richard, baron of Richard's Castle, was one of Roger's vassals and held it as a fief. However, he let it to someone called Robert.
To the four smallholders or bordars, their families must be added, but the population was obviously very small. A hide had been a unit of area, but by this stage it was simply a way of expressing liability to tax. Half a hide is a very small assessment. Badger was a long way down the territorial scale, its manor run by a man two levels below the regional magnate, Earl Roger.
A little later, in the early 12th century, under Henry I, Earl Roger's son, Robert, lost his earldom and the barons of Richard's Castle are at the top of the pyramid (beneath the king, of course). The history of the lordship is rather convoluted, but by the end of the 12th century, the immediate overlord was the Prior of Wenlock.
The history of the actual occupiers or "terre tenants" of the manor is a little less complicated. William de Badger was the tenant in the mid-12th century, and he sold up to one Philip, who is soon also known as de Badger. After that it passed from father to son for nearly two centuries, until 1349, and stayed within the same family until 1402, when Alice, widow of John de Badger, died without issue. Thereafter there was a complex situation of shares in the manor held by members of the Elmbridge family, until Dorothy Kynnersley née Elmbridge conveyed it to her son, Thomas Kynnersley, in 1560.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.2.
The medieval village was probably surrounded by open fields, although there is no direct evidence of them until the 17th century, on the eve of their enclosure. At that point the fields were called Batch and Middle fields and Uppsfield.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.3. It was surrounded by woods to the west and north and heathland to the east. The layout was probably very similar to the modern pattern. The church, rectory and hall form a group, and the rest of the village is strung along the road to the south of them.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.1.
The village probably acquired a church and a priest in the mid-12th century. By 1246, the living was known as a rectory. The lord of the manor, that is the terre tenant, had the right to nominate his choice of priest to the Prior of Wenlock, although he had to pay the prior 3s. 4d. a year for the right. However, Wenlock was a Cluniac house and so classed as an alien priory, the daughter house of an abbey in France. Hence it was constantly seized by the Crown during the Hundred Years War, so nominations were actually sent to the Crown for most of the 14th century. Because of the Wenlock connection, Badger and the neighbouring parish of Beckbury formed an exclave of the Diocese of Hereford – an anomaly that persisted until 1905, when it was transferred to the Diocese of Lichfield. Several of the early incumbents seem to have been sons of the lord of the manor or of the lords of Beckbury. The rector lived on tithes and Easter offerings, and also had an area of glebe land and, for some centuries, the rent of a house inhabited by the Blakemans.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.5.
Early modern Badger
Under the Kynnersleys, the manor again stayed in the same family for more than two centuries. An early challenge to their control came in the form of a royal appointment to the rectory. Since the dissolution of the monasteries, advowson or the right to present an incumbent had technically belonged to the Crown, but the old arrangement, by which the lord of the manor made the initial nomination, still held. Indeed, the Elmbridges and the Kynnersleys alike had continued to pay their annual dues to preserve it. In 1614, James I presented Richard Froysall to the rectory, without consulting the lord of the manor, Francis Kynnersley. Francis fought back. First he tried to stop Froysall entering the church and ordered the parishioners not to attend. Then he cut off economic support, seizing Froysall's tithes and planting trees on the glebe. He swore he would cut off Froysall's head and throw it in Badger Pool. He managed to get the rector imprisoned at Shrewsbury. However, Froysall apparently had some supporters, and they made off with some of Francis's oxen.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.5.
Francis seems to have done enough to vindicate his claims. The Kynnersley lords slowly crept up the social scale, serving their locality in various capacities. Thomas Kynnersley was High Sheriff of Staffordshire and later High Sheriff of Shropshire under the Commonwealth, and his grandson John was High Sheriff of Shropshire under George I. Around 1719, John Kynnersley demolished the old timber-framed manor house and built a new hall, a substantial but unpretentious building with six ground floor rooms, just to the north of the old site.
Starting in 1662, the whole agricultural organisation of Badger was transformed. Firstly a large part of the east of the parish was hived off as a separate estate: Badger Heath,Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.2. which for more than a century was farmed by the Taylor family, before being sold to the Greens in 1796. Then a large area of common land was divided up among the cultivators. Some time after this the open field system was abandoned and the land enclosed. Heathland was cleared and ploughed up: by 1748, even the Heath estate was half arable and had only 3% heathland.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.3. This set the pattern which has persisted to this day. Despite concentration of holdings, Badger's landscape remains mainly one of farms, predominantly arable but with considerable pasturage.
The population of Badger evidently remained small. In the mid-17th century the adult population seems to have been less than 50.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.1. With such a small population, most of the rectors decided they need devote only a small part of their time to the parish. In most cases, they chose to live elsewhere and combined Badger with other posts of greater profit. Thomas Hartshorn was rector from 1759 to 1780. For most of that time he also held two prebends under the peculiar jurisdiction of St. Peter's Collegiate Church, Wolverhampton: Hatherton, near Cannock and Monmore, near Wolverhampton.
John Kynnersley died without issue and passed the manor to his unmarried brother, Clement, who died in 1758. It then passed to his nephew, also called Clement, of Loxley. Both Clements had their own property near Uttoxeter and neither lived in Badger. They rented the manor house to an ironmaster, William Ferriday. So, for many years, both the lords of the manor and the rectors were absentees, rarely seen in the village. The second Clement decided to sell Badger in 1774.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.2.
Making of the modern village
The buyer was Isaac Hawkins Browne, a Derbyshire industrialist and a Tory politician. Returning from the Grand Tour, Browne set about living the life of a country gentleman on his Shropshire estates at Badger and at Malinslee, near Dawley. He worked on his father's writings, helping to get his poetry recognised. Browne ingratiated himself with the local gentry, serving as High Sheriff for 1783 and as member of parliament for the pocket borough of Bridgnorth, a fiefdom of the Whitmore family of Dudmaston Hall from 1784 until 1812.
Browne spent heavily on the Hall. Between 1779 and 1783, he had it greatly extended, to a design by James Wyatt, with a museum, library, and conservatory, elaborate plasterwork by Joseph Rose, and paintings by Robert Smirke. Browne then turned his attention to the landscape. However, it was in his work on the landscape that Browne made his biggest and most permanent mark on the appearance of the village and its surroundings. He had the dell along the Batch Brook, on the south edge of the village, improved to a plan by William Emes and probably his pupil, John Webb. This reshaped Badger Dingle was a notable example of the picturesque style in landscaping. It had two miles of walks, with a walk linking it to Badger Hall from its east end, cascades created by damming the brook, a "temple" and other architectural features.See the map of Badger and the Dingle in 1837 in the Victoria County History. It seems that the pools in the village itself, which drain into the Dingle, were enlarged and reshaped at this time.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.2.
Browne was a generous landlord and employer, instituting coal allowances for the villagers and help for the poor. It was probably he who initiated and financed the main village school: this was paid for by the lords of the manor and provided primary education for the village children and others, until 1933.Victoria County History: Shropshire, volume 10, Badger, s.7.