HAGLEY THROUGH THE FIRST MILLENNIUM
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There is documentary evidence for the road from Wolverhampton to Bromsgrove in Saxon times, i.e., the A491, and it is certain that the Halesowen to Kidderminster road existed in 1086 but they would not have been surfaced. Any other "roads" would have led to neighbouring villages and to the fields where the peasants held their strips of land. Today we grumble about 
potholes and road surfaces breaking up but we forget that it was not until 1907 that Tarmac improved on J.L. Macadam's method of surfacing the road by adding tar to compacted layers of broken stones.
In 1900 the Birmingham/Kidderminster road turned left at the Forge Garage and right at the Lyttelton Arms to the site of the War Memorial. The direct link between the top of Park Road and Middlefield Lane was not created until c1930. Just imagine the rush hour on that route. Other roads that did not exist in 1900 would have included Western Road, South Road, Woodland Avenue, Hoarstone, The Crescent, Pinewoods Avenue and all the estate roads created in the last forty years.
Law and order was controlled by the Police Station opposite the Woodman at Clent and if you wanted a doctor you had to send to Stourbridge and he would come out in his trap drawn by a pony.
If you were unable to get work, too ill to look after yourself, suffered from mental illness and you had no family to care for you, then you were sent to the Bromsgrove Union Workhouse in Birmingham Road, Bromsgrove.
Leisure activities in 1086 for the peasants would have been very basic and the time for them very limited. In 1900 it was very much a do it yourself thing. Playing the piano, if you could afford one, the occasional parish musical evening or dance were the sort of things available. There was no radio or TV, no cinema, no computers, no internet, no-one ate out, ladies did not go into pubs, with or without men. Sporting activities such as cricket, tennis and soccer, were available but the standard of the grounds was very different from what is demanded today.
Tom Pagett
January 2000
