Great Haywood
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Great Haywood () is a village in central Staffordshire, England, about four miles from Rugeley.
Great Haywood lies on the River Trent, where the Trent is met by its tributary, the River Sow. The village is also a significant junction of the English inland canal network, and the waters around the village are widely regarded by guidebooks as some of the most attractive on the network.
The church, St. Stephen, was designed by Thomas Trubshaw, and became the centre of a parish in 1858.
The village was home to the newly married Edith Tolkien, wife of famous author J. R. R. Tolkien, from March 1916 to February 1917.[1] He stayed with her in her cottage (Cottage 1, Gipsy Green, on the Teddesley Park Estate) near the village during the winter of 1916, while recuperating from trench fever.[2] The surrounding landscape was said to be an inspiration for his early literary works about Middle-earth. At the cottage he began work on what would become The Silmarillion. Nearby is a place called Norbury, which may relate to the "Norbury of the Kings" that appears in The Lord of the Rings.
Great Haywood was served by a railway station which was opened by the North Staffordshire Railway on June 6, 1887.
In August 2002 advertisements were placed in the national press for an "hermit" to take up residence on the Great Haywood Cliffs above the nearby Shugborough estate, ancestral home of Lord Lichfield. Fifty-five people applied, and Ansuman Biswas was chosen as hermit. Shugbourough also serves as the headquarters of Staffordshire county's arts management team.
Great Haywood is the site of one of the largest surviving packhorse bridges in the country which stands over the river Sow near Shugborough hall.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Great War: Garth, John (2003). Tolkien and the Great War. London: HarperCollins. ISBN 0-00-711952-6.
