William Withering (1741 1799) and Edgbaston Hall

Abstract

Edgbaston Hall, once the home of William Withering, and now the club house of the Edgbaston Golf Club, was the venue of the annual dinner of the Cardiac Society of Great Britain and Ireland for the Birmingham meeting in May 1939. The estate is a very old one, and the present house has some close medical associations. The Manor of Edgbaston dates back to the Norman Conquest, when it was valued at thirty shillings a year; and in the reign of King Richard the second, through the marriage of Isabella de Egebaston to Thomas Middlemore, the estate passed to the Middlemores, with whom it remained for more than three hundred years. The Middlemores were an important Roman Catholic family in the Midlands, with very large estates of which the present Duke of Norfolk is co-heir. In 1635, as Roman Catholics, they forfeited their Edgbaston estates, but managed to obtain a forty years lease from the Crown on the payment of one hundred pounds a year. The size of Edgbaston Hall at this time may be judged from the fact that it paid hearth tax on twenty-two hearths. During the Civil War, the Hall was held for Parliament by the notorious Colonel Fox, who maintained a garrison there for three years. He did so much damage that it was not again inhabited. In 1680, the Hall was dismantled, with the excuse of preventing it acting any longer as a refuge for Papists, and in 1717 the estate was sold to Sir Richard Gough, and shortly afterwards the Hall as it now stands was constructed. An illustration is shown on the next page. William Withering obtained a fourteen years lease of the Hall and park in January 1786, at an annual rental of two hundred and thirty-seven pounds ten shillings. The lease also states that " he is to replace any sweet carp or tench removed from the pool, is not to dig, plough, break up, or convert into tillage, any part of the estate, under penalty; nor to plant flax seed, rape seed, wood madder, or potatoes, but he is to maintain the wheat crop." In 1791, Birmingham had most serious riots, fomented by rival religious parties, but based upon political unrest and feelings against Dr. J. Priestley and others who approved the French Revolution. Edgbaston Hall was attacked, but escaped serious damage, being more fortunate than many of the mansions round the city. Withering was neither a non-conformist nor a 298