Kinver - History

History

Kinver has, at various times in the past, been spelt on maps and documents as: Kinfare, Kynfare, Chenfare, Chenevare and Cynefare.

The hilltop church is on a very ancient site, and the current church, dedicated to St. Peter dates from the 12th century. The village High Street was laid out as the burgages of a new town by the lord of the manor in the late 13th century and was administered by a borough court, separate for the manorial court for the rest of the manor of Kinver and Stourton (known as Kinfare Foreign).

The main pub, The White Hart, dates from the 14th century, and the Anchor Hotel (now developed as housing) from the 15th Century. The Grammar School, although it closed as a school in 1915, is 16th Century.

Kinver was known for making sturdy woollen cloth, using the flow of the Stour for fulling mills and dyeing. The village also profited from being a stop on the great "Irish Road" from Bristol to Chester (until the 19th century, the port of embarkation for Ireland), the 'White Hart' being the oldest and largest inn.

Later, the river was used to power finery forges and from 1628 the first slitting mills, including Hyde Mill which has been claimed (incorrectly) as the earliest in England, though it certainly was among the earliest. There were five slitting mills in the parish by the late 18th century, more than any other parish in Great Britain. These slit bars of iron into rods to be made into nails in the nearby Black Country.

Stourton Castle figured notably in the history of the English Civil Wars.

In 1771 the area was opened up to trade by the Staffordshire and Worcester Canal, built by James Brindley.

In Victorian and Edwardian times it was a popular Sunday day out for people from Birmingham and the Black Country, via a 1901 pole & wires tram extension that ran across the fields, the "Kinver Light Railway".

The nailshops and forges ceased work around 1892, and local ironworks are thought to have all closed in about 1912 or 1913.