to him:--

There was a man--the neighbours thought him mad--
The more he gave away, the more he had.

In the Town Hall of Wolverhampton a statue has been set up to commemorate
the public work of this estimable character.

[Picture: Bell Inn]

Although during the greater portion of his career a great supporter of
the State Church, in earlier life Mr. G. B. Thorneycroft had been an
ardent Wesleyan; and in his memoirs (p. 134) it is recorded how he
liquidated the burden of debt on the Willenhall Chapel belonging to that
denomination. On his death, in 1851, among those who testified to his
public usefulness, and the estimation in which he was held, was the Rev.
G. H. Fisher, of Willenhall (memoirs pp. 263-5).

[Picture: Old Bull's Head]

"The Willenhall Magazine" was the name of a monthly periodical launched
in 1862, "published for the proprietors by J. Loxton, Market Place,
Willenhall," and having Messrs. J. C. and Jesse Tildesley as its chief
contributors. The first number appeared in March, and twelve months
afterwards this praiseworthy attempt to establish a local magazine in
Willenhall had completely failed.

[Picture: The Plough]

In 1866 appeared a religious novel written by a Primitive Methodist
preacher of this town, and published by Elliot Stock, London. It: was
entitled "Nest: A Tale of the Early British Christians," by the Rev. J.
Boxer, Willenhall. Mr. G. T. Lawley describes it as a well-written story
dealing with the pagan persecution of the early British Christians by
their Saxon conquerors.

A story of direct local interest was Mr. G. T. Lawley's work "The
Locksmith's Apprentice; a Tale of Old Willenhall," published serially
some years ago in the columns of a Wolverhampton weekly newspaper.

Mr N. Neal Solly (of the firm of Fletcher, Solly, and Urwick, Willenhall
Furnaces) wrote the Guide to the Fine Arts Section of the South
Staffordshire Exhibition, held at Molineux House, Wolverhampton, in 1869.
The writer was himself an artist, and he afterwards produced some
valuable Memoirs of David Cox (1873), and of the Bristol painter, William
James Muller (1875).

The most eminent litterateur Willenhall has produced is Mr. James
Carpenter Tildesley, a lock manufacturer, as we have seen, and a
life-long public man in the town. Reference has already been made to his
writings on industrial subjects, and also to his w