ided the family of Welch, who
founded the church dole; the Doctor's Piece was perhaps part of the
estate of the celebrated Dr. Wilkes; the Clothers and the Little
Clothiers are names which are said to indicate certain lands once
belonging to the Cloth-workers' Company of the City of London; Somerford
Bridge Piece and the Hither Bathing were presumably located near the
brook; while the Poor's Piece, the Constable's Dole, and the Dole's Butty
(query: does the last-named, interpreted in the dialect of the district,
signify "the companion piece to the Dole?"), are names which suggest the
identity of charity lands.

There is mention of a High Causeway, which manifestly indicates the
position of some old paved road; and the Butts, doubtless, named the
field where in ancient times archery was practised by the men of
Willenhall, as the men of Darlaston did at the Butcroft in their parish.

Reverting to the schedule, there are some names for which no explanation
can be offered; as Ell Park, Berry Stile, the Stringes, and the Farther
Stringes. Many of the properties named in the list are declared to be
"uninclosed lands that lie dispersedly in the Common Fields there,
intermixed with other lands." How much, or rather, how little, common
land is there in Willenhall to-day?

And yet the amount of "waste" land in and around Willenhall was once
excessive, as the writings of George Borrow cannot fail to convey (Chap.
XXVIII.). In Chap. XXII. we read of Canne Byrch, situated in "Willenhall
Field," lying in the highway towards Darlaston, where perhaps the village
community of ancient times tilled their lands in common; and more
directly of the "waste or common land" called Shepwell Green; a wide
stretch of open land once apparently stretching away towards the
wilderness and solitudes of that gipsy-land immortalised by George
Borrow.

"Willenhall Green" is named by Dr. Plot, writing in 1686, as a place
where yellow ochre was found a yard below the surface, and which after
being beaten up was made into oval cakes to be sold at fourpence a dozen
to glovers, who used it in combination with cakes of "blew clay," found
at Darlaston and Wednesbury, "for giving their wares an ash colour."

The old highway between Walsall and Wolverhampton lay along Walsall
Street, through Cross Street, and the Market Place; the new coach route,
or the New Road, as it was called, was made in the early part of the
nineteenth century.

New Invention is a