Wich as an element in place-names comes from Old English wic, which denotes a settlement that was already old in Saxon times, therefore dating back at least to the Roman Era, and was associated with some specialized production. The first part of the name is derived from hamor, the Old English for 'hammer', which has led to the interpretation of Hammerwich as 'the old settlement with a smithy'. (Mills, p.162; Poulton-Smith, p.57)

There is no archaeology of the Paleolithic period (c.500,000 - 10,000B.C.) on the Chase itself. This is because the land surface upon which Old-Stone-Age man walked and lived was eroded by glacial action during the last Ice-Age, which ended about 10,000 years BCE. The uplands of Cannock Chase, however, marked the southern limit of glaciation, which means that we may expect to see evidence from the Paleolithic in the area to the south, and this would appear to be the case at Hammerwich, where a chert¹ handaxe typical of the period was found to the east of Stockhay Lane about ¾-mile north of the village centre (SK 070085). Evidence for later Stone-Age activity during the Neolithic period (c.4,000 - 2,000B.C.) has also been found in the form of a single chip or flake of flint which was found beside the B4155 Hanney Hay Road just north-west of the junction with Meerash Lane (SK 0571 0714), about ¾-mile south-east of the village. You may be asking how a single tiny chip of flint can be construed as evidence for human activity, but the answer is quite simply that flint does not occur naturally in the geology of the area and the only way for it to have got here was by being carried. (AHDS)

1. Chert a microcrystalline form of silica usually occurring as bands or layers of pebbles in sedimentary rock (Collins English Dictionary). Flint is a type of chert, in fact, with the added ability of producing sparks when struck with iron, which ordinary chert does not possess.

Bronze- and Iron-Age Hammerwich (c.2,500B.C. - A.D.43)

The metallurgical ages are unrepresented in the archaeology of Hammerwich.

Although there has been no physical evidence recovered which proves Roman settlement of Hammerwich, activity during this period is implied in the etymology of the place-name (see above). The presence of a major Roman military highway, the Watling Street, only ¾-mile to the south of the village would lend support to this supposition. In light of this, it is possible that the footpath which leads southwards from the village marks the route of a minor Roman road connecting Hammerwich with the A5 opposite the former junction with the Lichfield Road out of Brownhills (SK 067065), just east of the point where the new M6 Toll Road passes under the old military highway.

Early-Medieval Hammerwich (A.D.410 – 1066)

The only evidence we have for the settlement of Anglo-Saxon Hammerwich is the brief mention of the village in the Domesday Book of King William:

The village of Humeruuich was owned by Robert de Limesey the Bishop of Chester in 1086, and was held and managed on his behalf by the priests of Saint Chad's at Lichfield, together with other holdings at Packington,¹ Stytchbrook, Norton Canes, Great Wyrley and Rowley. All of these villages were listed as 'waste', meaning that they were uninhabited when the Domesday record was made. There were five carucates or 'ploughs' of arable farmland at Hammerwich, amounting to 600 acres by modern reckoning.

Domesday indicates the existence of two villages named Hammerwich, which is most interesting, and one would expect that if both settlements had survived to this day they would have been distinguished from one-another by the prefixes Great and Little, as is the case with the Haywoods near Shugborough and the Saredons south-west of Cannock. This is not the case here, however, there being only a single modern village bearing the name Hammerwich. So where is the missing Domesday village? It is likely that the smaller of the two settlements recorded in 1086 must lie somewhere in the neighbourhood of the surviving village, and it is the opinion of the authors that the second Hammerwich lies only one-quarter mile to the south-east where a number of roads converge and Hammerwich Place Farm is located; it may also be significant that Hammerwich Hall is placed closer to this area than to the modern village. This situation is similar to that at Sandon, where the larger settlement mentioned in Domesday has since disappeared, but these two villages were separated by a distance of about 2½ miles.

1. The village of Packington lies just north-west of Tamworth and is therefore beyond the scope of this website.

Click here for more information on The Domesday Book in general

Medieval Hammerwich (A.D.1066 - 1540)

There is no remaining physical evidence recorded by the AHDS which supports the Medieval settlement of the village even though it is certain that Hammerwich was occupied at least during the latter part of this period.

The most prominent relic of the post-Medieval period in Hammerwich is Speedwell Windmill in the centre of the village (SK 067074), which was built in the late-18th century and was converted into living accommodation in the mid-20th century. Situated about ¼-mile south-east of the village, Hammerwich Station (SK 074071) was opened on the South Staffordshire Railway in 1849. The station closed in 1965 and the building was demolished, although the line itself is still extant from a point about a mile south-west of the village, just short of the A5 Trunk Road, all the way to its junction with the Sutton Coldfield and Lichfield Railway line just outside Lichfield (SK 116087). Hammerwich Cottage Hospital lies on Hospital Road about half a mile north-west of the village centre at the end of Coppy Nook Lane (SK 058081). This single-storey red-brick building was constructed in 1882 and was enlarged in 1938. Lying in the south-east corner of the village (SK 069073) the Church of Saint John the Baptist was built by Newman and Billing between 1873 and 1883. (AHDS; Salter, p.97)

Built c.1705 about a mile north-east of Hammerwich beside the A5190 opposite Peters Lane, Edial Hall (SK 0808 0871) is famous as the home of the great writer and devout Christian Samuel Johnson who was born in Lichfield in 1709 and opened the house as a school in 1735. Among his first students was David Garrick, who was later regarded as the foremost actor of his day and became Johnson's lifelong friend. In 1773 Edial hall was occupied by Thomas Ashmole who founded the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and who's likeness has been preserved amongst the statues adorning the western front of Lichfield Cathedral, there being depicted holding a model of his famous building. The hall was demolished in 1809. The house currently going by the name was originally called Edial Hall Farm and was one of the outbuildings of the former manor house. (AHDS)

Modern Hammerwich (A.D.1901 - Present day)

Aside from the M6 Toll Road or 'Birmingham Orbital', which is a complete blot on the landscape, there is nothing of note in the area of the modern village.

www.streetmap.co.uk
Biography of Samuel Johnson from Justus.Anglican.org

Bibliography

Domesday Book - Staffordshire Ed. by John Morris (Phillimore, Chichester, 1976);
Staffordshire Place-Names including The Black Country by Anthony Poulton-Smith (Countryside, Berkshire, 1995);
The Old Parish Churches of Staffordshire by Mike Salter (Folly, Malvern, 1996);
Dictionary of English Place-Names by A.D. Mills (Oxford, 2nd Ed. 1998);
The Landscape of Place-Names by Margaret Gelling & Ann Cole (Shaun Tyas, Stamford, 2000);
Domesday Book - A Complete Translation Ed. by The Alecto Domesday Editorial Board (Penguin, London, 2002);