1736 AD Thomas Hinckley & John Perrott

Hinckley: Good day, sir !

Perrott: And good day to you too, sir ! Have I the honour of addressing Doctor Hinckley of Summerfield?

Hinckley: I don't know about the honour, and it's many years since I was a doctor, but yes, I am Thomas Hinckley.

Perrott: Then may I introduce myself, sir. I am John Perrott of Belbroughton. Since the death of my cousin Humphrey, whom you know, I am the owner of Rotton Park: and as I intend to live there, I shall be your neighbour.

Hinckley: You are most welcome, as a visitor and as a neighbour, Mr. Perrott. Your grandfather owned the Park when I bought this estate and built the house thirty-odd years ago: and it was his grandfather who bought Rotton Park from Sir Edward Marrow in 1628.But you will be the first of your family to choose to live there. Do you intend to make your home in the Lodge?

Perrott: When I have rebuilt it, yes. The present house is very old, you know. It was restored for use as a farm-house about two hundred years ago, and it wasn't a Lodge for some years before that, I understand. But the old name has stuck, and I shall not change it when I build a new house.

Hinckley: It is strange how these old names last. Your estate ceased to be a park for the manor lord's pleasure at least two centuries ago, yet it is still called Rotton Park.

Perrott: I hope to make it more park-like by planting many trees, as you have done on this most pleasant estate, sir, and to improve Roach Pool. I also have a plan for completing the view across the valleys to the east, but it will be costly to carry out and I may be unable to do it for some years.

Hinckley: What is your plan, Mr.Perrott?

Perrott: You know, sir, how bare is the prospect on the further side where Lady Wood once was? There's another old name that doesn't fit now! I can plant trees on the skyline, but they will not have grown much in my lifetime, though I am but 35 now. So I intend to build an Observatory Tower.

Hinckley: An Observatory Tower - to observe what, may I ask? Your other estate at Belbroughton?

Perrott: That would be a folly indeed! The structure will be of six storeys, perhaps a hundred feet high, but not a thousand, which it would have to give a view over the Clent Hill to Belbroughton. It will make an attractive feature on the skyline.....

Hinckley: With the smoke of Birmingham behind it!

Perrott: Perhaps. But it will be useful as well as decorative. From it I shall be able to view my whole estate and near the whole parish.

Hinckley: H'm. It seems an expensive way to do it, but I wish your plan well. You rode here along the Halesowen road, I suppose?

Perrott: Yes, and a disgraceful road it is, unworthy of the name of highway, being more often sunk in a deep and narrow trench with a bog for surface! The pack-horse trains to and from Bewdley are the cause, but where is the cure?

Hinckley: I travel little these days, so that the state of the roads hardly concerns me. But I wonder that the rich men of Birmingham have not been more ready to set up Turnpike Trusts. On this side of the town only the Wednesbury and Bromsgrove roads have been turnpiked, and even of them it must be said that the Trust Companies were quicker in putting up their tollgates and keepers' cottages than they were in improving the roads.

Perrott: Of course, the Trusts provide only engineers and materials, the work is still done without pay by the local people in their own parishes, and as always they grudge time spent on roads for strangers to use. Then, too, the Trusts try to patch up roads when they should abandon them and make new ones.

Hinckley: I know that Dudley road is so bad as often to be unusable, for the same reason as the road from Bewdley - that it is never made but only repaired. I am told that the roads across the clay country to the south are even worse! It is no wish of mine that Birmingham shall grow until there are smoking manufactories at my gates, but unless the town can find a way to move its materials and products more easily and cheaply than on packhorse-back, it cannot continue to thrive.

Perrott: It is remarkable that a manufacturing town ever developed in this region, lacking a navigable river, twenty miles from the nearest river ports at Bewdley and Stratford.

Hinckley: Have you met Sir Richard Gough yet, Mr. Perrott?

Perrott: The lord of the manor of Edgbaston? Not yet, but I hope to call on him soon.

Hinckley: Do so, for he will be delighted to show you his estate. He rebuilt the Hall, you know, when he bought the old Middlemore estate. The ancient hall was pulled down by the townsfolk in 1688, when there was so much ill-feeling against Catholics. They burnt the Masshouse in Birmingham too, and since then the Papists have held their services in a farmhouse in Edgbaston. Talking of churches, St. Bartholomew's was left a ruin by 'Tinker' Fox's men after the Civil War, and Sir Richard has rebuilt that too. The Bromsgrove Turnpike goes down by the church, and there's a toll-gate on the corner. The road is very bad between the town and Bourn Brook, and sooner or later it will have to be replaced by a new straight road.

Perrott: I think I should take my leave of you now, Doctor Hinckley.

Hinckley: Oh no, Mr. Perrott, I refuse to let you go until you have had dinner with me! I see few visitors these days, there aren't many gentlemen's houses out here, and I want to get to know my new neighbour. Come in with me - tell me about your family. You have children?

Perrott: Thank you, you are most kind. I have no sons, but I have a young daughter......

The two men passed out of my hearing, into the house.