The Lost Hamlets of Rowley Regis One-Place Study

The village of Rowley Regis in the area known as the Black Country, formerly in South Staffordshire, once had a number of outlying hamlets of varying size – from a dozen households to several hundreds.
The principal local industry for centuries was wrought iron nail making which involved all the family, including children from the age of six, later including quarrying and mining. My own ancestors lived in some of these hamlets. It is clear from research in parish and census records that these hamlets formed close knit communities and that many residents stayed close to home as they married and had families of their own.
This study is looking at some of those hamlets which have been lost, disappeared from modern maps and memory, sometimes lost to quarrying or simply being subsumed into wider development. The study includes the hamlets of Perry’s Lake, Gadd’s Green and Turner’s Hill initially but will expand to other hamlets in due course. Records being used include transcriptions of parish registers and censuses for each hamlet and other records, such as Tithe maps as these can be accessed.