Chapter 1: The Hingley family

The origin of the Hingley name is not clear. Some authors suggest that it is derived from Hindley, a place in Lancashire, and moved from there to Worcestershire. What ever its original form and origin, there have been many variations on the name over the years including Hinghley, Hinglsey, Inlgey, Ingel(l)y, Insley and even Yngley.

Hingleys, first appeared in the parish records of Rowley Regis in the Black Country when Charles Yngley was buried there on 22 November 1602. The name Ingely was first used some ten years later. The name has always been relatively rare; in 1851 there were less than 500 Hingleys in the UK, with a very marked concentration on the Worcestershire-Staffordshire border. There were smaller concentrations in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Places of birth of male Hingleys alive in 1851

Within Worcestershire and Staffordshire the name has always been concentrated in the area around Dudley known as the ‘Black Country’. The Black Country is the industrial region to the west of, and separate from, Birmingham in the Midlands of England. Today the Black Country is made up of most of the four Metropolitan District Council areas of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. It gained its name in the mid-nineteenth century due to the smoke from the many thousands of ironworking foundries and forges and the nature of the countryside that had been spoiled by the working of shallow and relatively thick (30ft) coal seams. The region was described as 'Black by day and red by night' by Elihu Burritt, the American Consul to Birmingham in 1862 and other authors, from Dickens to Shenstone refer to the intensity of manufacturing in the Black Country and its effect on the landscape and its people. The main products leaving the Black Country were nails, chains, ships anchors, locks and keys, and glassware. Most of these industries are represented in the Hingley family history presented here.

In the seventeenth century much of the area later to be known as the Black Country was open heathland on which smiths making nails, locks, chains and edge tools built cottages and workshops. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the communities within the Black Country were still relatively small and separated from each other by open country. Cradley, which was in Worcestershire, still had its associated heath - Cradley Heath in neighouring Staffordshire. The parish church of Cradley is St Peter’s. There is a clue to the turbulent origins of St. Peter's in the orientation of the chancel. Conventionally, the chancels of churches of the Established Church of England face due east, but that of St Peter's faces west. The reason is that St Peter's was built by a group of Dissenters who gathered together as the Independent Congregational Society. It was opened in 1791 as "Cradley Chapel", for it did not become St Peter's until June 29, 1898.

Rowley Regis was a large parish to the northeast of Cradley, with a small village centre where St Giles, the parish church, stood. Encouraged by the presence of the three essential elements of the iron smelting industry, iron ore, coal and limestone the industrial revolution effectively relocated from its birthplace, Ironbridge, to the Black Country at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

In 1712 Thomas Newcomen built the first successful steam engine in the world which was used for pumping water from coal mines on Lord Dudley's estates.

By 1860 Dudley was the epicentre of an industrial boom. Within five miles of the town there were 461 collieries, 181 blast furnaces (for producing molten iron), 1,500 puddling furnaces (for removing impurities from the molten ore), 79 rolling mills (for flattening iron ingots) and 118 ironworks (for smelting, casting and shaping). In rolling mills iron and later, steel bars were reduced in size or changed in section. The iron bars are heated up in the cast iron furnace and then passed through the mill stands several times to reduce the size of the section.

Chain making was a major industry in the Black Country, particularly in the villages of Netherton, Old Hill and Cradley Heath. The trade developed due to the ready supply of raw materials in this area: fuel, locally produced high quality wrought iron and a highly skilled workforce of trained ironworkers. Both men and women were employed in the industry, many in back yard workshop, but many others worked in chain shops. Nail making was a well-established trade in the Black Country; at its peak around 1820 there were over 50,000 nailers at work in the area. Principle centres were Sedgley, Gornal, the Lye, Halesowen, Oldhill and Dudley. It was essentially a cottage industry, the nailers worked for middlemen known as ‘foggers’, or as outworkers for firms such as Eliza Tinsley. Conditions tended to be harder than in the chain making industry with many more women and children employed.

As well as the Hingley line, we have studied a number of related families including Sidaway, Homer and Parsons. The Sidaway family in particular is related in several different places to our Hingley family, producing a complex web of relationships.