Bilbrook, Staffordshire


Bilbrook is a village in the South Staffordshire district of Staffordshire, England. It is situated close to the border of the West Midlands, just outside Wolverhampton. Bilbrook is often overshadowed by the adjacent Codsall village but has its own separate identity. The village gets its name from billers, which grew in the local Moat Brook until recent times. The Moat Brook rises in Chillington Estate and Oaken Village, it runs into the River Penk in Pendeford Mill Nature Reserve. The river continues, where it joins the River Sow, which joins the River Trent which joins the River Humber and eventually flows into the North Sea from the Humber Estuary, near Grimsby, Lincolnshire.

History

Prior to the 1850s Bilbrook was a small farming village composed mainly of the Estate of Bilbrook Manor, with its constituent farm workers cottages. The original village green was situated to the north of the existing green at the junction of Bilbrook Road and Joeys Lane, and was the location that the founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley preached in 1745.

Education and amenities

Bilbrook has a first school, a middle school and a church. Other features include The Woodman Inn public house and two rows of shops including One Stop Shop and Budgens supermarkets. Bilbrook's village green includes a war memorial, and a carved oak arch adorned with historical information about the local area. It has a yearly street fair on Easter Monday in the road outside the Church and is generally considered a safe place to live.
Bilbrook has a thriving community football club called Bilbrook Junior FC, which was founded in 1978 with the objective of providing local youngsters with the opportunity to enjoy playing football both in training and competitive matches, the club catering for 300 boys and girls from under 7s to under 18s. In December 2005 the club achieved "The FA Charter Standards Community Club" award. The club, based on Pendeford Lane with pitches off Wobaston Road in nearby Pendeford, has recently been told to vacate its Wobaston Road pitches as the land is needed as part of the i54 business park project.

The Friends of Bilbrook

The Friends of Bilbrook was formed in 2011 by local residents who wanted to improve the open, green spaces in their village. Some of their many projects have included the fund raising and construction of a Multi Use Games Area on the Twentyman's Playing Fields. They have also planted 1200 trees in a community wood called the Jubilee Wood which was planted to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Recently they formed a partnership with Vinci Construction and Jaguar Land Rover for a Corporate Social Responsibility project which included the installation of a wheelchair access gate, seating benches and information boards in the wood. They host local businesses for volunteer days carrying out maintenance and improvement works in the wood. In an annual project with Bilbrook Codsall Scouts they construct bird nesting boxes, bat roosting boxes and insect hotels. The wood is now brimming with wildlife including: bank vole, field vole, common shrew, wood mouse, grass snake, barn owl, tawny owl, common kestrel, common kingfisher, noctule bat, soprano and common pipistrelle bat. Bordering the Jubilee Wood to the North East is the Moat Brook. The group regularly carry out water health monitoring activities and record all their results through Waterside Care and the Environment Agency.

Notable people

The parish contains one listed building, a milepost on the Shropshire Union Canal, designated at Grade II, the lowest of the three grades, which is applied to "buildings of national importance and special interest". The milepost is in cast iron, and consists of a T-shaped plate divided into three panels inscribed with the distances to Nantwich, Autherley Junction, and Norbury Junction.