The Great Wyrley Institute: P Ford. 2017.
Time for a small article extracted (and rejigged) from the forthcoming Great Wyrley (and Cheslyn Hay) Great War book. This one is a little different though, as the preamble will be longer than the article, which is one especially timed for the start of a new year – when most of us hold, however briefly, positive hopes for the future.
This is not an article about the merits or the vanity of those ‘wealthier people’ that founded the Institute, for if that is all that comes from reading this then the point of these few words has been missed. Neither is it a history of a building, all too familiar to most of us, but an extract about its foundation; as the reasons for that foundation, very poignantly, are as needed today, with the rise of social media, as much as in 1870.
What I ask you is to take a look around you, as the year opens, at the inability of people to accept or understand another’s point of view. It seems to be everywhere. Do not get me wrong, this is not a naive plea for world peace, but aimed at those, usually from the stronger political and ideological elements of the spectrum, that seem to dominate the narrative and often with vitriol.
There are plenty of things I would likely have disagreed with Geoffrey Elton on – a pre-60s historian that I once described as that manager of your Sunday league team that drags you off after scoring a hat-trick as your socks are not pulled-up – yet, I fully agree with him when he says of himself: ‘to be a good historian he must question his own faith and admit some virtue in the belief of others. If he allows the task of choosing among the facts of the past to deteriorate into suppression of what will not serve the cause, he loses all right to claim weight for his opinions’ (Elton, The Practice of History, p60-61).
He advocates asking questions, and especially of oneself, as well as acknowledging the strengths in other people’s arguments or opinions, as only then can you formulate a rounded opinion of your own. This lacks today.
The Walsall Road/Norton Lane junction c1840, with its splay, prior to the building of the Institute. P Ford (Staffordshire Record Office)
Other than the pubs, the schools, St. Mark’s Church, the Wesleyan Methodist Church (then on the corner of Bentons Lane and Gorsey Lane), Great Wyrley and Landywood only had one other venue apiece that could host events and shows in 1914. That in Landywood was the recently opened Lower Landywood Club, or Harrisons as it is today.
The redesigned junction after the building of the Institute in 1870. P Ford (Staffordshire Record Office).
That in Great Wyrley was the Workingmen’s Institute, or simply the Institute. It needs to be set contextually against three movements around the time of its opening in 1870: education, temperance and political. The idea of adult education (the National Education League had been formed the year before its opening, and the first Education Act for the teaching of children was also passed in 1870) is why the Wyrley library was established at the Institute (there were small libraries in both Lower and Upper Landywood as well); the temperance movement was also growing strength after a glut of beer-houses were opened after the 1830 Beer-house Act, simply replacing rather than removing the previous scourge of gin; and finally, the 1867 Reform Act had started the enfranchisement of the working-class man.
The Institute, where the stone-laying ceremony was celebrated with a half-day holiday for villagers, was opened in October 1870. An account in the Staffordshire Advertiser, 22 October 1870, laid out the reasons for it being constructed: it was the brainchild of a committee of ‘wealthier’ locals and was designed to draw working men from the temptations of drink (women were not barred from entry, of course – and no, drink was not just a male problem) through providing a meeting, recreational and educational venue that was free from religious or political bias.
During the ceremony, when Mayor Banrock of Wolverhampton officially opened the Institute, he said: ‘It would secure a greater toleration among persons of diverse political views and religious opinions, who would meet within its walls, and lead them to respect the honest, independent opinions of each other.’ This statement now puts us to shame.
The raised stage area, able to be partitioned off, in the Institute: a place built in 1870 to keep working men out of the pub, and offer space for education and recreation without political or religious bias. P Ford 2022.
The recreation function saw it used as a venue by many clubs, such as Great Wyrley Cricket Club in 1897, and societies by 1914. Through the Great War it hosted events to raise money for the Red Cross, to entertain the families of serving soldiers, whist drives for new heating apparatus at St Mark’s Church and, interestingly, a baby show (this was quite serious, as it was about raising awareness on child mortality). It is amazing to think that it was still of sufficient size to host such events despite the population rises between 1870 and 1914.
The building is home today for the Great Wyrley Table Tennis Club, but I ask you to remember in your hearts not the builders or current users of the Institute, but the purpose, although I do not like the non-drinking bit, for which it was erected.
We need to burst bubbles and engage in meaningful discourse.
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