Great Barr, Staffordshire
Historical Description
Barr, Great, a village and a parish in Staffordshire. The village stands 2 miles E of Great Barr station on the L. & N.W.R., 3 SE of Walsall, and 5 N of Birmingham. It has a post office under Birmingham; money order and telegraph office, Hamstead. The parish comprises 5252 acres; population, 1388. Great Ban' Hall is a noble modern mansion, standing amid charming grounds, in a beautiful valley, and surrounded by a well-wooded park of 600 acres. It is the seat of the Scott family. An um, near the flower garden, is monumental of Miss Mary Dolman, the cousin of Shen-stone. Barr Beacon, 2 miles NE, is 653 feet high, and commands an extensive view. It is said to have been the seat of the Archdmid, and was used by the Saxons and the Danes as a place of alarm-fires. The living is a vicarage in. The diocese of Lichfield; net value, £518 with residence. The church was entirely rebuilt in 1860, with the exception of the tower and spire. There are a Wesleyan chapel and an endowed school.
Administration
The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.
| Ancient County | Staffordshire | |
| Civil parish | Handsworth | |
| Hundred | Offlow | |
| Poor Law union | Walsall |
Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.
Church Records
The register of St. Margaret dates from the year 1654.
Churches
Church of England
Mission Church
The small iron mission church was built in 1892.
St. Margaret (parish church)
The church of St. Margaret was entirely rebuilt, with the exception of the tower and spire, in 1860, and in 1893 the tower and spire were restored at a cost of £1,250: the church is an edifice of stone in the Early English style, consisting of chancel, nave, aisles and a western tower with spire, containing a clock and 6 bells: in the church is a monument erected in 1867 to Sir Francis Edward Bateman-Scott bart. d. 21 November, 1863: many of the windows are stained: there are 460 sittings.
Methodist
Wesleyan Chapel
The Wesleyan chapel, erected in 1868, at a cost of £1,657, will seat 150 persons.
Directories & Gazetteers
We have transcribed the entry for Great Barr from the following:
- Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Barr, Great)
Land and Property
A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Staffordshire is online.
Maps
Online maps of Great Barr are available from a number of sites:
- Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- Google Streetview.
- National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
- OpenStreetMap.
- old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
- Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
- A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)
Newspapers and Periodicals
The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Staffordshire newspapers online: