Places

The two parts of the Manor of Dene Magna (now Mitcheldean), recorded in the Domesday Book, were both briefly in the control of Thomas Baynham of Clearwell in the years around 1480.

He had inherited one part from his father Robert ap Einon; this ‘first’ part was once owned by his great-great-great-grandmother Johanna de Dene, the elder daughter and senior co-heir of William de Dene IV who died c1319. The second part was brought to the marriage by Thomas’ second wife Alice Walwyn who had inherited it from her father; it had been owned by the younger daughter and second co-heir of William de Dene IV, Isabella.

But around the time of Thomas’ death in 1500, the manor would once again be divided – between his sons Sir Alexander Baynham and Sir Christoper Baynham.

As well as the ‘first’ part of the Mitcheldean manor, Sir Alexander Baynham’s inheritance included lands at the places which are now known as Westbury-on Severn, Littledene (Dene Parva), Ruardene, English Bicknor, Staunton and Newnham.

Sir Christopher inherited the ‘second part’ from his mother Alice which included the Clearwell Estate near Newland.

By the time my great-great-grandfather Jeremiah Baynham was preparing to move his young family to the Midlands in the early 1850s, he was still living just 6 miles north of Mitcheldean but all of properties held by Alexander and Christopher were long lost.

In the Midlands, Jeremiah settled initially in Harborne which was then a village just outside the industrial heartlands and later moved to Smethwick to be closer to his place of work. In the 1880s, his son Arthur William Baynham moved to ‘The Pleck’ in Walsall, where the Baynham family would remain for almost a century.