Caughley ()Margaret Gelling and H. D. G. Foxall, ''The Place-Names of Shropshire, Part Three: Telford New Town, the Northern Part of Munslow Hundred and the Franchise of Wenlock'', English Place-Name Society, 76 (Nottingham: English Place-Names Society, 2001), pp. 166–67. was a non-nucleated settlement situated two kilometres east of Barrow near

Much Wenlock Much Wenlock is a market town and Civil parishes in England, parish in Shropshire, England; it is situated on the A458 road between Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth. Nearby, to the north-east, is the Ironbridge Gorge and Telford. The civil parish incl ...

in Shopshire, England, with the

River Severn The River Severn (, ), at long, is the longest river in Great Britain. It is also the river with the most voluminous flow of water by far in all of England and Wales, with an average flow rate of at Apperley, Gloucestershire. It rises in t ...

running down its eastern edge and Dean Brook along its south-western edge.A. P. Baggs, G. C. Baugh, D. C. Cox, Jessie McFall and P. A. Stamper.
Caughley
" in ''A History of the County of Shropshire: Volume 10, Munslow Hundred (Part), the Liberty and Borough of Wenlock'', ed. by G C Baugh (London: Victoria County History, 1998), pp. 233-240. ''British History Online'', accessed May 27, 2023. It is noted as a site of the production of Coalport porcelain. In 1883, Caughley extended to 332 hectares and in 1931 the population of the township stood at 48.

Administration

In the Middle Ages, Caughley belonged to the parish of Holy Trinity centred on Much Wenlock, but by 1649 it was in Barrow parish. Caughley was transferred to Linley Civil Parish, in the Barrow ward of Wenlock borough, in 1934, but returned to Barrow Civil Parish when Linley Civil Parish was itself absorbed by Barrow Civil Parish in 1966. Barrow Civil Parish was in Bridgenorth rural district from 1966 to 1974, and from 1974 in Bridgnorth district.

Etymology

The name of Caughley is first attested in 901, as an estate-name among lands acquired by the minsters of Much Wenlock, ''cahing læg''. This was interpreted by Sigurd Karlström as deriving from a personal name *''Cah(h)a'' followed by the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

place-name-forming

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

-''ing'', but later by

Eilert Ekwall Bror Oscar Eilert Ekwall (8 January 1877 in Vallsjö – 23 November 1964 in Lund) was a Swedish academic, Professor of English at Sweden's Lund University from 1909 to 1942 and one of the outstanding scholars of the English language in the firs ...

and Margaret Gelling as the Old English word ''ceahhe'' ('jackdaw') followed by the same suffix, meaning 'jackdaw place'. The ''læg'' element is a form of the Old English word ''lēah'' ('clearing in woodland'). Thus in total the name probably meant 'jackdaw-clearing'.Ekwall, Eilert, ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names'', 4th edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), s.v. ''Caughley''.

History

Unusually, Caughley is not mentioned in the ''Domesday Book'' of 1086. Mining of limestone, coal, and ironstone, with associated iron production, was underway already in the sixteenth century; Thomas Munslow had established an ironworks there by around 1523. A pottery was established around 1750, creating slip-coated and coarse wares. Ambrose Gallimore (from the Staffordshire potteries) made traditional course and slip-coated wares. He was joined in 1772 by

Thomas Turner (potter) Thomas Turner (1749 – February 1809) was an English potter. He was the lessee of the celebrated Salopian porcelain company, or Caughley manufactory, during the later decades of the 18th century. He is not to be confused with the potter Turner (p ...

, who had trained at the Worcester porcelain works. This became the Salopian China Manufactory, making

porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...

by 1775, flanked by coal mines to the south-west of Inett Farm to the east of what was then the Caughley hamlet of Darley. Caughley came to prominence as an industrial centre, employing the noted porcelain engraver Robert Hancock and supplying the Salopian China Warehouse, which opened in London in 1783. By 1793, the factory had around one hundred workers. The lease, factory, and stock at Caughley was acquired in 1799 by the Coalport porcelain makers Edward Blakeway, Richard Rose, and John Rose. John Rose closed the Caughley works by 1821.

References

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