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Museum on the Move: Brookes’ Much Wenlock
A view of Victorian Wenlock (Image courtesy of Shropshire Archives)
Many of the social and welfare problems Brookes saw in his home town
inspired him to improve life for “all grades of man” through learning and sport.
In 1831 Brookes took over his father’s medical practice. Soon he was taking an active interest in Much Wenlock’s affairs.
Much Wenlock was a poor community with many social problems. In 1797 the Universal British Directory described the town as “...an ill-built dirty little place, consisting only of two ordinary streets.”
The town’s population had almost doubled in Brookes’ lifetime as new quarries opened to provide lime to the Ironworks in the Severn Gorge. Many families lived in badly built single room cottages on the edge of the town. Sanitation was poor with an open drain running through the town’s main street carrying “...all manner of scum and rottenness”. Brookes’ own father had died in 1831 of typhoid; a disease caught from drinking dirty water.
In 1841 Brookes became the Justice of the Peace for Much Wenlock. For nearly
40 years he presided over the local court room. Cases of petty crime and drunkenness would no doubt have influenced his desire to encourage working men to direct their energy towards physical exercise and education. A good example of this concerns the game of quoits. Quoits is a traditional game which involves throwing a metal ring over a set distance to land over a pin (called a hob) in the centre of a patch of clay. There is evidence of a similar game which was played by the ancient Greeks.
In Victorian times quoits had become a popular pub game. Brookes was keen to promote outdoor pursuits away from the ale house and the evils of drink:
“I should not be doing my duty if I did not, on this occasion, warn the working men against the fearful consequences of intemperance”.
You can access an interactive resource about the inns of Much Wenlock, on the Friends of Much Wenlock Museum webpages, by clicking on "William Penny Brookes and the inns of Much Wenlock" below "Related Webpages" in the side menu.
(Image courtesy of Shropshire Archives)
In 1848 the National School opened under Brookes’ governorship. This was 22 years before it became compulsory to provide education for all. Four years later Brookes opened the Agricultural Reading Rooms which offered working men and women not only their first lending library but also classes in a range of subjects including art and music.