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Penkridge is a village and civil parish in South Staffordshire District in Staffordshire, England. It is to the south of Stafford, north of Wolverhampton, west of Cannock and east of Telford. The nearby town of Brewood is also not far away. The wealthiest establishment in Penkridge in the Middle Ages, its collegiate church building survived the abolition of the chantries and is the tallest structure in the village centre. The parish is crossed towards its eastern border by the M6 motorway and a separate junction north of the M6 toll between the West Midlands and Stoke-on-Trent. Penkridge has a railway station on the West Coast Main Line railway next to the Grade I listed medieval church. Penkridge Viaduct and the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal are to either side of Market Street and the Old Market Square and are among its landmarks. Penkridge is a parish unit within the East Cuttlestone Hundred of Staffordshire. Its boundaries have varied considerably over the centuries. The ancient parish of Penkridge, as defined from 1551 (although it existed in much the same form throughout the Middle Ages), was made up of four distinct townships: Penkridge itself, Coppenhall, Dunston, and Stretton. As a place with its own institutions of local government, the parish was also known as "Penkridge Borough". Penkridge became a civil parish in the 1830s and in 1866 was shorn of the three smaller townships, which became separate parishes. It was constituted as a parish of four distinct "constablewicks": Penkridge, Levedale, Pillaton, and Whiston. In 1934, the civil parish exchanged some territory with the surrounding parishes to rationalise the boundaries, acquiring the whole of the former civil parish of Kinvaston in the process. The civil parish was the merger of the following settlements or entirely farmed manors: Penkridge, Gailey, Levedale, Longridge, Drayton, Whiston, Bickford, Congreve, Mitton, Pillaton, Lyne Hill and Otherton. (All the additional manors and settlements have been redirected here.) [edit] LocationPenkridge has been since 1974 in the district of South Staffordshire in the county of Staffordshire. It is between Stafford, five miles (8 km) to the north and Wolverhampton, ten miles south, and lies mostly on the east bank of the River Penk. For many years it was commonly thought that the town derived its name from the river, but archaeological digs in to the Roman Fort and villas at Pennocrucium along the A5 (Watling Street) indicates that the opposite was likely the case. Just to the south, at Gailey, the major stagecoach routes linking London and Birmingham with Manchester and Liverpool crosses the historically still more important Watling Street which linked London, Chester, Wales and ultimately Ireland. The town was also bisected by the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal from 1770. Today Penkridge is grazed on its eastern side by the M6 motorway, the main route between London and the north-west of England and Glasgow. For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Penkridge. There is a very long article on Penkridge's history. [edit] Staffordshire Research TipsReminder: Staffordshire today covers a much smaller area than formerly. The West Midlands now governs the southeastern corner of pre-1974 Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, although ceremonially still part of Staffordshire, is a unitary authority covering a large well-populated part of the north of the county.
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