Arley Before The Mine

Previous to 1900, Arley was a quiet, rural village in the Arden area of North-East Warwickshire. In the Domesday Book the parish and its small village is recorded as AREI, the name contains the leah ending which, in Old English, means woodland or a clearing in woodland. Arley itself was made up of several small hamlets: Gun Hill, Slowley Hill, Devitt's Green and Ballard's Green. A farming community, the population in 1881 was 207 and in 1891 216. The village centred around St. Wilfred's, a massive stone Church with early Gothic origins, though much reconstruction took place during Henry III's reign.

By 1900, however, some change had taken place and the population had increased. Kelly's Directory shows that there was a Post Office, with a wall letterbox, by the church; a free school (mixed) built in 1875 for an attendance of sixty (though the average attendance was only thirty-three); and a railway station, Station-Master Alfred Lingdon. There were also twenty farms, a mill, one public house -- the Waggon Load of Lime, near St. Wilfred's -- and, still, only one shop.

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