Wilden is a small village about 1 mile north east of

Stourport-on-Severn Stourport-on-Severn, often shortened to Stourport, is a town and civil parish in the Wyre Forest (district), Wyre Forest District of North Worcestershire, England, 4 miles to the south of Kidderminster and downstream on the River Severn from Be ...

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Shropshire, Staffordshire, and the West Midlands (county), West ...

. It is in the Stour valley and both the River Stour and the

Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal The Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal is a navigable narrow canal in Staffordshire and Worcestershire in the The Midlands, England, Midlands of England. It is long, linking the River Severn at Stourport in Worcestershire with the Trent a ...

pass through the parish before joining 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 ...

at Stourport. Nearby is Wilden Marsh, a nature reserve of the

Worcestershire Wildlife Trust Worcestershire Wildlife Trust is one of 46 wildlife trusts throughout the United Kingdom, part of The Wildlife Trusts partnership, the UK's largest charity network dedicated to conserving all our habitats and species. It was founded in 1968 to ...

History

Wilden was originally part of the parish of

Hartlebury Hartlebury is a village and civil parish in the Wychavon district of Worcestershire, England. It is south of Kidderminster. The village had a population of 2,549 in the 2001 Census. The village is green-buffered from surrounding villages exc ...

, but became a separate parish in the late 19th century, before becoming part of Stourport. In the 17th century there were

slitting mill Slitting Mill is a small village on the outskirts of Rugeley, Staffordshire. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 265. The village is within Rugeley civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish use ...

s on the River Stour near to the site of present

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a place/building for Christian religious activities and praying * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian comm ...

. Eventually, these mills came into the ownership of the Wilden Iron and Tin Plate Company and the

Baldwin Baldwin may refer to: People * Baldwin (name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the surname Places Canada * Baldwin, York Regional Municipality, Ontario * Baldwin, Ontario, in Sudbury District * Baldwin's Mills, ...

family. A lock at Pratt's Wharf (misnamed Platt's Wharf by the

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

) on the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, connected the canal with the river. This enabled canal barges to use the River Stour to deliver timber to a steam saw-mill in Wilden. Later it was used to transport coal and iron to the Wilden Works. The wharf was built by Isaac Pratt from Henwick,

Worcester Worcester may refer to: Places United Kingdom * Worcester, England, a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England ** Worcester (UK Parliament constituency), an area represented by a Member of Parliament * Worcester Park, London, Engl ...

in 1835. He is described as a businessman and a merchant. There were two houses at Pratt's Wharf, one occupied by a lock keeper and the other by a clerk. The link was closed c1950. The church is All Saints. It was designed by

William Hopkins William Hopkins Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (2 February 179313 October 1866) was an English mathematician and geologist. He is famous as a private tutor of aspiring undergraduate University of Cambridge, Cambridge mathematicians, earning h ...

with funds provided by

Alfred Baldwin Alfred Baldwin may refer to: * Alfred Baldwin (politician) (1841–1908), English businessman and Conservative MP, father of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin * Alfred C. Baldwin III (1936–2020), "shadow man" in the 1972 Watergate break-in * Alfred ...

very close to his own home, Wilden House and one of his large

iron works An ironworks or iron works is a building or site where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and steel products are made. Iron Works may also refer to: * Iron Works, a neighborhood in Brookfield, Connecticut * Clay City, Kentucky, known as Iron ...

. It served the Baldwin family and their employees and was consecrated in 1880. The church has been designated as

Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

listed by Historic England.

References

External links

S&W Canal
{{authority control Villages in Worcestershire Stourport-on-Severn