282 NORTHFIELD, WITH COFTON HACKETT.

Northfield, has been a great benefactor to the church. The building contains Norman, Early English, and Perpendicular work, has an immense chanceland a western tower, low and massive; also a good peal of six bells, cast by Joseph Smith, at Edgbaston, in 1730. The tithes of Northfield are commuted it £805, those of Cofton at £244. The rent of the glebe land is £74. 10s., of Cofton £123. Rev. Henry Clarke rector; patron, Rev. J. A. Fenwick. Church sittings, 700, all free. There are several schools, one of which was endowed in the last century, and the endowment is invested in Consols, the trustees being the rector and churchwardens, and an official trustee appointed by the Charity Commissioners.

Cofton Hackett Church was united with Northfield in the last year of William the Conqueror, and both are mentioned in Domesday. The former is a small but interesting structure, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries' work, restored in 1861 by the Baroness Windsor, containing, among other things, an Incised alabaster slab to William Leycester and his two wives (1508). Cofton Hall, near the church, was mainly erected in the last century, but the kitchen is formed out of a portion of the old hall of the original mansion, and has a fine Perpendicular roof, in good preservation. Mr. Green resides here as tenant to the Baroness Windsor. Tradition says that King Charles lay at this house during one period of the civil wars, and that the then occupant, Mr. Jolliffe, had subsequently the entree to the prison in which his Majesty was confined. Richard Symonds, who accompanied Charles's army, states that the King lay at Cofton Hall on the night of May 14, 1645, and next day "We marched from four in the morning till six sans rest. This night the King lay at Himley Hall, Bom. Staff., where now the Lord Ward lives, who is son to Ward sometyme goldsmith in London, which son married the Lady Dudley."

A wake was formerly held at Cofton on three successive Sundays after Midsummer, called "Bilberry wake," from a fruit which grew remarkably on Cofton Hill. Groveley is a manor in this chapelry.