304 REDDITCH.

There is a Congregational chapel in the parish and a Roman Catholic chapel at the convent.

Powyke is famous for having given birth to Dr. Wall, a physician of great note, and to whom the city of Worcester mainly owes its china manufacture; also for two great fights during the civil wars - one in 1642, when Colonel Sandys and the Parliamentarians were caught in a stratagem and routed by Princes Rupert and Maurice; and the other in 1651, when General Fleetwood drove the Royalists from the bridge over the Teme, and secured the pass after a two hours' fight. This old bridge is yet standing.

Redditch.

WELL known throughout Europe, if not the world, as the seat of the manufacture of needles, pins, fishhooks, fishing tackle, harpoons, sail hooks, sailors' palms, sewing machines, knitting pins, and bodkins. Formerly, only a chapelry or hamlet to Tardebigg, from which it was separated in the year 1855, the little village (which derived its name from a small stream tinged with the red colour of the marly soil) gradually grew up from a few cottages under the shadow of Bordesley Abbey. This was a Cistercian Monastery, founded in 1138 by Maud, daughter of Henry I, and many interesting remains of the old establishment have recently been exhumed, of which an account has recently been published in a handsome volume, by R. S. Bartleet, Esq., at whose expense the excavations were carried out. At the Dissolution the monastic lands were granted to Lord Windsor, and the Baroness Windsor is still the lady of the manor and patroness of the living.

There is no certain record of the period when the needle trade found out the little place and extended it so greatly, but