page_title: Badger, Shropshire
section_title: Decline and recovery
hierarchical_section_title: Badger, Shropshire / History / Decline and recovery
caption_attribution_description: English: Memorial to the Cheney brothers, successive lords of the manor of Badger, Shropshire, in the parish church of St. Giles.
context_page_description: Badger is a village and civil parish in Shropshire, England, about six miles north-east of Bridgnorth. The parish had a population of 134 according to the 2001 census, falling to 126 at the 2011 census.
  Badger Parish is at grid map reference SJ 76834 99840. The boundaries of the parish contain the village of Badger, one side of Badger Dingle, and Badger Heath Farm. It is approximately 2.7 km at its widest point.
  The village and its surroundings, particularly the Dingle, are considered a visitor attraction. In their present form they owe much to deliberate planning and landscaping in the 18th century.
context_section_description: After the death of Browne's wife in 1839, the estate passed to Robert Henry Cheney, his nephew. Cheney was a watercolourist, specialising in architectural and landscape subjects, and he became a noted pioneer photographer. He opened the Dingle to visitors for the first time and groups of working people began to travel out from the industrial towns to walk in it. He died childless in 1866 and left the estate to his brother Edward.
  When Edward died in 1884, Badger became the property of their nephew, Alfred Capel Cure of Blake Hall, Ongar, perhaps the most colourful of Badger's lords. Capel Cure was a hero of the Crimean War, wounded at the assault on the Redan in 1855. He had been introduced to photography by his uncle and pursued it enthusiastically, also specialising in architectural subjects. He had a private family chapel added to the north side of the church. After holding Badger for 12 years, he was killed while trying to dynamite tree stumps on one of his other estates. The estate remained in the Capel Cure family until after World War II.
  The population of Badger grew throughout the first half of the 19th century. From 88 in 1801, it reached 123 in 1811, 132 in 1821, and 142 in 1831. The census of 1831 provided the first and only summary how the men of the parish were employed. Of the 37 adult males, 25 or more than two-thirds, were agricultural labourers and four were farmers. The remainder consisted of four in retail of handicrafts, one professional (perhaps the rector), a couple of servants and one other. So agriculture accounted directly for the great majority of the working men, and almost everyone depended on it at least indirectly.
  The population rose steadily to a peak of 178 in 1861. After that, like most agricultural villages in the region, it suffered a prolonged decline. By 1901 it was down to 140, and in 1951 it stood at precisely its 1801 level of 88. The cause is not hard to explain. Agriculture, the only significant employer in the parish, required less and less labour. The Long Depression hit the countryside around 1874, forcing farmers to reduce their output or sell at a loss. Thereafter, even relatively good times did nothing to raise employment, as farm amalgamations, improved crops and techniques, and mechanisation reduced the need for labour.
  With the decline in population, a number of important village institutions found the going difficult. At the school Emma Grainger was mistress from 1891. She and Francis Capel Cure, the school's patron, died 1933. The school closed and thereafter, village children went to school in Beckbury or Worfield.
  In 1952, the long-serving Rev. Archibald Dix retired and the parish was effectively amalgamated with Beckbury. Later amalgamations made it part of a benefice of six parishes. Archibald Dix died about a year after his retirement. His daughter, Margaret Dix MD FRCS, bought the rectory and lived in it until her death in 1992. She was distinguished surgeon at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, and is one of the eponyms of the Dix–Hallpike test for a benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. She bequeathed the house for Christian purposes within the diocese. After considerable debate, it was taken on by the Cornelius Trust, an evangelical military charity, and run as a holiday home, until being sold for a private residence in 2005.
  At about the same time as the ecclesiastical parish was amalgamated, the much decayed Hall and estate were sold to John Swire and Sons, a huge property, finance shipping and airline conglomerate, in whose hands it remains. Sir Adrian Swire is lord of the manor. Much of the Hall was demolished in 1953. A utility building and gatehouse was re-Christened Badger Hall and survives to this day: even this is sufficiently grand to give the impression to visitors that the original Hall still exists.
  However, the 1950s marked a turning point. With the increasing availability of motor cars, villages like Badger have become much more attractive places to live. The number of houses in the parish had been falling slowly, with the d
caption: Memorial to the Cheney brothers, successive lords of the manor, on the south wall of the chancel of the parish church.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image ExifOffset": "38", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2011:05:20 10:16:12"}