Edgbaston Hall

History

A house rebuilt

There had been a hall at Edgbaston long before the one that stands today. The earlier house was destroyed in 1688, and in 1717 Sir Richard Gough built a new one on the site, according to Historic England’s list entry. The Gough family, later the Gough-Calthorpes, owned Edgbaston, and the house sat at the heart of their estate.

By the 1780s the family had moved away and the hall stood empty. In 1786 it found a remarkable tenant.

The foxglove doctor

William Withering had come to Birmingham in 1775, tipped off by Erasmus Darwin that the town needed a physician. He ran a clinic for the poor and joined the staff of the new General Hospital. He was also a passionate botanist: in 1776 he published the first full account of British plants arranged by the system of Linnaeus.

His great work was on the foxglove. In his own words, published in 1785: “In the year 1775, my opinion was asked concerning a family receipt for the cure of the dropsy. I was told that it had long been kept a secret by an old woman in Shropshire”. Withering worked out that the active ingredient was foxglove, then spent ten years testing it carefully on patients. His Account of the Foxglove set out 163 cases, with instructions on dose and side effects. Foxglove still yields digoxin, a heart medicine in use today.

Life at the hall

In 1786, a year after the foxglove book, Withering took a fourteen-year lease of Edgbaston Hall. It suited a man of his interests. He bred Newfoundland dogs and French cattle, and employed plant collectors for the second edition of his botany. He analysed minerals too; one, “terra ponderosa”, was later named witherite after him. He was a member of the Lunar Society, and he also joined the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

The sources we have checked do not confirm that the Lunar Society met at Edgbaston Hall.

The riots come to Edgbaston

Withering was an Anglican, not a Dissenter, and he did not go to the dinner of 14 July 1791 that set off the riots. But he was Priestley’s friend, and that was enough. Around 16–17 July the rioters headed for Edgbaston Hall. Withering loaded his books and specimens into wagons, hid them under hay, and prepared to flee. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (1885), “the arrival of the military ultimately saved his house”.

Leaving

Withering suffered from a chest disease, believed to be tuberculosis, and spent the winters of the early 1790s in Portugal. In 1799, unable to face another winter at Edgbaston, he bought The Larches in Sparkbrook, the rebuilt house on Priestley’s old Fair Hill estate. He moved there on 28 September 1799 and died on 6 October. He was buried at Edgbaston Old Church, St Bartholomew’s, a short walk from the hall. His memorial there is carved with a foxglove.

Golf and a blue plaque

The hall outlived its famous tenant. Since 1936 it has been the clubhouse of Edgbaston Golf Club, and its park, now the golf course, is a registered historic landscape. In 1988 Birmingham Civic Society put up a blue plaque: “William Withering MD FRS 1741–1799 physician and botanist lived here”.

Withering’s careful counting of cases helped turn a folk remedy into modern medicine. The house where he lived in those years is still standing.

What happened here?

Sir Richard Gough built the present house in 1717. William Withering lived here from 1786 to 1799, breeding animals, collecting plants and analysing minerals. In July 1791 rioters approached the house, but troops arrived in time. Since 1936 it has been a golf clubhouse.