Etymology The word "Wyrley" derives from two
Old English words:
wir and
leah.
Wir meant "
bog myrtle" and
leah meant "woodland clearing", suggesting that Great Wyrley began as sparse
woodland or
marshland. "Great" refers to its dominant size over
Little Wyrley.
Early history Great Wyrley is mentioned in the
Domesday Book under the name of
Wereleia, and as early as 1086 is said to have been indirectly owned by the
Bishop of Chester St John's as part of the "somewhat scattered holdings" of the Church of
Saint Chad in
Lichfield. Some of farming land were, assumingly, evenly distributed between Wyrley and nearby
Norton Canes. However, all six dependencies of Saint Chad had been labelled as "wasta", which meant they had been abandoned by the time the Domesday Book was made.
Post-Industrial Revolution In former times the village was a mining village – The Great Wyrley
Colliery – with metalworking (such as for nails, agricultural implements and horseshoes) in outlying areas. The
Wyrley and Essington Canal passes nearby. In 1848
Samuel Lewis included the settlement in his gazetteer and stated it had: • 799 inhabitants and , of which the
Duke of Sutherland owned part; • Several collieries; • The road from Walsall to
Cannock passing through the village, long, and consisting of detached houses; • In 1844, Great Wyrley formed with Cheslyn Hay a new ecclesiastical district, having a population of 1,753; •
St. Mark's Church, a highly finished structure in the early English style, built 1845, at a cost of £2,430, of which sum £1,200 was given by the Rev. William Gresley, prebendary of
Lichfield; the remainder was raised by subscription, aided by £333 from the Diocesan, and £250 from the Incorporated Society; • A
perpetual curacy; patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Lichfield; • A school, purchased from the Independents (
Nonconformists), was opened in 1843 which cross-references the gazetteer entry
Cannock. In 1876
Shapurji Edalji was appointed Vicar of Great Wyrley; he served until his death forty-two years later. A
Parsi convert to Christianity from Bombay, he may well have been the first South Asian to become the incumbent of an English parish.
Great Wyrley Outrages In 1903, the place was the scene of the Great Wyrley Outrages, a series of
slashings of horses, cows and sheep. In October, a local solicitor and son of the parson,
George Edalji, was tried and convicted for the eighth attack, on a pit pony, and sentenced to seven years with hard labour. Edalji's family had been the victims of a long-running campaign of untraceable abusive letters and anonymous harassment in 1888 and 1892–1895. Further letters, in 1903, alleged he was partially responsible for the outrages and caused the police suspicion to focus on him. Edalji was released in 1906 after the Chief Justice of the
Bahamas and others had pleaded his case but he was not pardoned, and the police kept him under surveillance.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of
Sherlock Holmes fame was persuaded to "turn detective" to prove the man's innocence. This he achieved after eight months of work. Edalji was exonerated by a
Home Office committee of enquiry, although no compensation was awarded. Local myth remembers the Outrages to have been enacted by "The Wyrley Gang", although Doyle believed that they were the work of a single person, a local butcher's boy and sometime sailor called Royden Sharp. Ironically, Doyle's suspicion was based on circumstantial evidence. It was an over-reliance on this type of evidence in the first place which had resulted in Edalji's flawed conviction.
Poison pen letters in the name of the "Wyrley Gang" continued for another twenty-five years, but these were subsequently discovered to have been posted from outside the town by Enoch Knowles of
Wednesbury, who was arrested and convicted in 1934. This case has been related or retold: • Doyle's
The Story of Mr. George Edalji (1907, expanded re-issue in 1985). • 1972 BBC anthology series
The Edwardians:
Arthur Conan Doyle (one episode) centres on his involvement in the Edaji case. Written by Jeremy Paul and directed by Brian Farnham, it stars
Nigel Davenport as Doyle,
Sam Dastor as George Edaji, and
Renu Setna as the Reverend Edaji. •
Arthur & George by
Julian Barnes (2005), nominated that year for the
Man Booker Prize. In 2010,
Arthur & George was adapted for the
theatre by
David Edgar and, in 2015, for a three-part
British television drama of the same title. • A comprehensive non-fictional account ''Conan Doyle and the Parson's Son: The George Edalji Case'' by Gordon Weaver (2006). • In Roger Oldfield's book
Outrage: The Edalji Five and the Shadow of Sherlock Holmes, Vanguard Press (2010), the case is set within the context of the wider experiences of the Edalji family as a whole. Oldfield taught history at Great Wyrley High School. ==Governance==