page_title: Black Patch Park
section_title: Gypsy connection
hierarchical_section_title: Black Patch Park / Gypsy connection
caption_attribution_description: English: Titled '1890-1920 (c) Travellers lived on the Black Patch off Foundry Lane'. This image is a public domain resource more than a 100 years old held by the Local Studies &amp; History Department of Birmingham Central Library from LSH/Slides Collection Set 0062 Slide 0041 (19/2067) available for non-commercial, private study and educational use. More detailed images appear in (ref) Ted Rudge 2003Sibadd 07:52, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
context_page_description: Black Patch Park is a park in Smethwick, West Midlands, England. It is bounded by Foundry Lane, Woodburn Road, Perrott Street and Kitchener Street, at grid reference SP038888.
  The park, covering over 20 acres, was part of a sparsely populated landscape of commons and woodland, dotted with farms and cottages which has been transformed from heath to farmland then to a carefully laid out municipal park surrounded by engineering companies employing thousands of people; Tangyes, Nettlefolds, the Birmingham Railway Carriage and Wagon Company, Birmingham Aluminium Castings, ironworks, glassmaking and brewing. These factories, including the Soho Foundry, started by James Watt and Matthew Boulton are, but for foundations and frontages, almost all gone.
  Much of what is known about Black Patch Chaplin Park appears in a book by Ted Rudge, developed from an Open University degree thesis, and published by Birmingham City Council in 2003.
context_section_description: Rudge  says that Esau Smith was the acknowledged king of the Black Patch. When he died in 1901 at the age of 92, his widow Henty was elected queen. Even while Esau was alive it was generally understood by local people that the Gypsies gained legal rights to the land as squatters. Though such rights are seldom written down, it is said that deeds to this effect were destroyed when the king and queen's caravan was ritually burned after her death on 7 January 1907. Queen Henty, who was buried with her husband in the churchyard of St. Mary's Church, Handsworth, is said to have placed a curse on anyone who builds over the Black Patch, the subject of a song by the well known folk artist Bryn Phillips in September 2003.
  In 1906 Mrs E J E Pilkington and Tangye Ltd were referred to as legal owners of Black Patch, having put it up for sale after employing land agents to carry out a court imposed eviction of the Gypsies on 26 July 1905. They did not finally relinquish links with the land until a "peaceful eviction" was negotiated by Birmingham Corporation Parks Department on 15 February 1909. Subsequent stories contribute to reasonable doubt as to who ought to have inherited the Black Patch and who now holds legal title to the Gypsies' old camping ground. Rudge reports that in 1960 Jane Badger, who lived near Black Patch, got into conversation while walking by the Park with a gentleman with an American accent. He claimed he owned the deeds to the land. This story resembles a statement made by Ray Plant, a distant relative of the Black Patch Gypsies, that a family called Murdock once owned the land and gave permission to camp there. According to Ray Plant when the Murdocks emigrated to America they handed over the Black Patch deeds to the Gypsies. The deeds were apparently stolen making any of the gypsies  claims to the land unfounded. Many of the gypsy descendants still live in the surrounding area - the names of descendants accessible via the National Census.
  In July 2005, a memorial plaque to the gypsies was erected. Sometime in March 2007 this plaque disappeared but has since been replaced.
caption: Gypsies on the Black Patch
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