Dudley No. 1 / Duddelœge / Dudelei / Dvdelei

There is an entry for Dudley [variant spelling] in the Domesday survey [http://domesdaymap.co.uk/place/SO9490/dudley/] [accessed 17 September 2014], but it mentions neither cleric nor a church in it. Miller (1890) writes: "There appears to have been formerly two churches in Dudley--St. Edmund and St. Thomas. Bishop Sandy's Survey states that St. Thomas's was a chapel dependent on St. Edmund's. Both these churches are said, in the Bull of Pope Lucius, 1190, to be dependent on the mother church of St. James. This latter church must have been destroyed in early times. The church of St. Edmund was demolished by Colonel Leveson, 1646. Both parishes became then one, and the register book, from thenceforth, became also one. On September 13th, 1648, upon the people's petition, it was ordered that both parishes should repair the church of St. Thomas. The present church was erected 1816." The Victoria County History (Worcester, vol. 3, 1913) notes: "From very early times there were two churches at Dudley. They were granted by Gervase Paynel in the middle of the 12th century to his newly-founded priory of Dudley, [...] and appear afterwards to have become annexed to the priory church of St. James, for when Pope Lucius confirmed the possessions of the priory in 1182 he included the church of St. James of Dudley with the chapels of St. Edmund and St. Thomas. [...] Both the churches were united in one vicarage, [...] and Bishop Sandys's survey states that St. Edmund's was the parish church and St. Thomas's a chapel dependent upon it. [...] In 1844 the four new parishes of St. Edmund, St. James, St. John and St. Andrew, Netherton, were formed out of the old parish of Dudley. [...] Since that date two other parishes have been formed, that of St. Luke in 1876 [...] and that of St. Augustine in 1884. [...] The livings of all these churches are vicarages, and all are in the gift of the vicar of Dudley." All other churches in Dudley date from the 19th-century. [NB: we have no information on the font from the mid-12th century church here].