The construction of Slingfield Mill in 1864 was perhaps a clear demonstration that the town had survived and indeed overcome the grim decade of the 1850s. It was built by Thomas Lea – born Butcher but who had adopted the name Lea on taking on the business of a previous Thomas Lea.

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When it was completed, it was the largest building in the town a fact that Lea celebrated in buccaneering style climbing to the top of the 180 foot stack which stands alongside the mill itself and allegedly taking his breakfast there along with some of the construction crew.

 

The size of the building, which housed a spinning business, was to prove something of a mixed blessing for the town as the scale of operations meant that it generated so much waste water that the town’s primitive sewage operations were quite overwhelmed leaving the entire town in something of a bad odour and requiring expensive and protracted action to put in place a more suitable scheme.

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Lea who served as the MP for Kidderminster between 1868 and 1874 can take credit for another of the town’s more striking buildings as he was one of the forces behind the construction of the Baxter Church in the Bull Ring which was built between 1884/5. He was knighted in 1892.