History - Dorridge & St Philips

Smaller than Knowle, the Westminster Abbey Muniments first recorded the village of Dorridge around 1400, when it known as Derrech, meaning ‘clearing in the wood’. But in 1400 it was by no means a village, and it is thought it only became a village a further 450 years later, when in 1852 Knowle station was built.

The trains regularly stopped at the station and it was then, during October 1852, that Dorridge was born. A Mr Muntz of Umberslade Hall then founded the Forest Hotel, opposite the station, so that he could reside there with friends prior to traveling to London and back.

Within twenty years of the railway station being built in Dorridge in 1852, there was a thriving community here and after generous donations of land and money, and supported by the vicar of Packwood, St. Philip's church was built seating 120 people, and completed in 1878 at a cost of £1000. Local people had worshipped in St. James' church (housed in Bentley Heath school) for a hundred years when in 1941 St. James' and St. Philip's became financially one with a shared Parochial Church Council.

The vicarage was built in 1928, and later St. Philip's church was extended, a church hall built and a curate's house purchased. For a while, from 1975 the congregations of both churches worshipped at St. Philip's, but in recent years the congregation at St. James has met in the school again taking its place at the heart of the Bentley Heath community. In 2000 an innovative project saw the erection of a place of worship on the school site whilst providing improved facilities for the school.