Abridged from White’s, Directory of Staffordshire.
A large and well-built village in a pleasant valley near the south western border of the enclosed forest of Needwood, seven miles north-north east of Lichfield upon the Ashbourne Road. It was anciently a market town. The parish includes several hamlets and scattered houses and contains 1582 inhabitants and 4791 acres. The church is an ancient Gothic fabric dedicated to St Peter.
Two cattle fairs are held each year on 12 February and 19 October and a feast or wake on the first Sunday in July.
The hamlets in Yoxall parish are Hoar Cross, Longcroft, Hadley End, Morry, Olive Green and Woodhouses. Hoar Cross Hall, now the seat of H. C. Meynell esq, was anciently the residence of the Willes family and was rebuilt by its late possessor Lord Scarsdale and used as a hunting lodge. Longcroft Hall is the seat of Mrs Arden. At Morry is a large tape mill established about 40 years ago. It produces15 cwt of tape each week. Yoxall Lodge has long been the residence of the Rev Thomas Gisborne.
The parish possesses many valuable benefactions including:
The Town Lands consisting of about 24 acres, let for upwards of £50 a year have been held in trust for the benefit of the parish for more than two centuries. In a copy of the court rolls for this manor, the rents are declared to be for the repairs of Trent Bridge, Hall Bridge and the Church of Yoxall and for the funding of an armed man for the service of the king, or for any other necessary uses for the village of Yoxall as should seem expedient to the ‘major part of the better sort of inhabitants’. But 20s a year is paid out of the rents as the interest of legacies left to the poor by three persons named Robotham, Bell and Sutton.
The Church Lands comprise ten acres, let for £17 7s a year, which is applied by the churchwardens in aid of the church rate.
The Free School was rebuilt by subscription, about 1818, and founded in 1695 by Thomas Taylor. Here is also a Girls’ National School, built in 1817, by subscription.
In 1690 Richard Crosse bequeathed 22 acres calle Bigg Car, for the maintenance of six widows of deceased parishioners.
Source
William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (Sheffield: 1834), 470–72.