Studley.-This village is about five miles south from Tanworth, on the Birmingham and Alcester road. The church is some distance from the village, and apparently has undergone but little change. On the north side is a fine Norman doorway, while the large. south aisle is an evident addition to the church, and is doubtless the chantry which Thomas Middlemore founded here in 1406, for the health of his soul and the souls of his father and mother, and all the faithfull deceased. According to Dugdale there were "in the east window of the south Ile of Studley church" the following shields, I, Middlemore, II,. Middlemore quartering Edgbaston, and III, Edgbaston. The endowments of the chantry were confiscated by Henry VIII, and the altar placed there by Thomas Middlemore has vanished. But the south aisle still stands, and in it the grave-stone of Richard Middlemore, who died in 1647, thus reminding those who know the history of Studley and of the Middlemore family of the piety of Thomas Middlemore, the London merchant, who built it nearly five hundred years ago in memory of his parents.
In 7 Henry IV, 1405, Thomas Middlemore had license from the Crown to .found a chantry in Studley church, still called Middlemore's chapel, which may best be described in the words of Dugdale as follows