William Dargue, Author at Birmingham History

The Castle Hill

March 17, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

The Castle Hill is not easy to see, squeezed as it is between the slip road of the M6 at Junction 5 and the Chelmsley Collector Road (A452). Now much overgrown with trees and bushes, it is a small hill known locally as Pimple Hill. A natural feature in origin, it became a site of strategic importance, overlooking the ford across the River Tame. And it is from this fortification, built after the Norman Conquest in 1066, that Castle Bromwich takes the first part of its name.

When the Anglo-Saxon King Harold was defeated at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 by Duke William of Normandy, the impact was felt very quickly across the whole of England. In this area many manors had belonged to Earl Edwin before 1066. He was an Anglo-Saxon, the lord of Mercia, and his manors were sub-let to other Anglo-Saxon lords. However, in 1068 and then in 1071 Edwin rebelled against King William. As a result, his holdings were forfeit to the Crown and redistributed among the Norman lords who had fought at William‘s side at Hastings. They in turn sub-let most of them to their own Norman followers.

Ansculf de Picquigny was one such overlord. William gave him some 30 estates, many in the west midlands, which had formerly belonged to Edwin. As a result Ansculf built Dudley Castle as his administrative centre. When the Domesday Book was compiled in1086, his son William FitzAnsculf had succeeded to his father’s manors. By now few were sub-let to Anglo-Saxons; most, including Castle Bromwich, had Norman lords of the manor, Brictwin, the Anglo-Saxon lord in the time of King Edward, having been sent packing.

And so the castle of Bromwich was built on the hill alongside the ancient ridgeway and overlooking the ford of the River Tame.

The castle is likely to have been built on the orders of Ansculf or his son soon after the Norman Conquest. Ralph, mentioned in the Domesday Book, could well have been the first Norman lord of the manor and would have been responsible for the subjugation of the area. By the middle of the next century Ralph’s descendants were referring to them as de (of) Bromwich, effectively taking the placename as their surname.

Much of the castle mound was destroyed by the construction of the M6 motorway and the Chelmsley Collector Road. However, before work began on the latter, an archaeological survey was undertaken by W J Ford of Birmingham Museum on behalf of the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works.

This was a motte-and-bailey castle and made of timber, the motte being the mound on top of which stood a square castle, perhaps three storeys in height and made of wood. The bailey was the lower part of the castle, in effect an enclosed courtyard where there would have been sleeping quarters, stables, workshops and stores. Evidence was found of defensive palisades and trenches. It seems from the small size of the castle that it may have been more a watchtower than a full-blown occupied castle. Perhaps the lord of the manor had a separate manor house nearby, it is possible that an earlier structure stood on the site of Castle Bromwich Hall whose present form is initially dated from the early 17th century.

Evidence of buildings on the castle site date from the 12th to the 14th century but the timber castle was never rebuilt in stone by the manorial lord. It may be that the Lord of Dudley did not want another castle as a possible power base in a manor of which he was overlord .

The castle mound is now classified as a Scheduled Ancient Monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

Exif_JPEG_PICTURE — Castle Bromwich castle mound viewed from the A452; photograph William Dargue.

And so the castle of Bromwich was built on the hill alongside the ancient ridgeway and overlooking the ford of the River Tame.

The castle mound is now classified as a Scheduled Ancient Monument under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979.

The Chester Road

March 17, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

Some 40,000 vehicles travel along the Chester Road every day between the Kingsbury Road and the motorway island, creating a traffic problem typical of our time. Now one of the busiest roads in Birmingham, this is a route that has been travelled for over 5000 years.

From prehistoric times, what we now call the Chester Road was part of a long-distance trackway which ran from the north-west to the south-east of England. Keeping to higher well-drained land and fording rivers where a sand or gravel river bed provided a firm safe crossing, traders used this ridgeway as early as the New Stone Age.

In our area the route originates near Brownhills on the old Roman Watling Street, now the A5. It follows the course of the modern A452 southwards, crossing the River Tame beneath the raised section of the M6 to the motorway island at Junction 5. Here it used to climb a steep hill, formerly Mill Hill (now a dead-end), to Castle Bromwich church. At Castle Bromwich Hall the road turned east, heading towards the River Cole crossing at Bacons End and the River Blythe at Stonebridge.

Evidence of long-distance trade during the Neolithic period has been found in Birmingham from time to time. When the road was widened opposite the Old Crown pub on Deritend High Street in 1953, workers discovered a polished hand axe fashioned from Langdale stone. It had been brought here from the Lake District some 5000 years ago and may well have been carried along the Chester Road. When Bond Street was laid out in Bournville in1899 a hand axe was found made of stone that had come from the so-called neolithic axe factory at Graig Lwyd, Penmaenmawr in North Wales. Its journey south could well have been along the Chester Road, which was known in the Middle Ages as the Welsh Road.

The Castle Hill – a prehistoric site

003 Castle Hill — Castle Hill photographed in 1968 by Phyllis Nicklin. Copyright MLA West Midlands and the University of Birmingham; image available to redistribute for non-commercial purposes – http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/587.

Although Castle Bromwich has a name of Anglo-Saxon origin, there was settlement here thousands of years before the arrival of Anglo-Saxons.

In 1970 plans were put in place to build a road to connect Birmingham city centre via the A47 with the very large new estate under construction at Chelmsley Wood. Before the construction of the 4-mile stretch of dual carriageway began, a hasty archaeological dig was undertaken by Birmingham Museum at the Castle Hill site near M6 Junction 5. Above the river crossing Castle Hill, between the M6 and the Chelmsley Collector Road, is a natural mound that has been modified many times over the years. It probably stood much higher and, until the construction of the roads surrounding it in the 1970s, was bare of trees and much more prominent than it is now.

What was discovered here was evidence of human occupation covering a period of over 5000 years. Most of the objects unearthed were small and, to the inexperienced eye, would have appeared insignificant. Nonetheless, by careful excavation, archaeologists were able to piece together something of the history of the site over five millennia.

The New Stone Age

Colouration in the sub-soil was found. Though faint, this was evidence of post holes, showing the location of the uprights of a wooden building from the Neolithic era which stood on this site some 5000 years ago. Nearby, small fragments of pottery were found also dating from the New Stone Age. In many gardens in Castle Bromwich can be found the same red clay from which the first neolithic farmers in the area made their simple pots.

The Bronze Age

Sherds of Bronze Age pottery were also found, certainly made from local clay, and more evidence of post-holes, indicating the site of another wooden building, this one dating perhaps to 3000 years ago. The crossing the River Tame here was always a significant one and it may be that a local tribal chieftain guarded the ford, perhaps imposing tolls on travellers. This building is unlikely to have stood alone. The Castle Hill was almost certainly the focus of a small agricultural community making use of the lush water meadows for their livestock and the lighter soils above for growing crops.

The Iron Age

Evidence in Birmingham of the Iron Age is rare. However, a single white and yellow glass bead was found on the open land at the back of Castle Bromwich Hall in 1960. That bead, dating back over 2000 years, now in Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, testifies to a continuing occupation of this area.

The Roman Period

The Chester Road during the Roman period was not part of the network of Roman military roads. It would, nonetheless, have been one of routes used by travellers and traders in Roman Britain. A route led from the crossing of the Tame via Castle Bromwich and Green Lane to Grimstock Hill near Coleshill. Located here was a small pagan temple built on a site that had been used from the time before the Roman conquest. The 1st-century Romano-Celtic temple was excavated in 1978 along with a Roman-period villa nearby. The temple continued in use until the 4th century, not long before the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end.

At Castle Hill evidence of a building was unearthed from the Roman period. Although its purpose is uncertain, like earlier peoples, the Roman army would certainly have recognised the strategic important of the river crossing here.

003 Coin Empress Faustina — A coin of the Empress Faustina II – generic

Coins are commonly found as evidence of earlier times. Then, as now, people unwittingly dropped their loose change, never to find it again. Two Roman coins are known to have been found in Castle Bromwich; there are likely to be more unreported finds. A gold coin from the Brigantes tribe was dug up by a local gardener, this Celtic tribe was centred on York where the coin had been minted in Roman style. And in 1963 a small brass coin was found on open land in front of Castle Bromwich Hall, a dupondius which bore the portrait of Empress Faustina II (c128 – 175).

Castle Bromwich – an Anglo-Saxon place name

March 13, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

Many of our English place names are over a thousand years old and give some idea of the landscape and way of life of our Anglo-Saxon predecessors.

Castle Bromwich was founded by Anglo-Saxon settlers some centuries before the Norman Conquest, that successful invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. Known initially as Bromwich, the name is Old English; brom wic and means ‘broom farm’.

Brom – Broom, Cytisus scoparius, is a shrub which thrives on the sandy and gravelly soils of glacial drift, materials which were pushed by glaciers down from the north during the last Ice Age which ended ten thousand years ago.

Common across this country and temperate Europe, broom is a shrub which grows well on sandy heathlands as an erect bush between 1 and 1.5 metres in height. It produces long, slender, green branches, profusely covered with bright yellow flowers from April to July. These develop into flat black seed pods which burst audibly when they are ripe, scattering the seeds some distance from the parent plant.

The plant’s name derives from an Anglo-Saxon word simply meaning a ‘thorny shrub’. The straight flexible branches were bundled and tied and used for sweeping houses, hence the modern use of the word. The second element of the name, scoparius comes from the Latin scopae, which also means a broom.

Wic – A subsidiary settlement of an earlier village was often referred to as a wic in Anglo-Saxon times, and it may be that Aston was the original settlement from which Bromwich was founded. Castle Bromwich, until modern times, was part of the extensive ancient manor and parish of Aston, a village which was important enough to have its own priest when the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086.

A little local geology

The lay of the land and make-up of soil have always determined the locations and types of settlements. Castle Bromwich is no exception. Here there is a range of soil types: heavy clay, light sandy soil and alluvium.

As many local gardeners well know, the soil of much of the area around Birmingham, especially to the east, consists of Mercia mudstone, a heavy red clay. Hard as rock in a dry hot summer, its imperviousness to water turns it into a sticky slimy morass in wet weather.

Cutting through the clay, Birmingham’s rivers created wide marshy valleys rich with fertile alluvium, soils created by river silt and rotting plant material. Locally the River Tame and the River Cole were prone to flooding in winter and were difficult to cross at any time. Fords on clay or on marshland were necessary but unsatisfactory, and their locations are often evidenced by place names. Fulford, ‘foul ford’ is common across the country; there was one at Witton on the Tame, another near Sparkhill on the River Cole and the name of Stechford, another crossing of the Cole, probably means ‘sticky ford’.

However, where rivers and streams crossed deposits of glacial drift, the river bed was much firmer and easier to cross. A sandy or gravel riverbed was much easier to negotiate. Travellers in Anglo-Saxon times would recognise better river crossings by place names such as Greet, which contains the Old English word greot meaning gravel, and Gravelly Hill. By choice they would head for fords referring to the plant, broom, which they knew grows on sandy or gravel soil. Medieval travellers would much prefer to cross at Bromwich and Bromford, if they could, rather than at Stechford or Fulford.

The wic element of Bromwich also refers to the geology and topography of the place. A wic was a daughter settlement where livestock, especially cattle, were kept. It may well be that (Castle) Bromwich was established by villagers from Aston who kept their cattle on the floodplains of the River Tame and Cole. The land would often flood in winter but in summer there were lush water meadows, perfect for grazing livestock.

Castle Bromwich had the best of three worlds. Down in the valleys, there were ideal conditions for livestock. On the higher ground, much of which was a mix of sand, gravel and clay in varying amounts, there was lighter tree cover and easier ploughing than on lands lying solely on clay. Close by, on the clay lands, there was the Forest of Arden, a valuable woodland resource providing timber especially of oak and ash, as well as game and grazing for livestock, notably pigs.

After a thousand years, evidence survives

The river valleys are still much in evidence in Castle Bromwich. The Cole Valley is a linear public open space, part of an urban country park following the course of the river from Chelmsley Wood to Solihull Lodge.

The great open fields for growing crops, traditionally a three-year cycle of cereals, legumes and fallow, disappeared at the beginning of the 19th century but were not built on until the 20th century. However, Southfield Avenue is named after the large house at the corner of the Chester Road and Hall Road (now the Remembrance Club) which itself was named after the medieval open field of the same name on which the Hall estate stands.

Vestiges of the ancient woodland of the Forest of Arden also survive with stands of trees on the Park Hall Nature Reserve between the M6 and the River Tame

Castle Bromwich, a village in the Forest of Arden

March 9, 2014 by William Dargue Leave a Comment

Castle Bromwich is a residential suburb lying just beyond the eastern boundary of Birmingham, some 7 miles from the city centre. Formerly a tiny Warwickshire village, it occupies the northernmost tip of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull.

001 Castle Bromwich, a village (1) Dugdale map 1656 — Map of Hemlingford Hundred in William Dugdale’s ‘Antiquities of Warwickshire’ 1656

Until the 1930s the ancient Warwickshire manor of Castle Bromwich stretched from Stechford in the west almost to Water Orton in the east, a distance of some 4 miles. The manor lay on higher ground, the interfluvial land between the marshy valleys of the River Cole and River Tame. This was anciently part of the Forest of Arden which covered much of the area between Stratford-upon-Avon to Tamworth.

From the Norman Conquest in 1066, there was always a string of cottages along the Chester Road, forming a linear village close to the castle and later to Castle Bromwich Hall. The castle, then the hall, was the seat of the lords of the manor for almost a thousand years and a focus of employment in this agricultural district.

Although there was something of a village centre, this was a manor typical of forest areas; there were scattered farms and dwellings, with a handful of landowners holding most of the land and property.

From medieval times Coleshill was the local market town, being only 4 miles to the east. However, as it grew from its small beginnings, Birmingham, 7 miles to the west, increasingly became the predominant local market.

During the late 18th and especially during the 19th century, wealthy Birmingham businessmen built a number of large rural retreats in this picturesque corner of leafy Warwickshire. At times the hall itself was not occupied by the manorial family, but let. In 1773 this ‘capitol mansion house’ was advertised in Aris’s Gazette, a Birmingham newspaper, to be let fully furnished.

20th Century Castle Bromwich

Having been a rural community dependent on farming for a thousand years, during the 20th century Castle Bromwich transformed into a suburb dependent on the commerce and industry of the great city of Birmingham within a period of less than 50 years.

In 1931 the west and south of the manor, which included Bromford, Hodge Hill, Bucklands End and Shard End, became part of the City of Birmingham. There was extensive private house building before World War 2 on the Birmingham side and large-scale council house building there after the war. Private housing developments continued on the rest of the manor throughout the second half of the 20th century.

By the 1950s building was underway on the estates both east and west of Hurst Lane North, with the Hall estate around Southfield Avenue soon to follow. Most of the district had been built up by 1960, with the last developments taking place in the late 1970s and early 1980s along the remaining agricultural land, a 2-mile stretch south of the Chelmsley Collector Road.

With the development of the Kingshurst estate and later the extensive Chelmsley Wood housing estate in the 1960s, Castle Bromwich became continuous with the Birmingham conurbation except for a thin strip of farmland, just two fields in width, which still separates it from the Warwickshire village of Water Orton.

Castle Bromwich: Population

Early population figures can only be estimated, but the number of inhabitants at the time of the Domesday Book in 1086 probably amounted to only a couple of dozen across the whole manor.

By the time of the 1861 Census, the population was still only 613. Moving forward to the 1920s there were some 1000 people living in the district (This still included Bromford, Hodge Hill, Bucklands End and Shard End which were soon to be ceded to Birmingham).

After the Second World War the population recorded in the decennial censuses increased to 4356 in 1951, 9205 in 1961 and 15,941 in 1971. The 2011 Census recorded 11,217 residents.

Castle Bromwich: Local Government

Castle Bromwich Rural District Council (RDC) was created by the 1894 Local Government Act that sought to modernise and regularise the confused system of governance that had developed from the Middle Ages. It derived from the Aston Rural Sanitary District which had been created in 1837 and included the Aston Poor Law Union (Castle Bromwich had been part of the ancient manor and parish of Aston since Anglo-Saxon times). Castle Bromwich RDC also included Curdworth, Minworth, Water Orton and Wishaw civil parishes.

001 Castle Bromwich, a village (4) Poor Law Unions map — Map of the local Poor Law Unions

In 1912 Castle Bromwich Rural District became part of a much larger local authority, Meriden Rural District which, until 1974, covered a rural area much of which is now designated Green Belt between Coventry and Birmingham.

When local government was reorganised again in 1974, Castle Bromwich, now a wholly urban district, transferred from Meriden Rural District in Warwickshire to a newly expanded Metropolitan Borough of Solihull within the new metropolitan County of West Midlands.

Castle Bromwich Parish Council

001 Castle Bromwich, a village (5) CB parish council arms — Arms of Castle Bromwich Parish Council

However, despite various reorganisations of local government, Castle Bromwich Parish Council, which was set up on 4th December 1894, still exists. The initial meeting was held in the school on 22 December 1894 (The school, now demolished, had been built in the 1870s on the Chester Road by The Green).

The first councillors were almost all wealthy local dignitaries and included the Rt Hon George Bridgeman, Viscount Newport, eldest son of the Earl of Bradford, and Alderman Thomas Clayton, the canal magnate.

The parish council now meets in Arden Hall, a multi-purpose meeting hall on Water Orton Road.