ASTON MANOR

Beginning at Witton Bridge, the flight would go up Witton Road to Witton Cross, follow the shallow valley of the lost brook east of Emscote and Woodhall Roads and west of Lodge Road, between Witton/Mansfield Roads and Fentham Road/Johnstone Street, and at James Street curve north-westward to the former source. Therefrom it would take a line between Carlyle Street and Lime Grove to Lozells Road opposite Burbury Street, along the middle of Lozells Road, down the garden ends on the west side of Barker Street and down the middle of Hunters Road.

Aston Brook is underground, but dips in the many crossing streets indicate its course: a greenway overlies its bed from Hockley Circus to Newtown Centre. From The Avenue northward the Fazeley Canal runs generally parallel to the hidden Bourn, at a distance of a hundred yards or so to its west. Thus Chester Street is in Aston, but Cheston Road is in Duddeston: Plume, Salford, and Jameson Streets are Aston's except for their extreme eastern ends on Long Acre. Due to the Tame straightening four acres east of the church that were a salient of Witton are now on the Aston side of the river.

The manor covered 960 acres in 1911, though earlier surveys of the same area had made the acreage 943. It is of simple relief, an east-west ridge (descending from 430 feet at Villa Cross to 300 feet at Salford) which has been created by the downcutting into a red sandstone plain of streams draining from the western ramparts of the Birmingham Plateau. Deeply scoured valleys of post-glacial times have been infilled with silt, and gravelly drift overlies the sandstone. Except for the wide Tameside meadows and the narrower boggy strip that used to border Aston Brook, the manor is well-drained.