TUDOR AND STUART TIMES

The last item has been identified as the building now called The Old Crown Inn, and perhaps correctly so: but it should be noted that Leland places both chapel and house 'hard by the ripe' (close to the bank) of the Rea. This is correct for St. John's, separated from the river by a single croft, but certainly not for the house, which is nine crofts and 120 yards away. Though a building was erected on this site, probably by Robert o'the Green, in the C14th, the present appearance of the Old Crown suggests that it is of Tudor date, probably new-built when Leland passed it.

The central doorway closes off a passage which formerly led to a yard enclosed by outbuildings, with a well. The croft on which the house stood extended about 80 yards back from the green. The original single dwelling was converted into two and then three in 1684 and '93. The Anchor inn was built on Kemp Hill in 1560, beside the Bordesley manor pound: the landlords always the pound-keeper and a constable. The inn was also a farmhouse, with barn and dairy, having market gardens down to Snails Lane and grazing beyond. Its gardens and bowling green made it a popular resort in Georgian times. The building now known as the Golden Lion inn and moved to Cannon Hill Park was erected near St. John's Chapel: its quadrant timbering is Elizabethan.

In 1597 Vestries or Civil Parishes, overseen by the local magistracy, replaced the declining manorial system, though Birmingham's court leet continued to meet biennially in a building within the manor house moat, and to be concerned with Deritend through its constable; Deritend and Bordesley together had their Overseers of the Poor and Surveyors of Highways as officials of Aston Parish. Stratford House was built in 1601 by Ambrose Rotton for himself and his wife Bridget, a three-gabled mansion with oversailing upper floors in herringbone and quadrant timbering. In this period there were additions to the medieval Heybarnes farmhouse.

From the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642 Reaside ironmasters and cutlers worked to supply the need for arms of the Parliamentary forces, while refusing Cavalier contracts. This, and local actions against the king's baggage train and his supporters, had given Royalists no cause to love this centre of 'hearty, wilful, affected disloyalty'. When therefore on Easter Monday of 1643 Prince Rupert's army of 2000 men advanced from Henley, proposing to move through Birmingham and raise the siege of Lichfield Cathedral Close, the towns-folk feared to admit it. Quartermasters sent ahead to offer protection and no reprisals for past misdeeds in return for a night's billeting were turned away: the dragoons' reputation for looting and atrocity was too well known.

'Bromycham' was an open town with only 200 muskets and no soldiers other than a troop of cavalry. There could be no prolonged defence, only a hope that Rupert might be persuaded to bypass the town rather than delay to fight an unnecessary action, and move north by way of Duddeston ford. Barricades were erected in Deritend High Street between the houses. The Royalists were obliged to advance in column and when two attacks had been repulsed, Rupert ordered his commanders to outflank the deep and narrow way'.

They charged across the fields on either side of Deritend's crofts, forded the Rea above and below the defended bridge, and overrode the minor defences off Digbeth. That was the end of effective resistance. Rupert lodged at the Anchor inn on Kemp Hill, and a night of pillage began. Robert Porter's mill (Lower Mill Lane off Digbeth) was pulled down next morning by 'malignants' (Royalist supporters): Porter himself had prudently retreated with the Parliamentary troop. Eighty houses were destroyed in fires started before the Cavaliers moved on. Twice more their forces were in the town during the war, causing further loss and destruction. Garrison Farm may have taken its name from its use as quarters for troops of one or both sides.

By 1651 Deritend Bridge was 'so utterly demolished' through neglect that it looked like a casualty of the war. Since the dissolution of the Birmingham Gild of the Holy Cross that had maintained 'two great bridges of stone' across the Rea channels, nothing had been done to them. The local Justices had disclaimed respon-sibility for more than a century, but they were now required to restore the bridge. Hemill (Hay Mill) Bridge was first recorded on Ogilby's strip-map of 1675, but it was probably a footbridge only at that time. Of about that date were A-B House (Aston-Birmingham) beside the bridge, raised on piles above floods, and two Dutch-gabled houses: Coopers Farm alongside the dormered watermill (Belmont Row off Montagu Street) shown on Westley's Prospect, and Ravenhurst, the Lowe mansion (site of St. Anne's R.C. School off Bradford Street). Of the Stuart Owens' Farm one much-repaired brick building in Farm Park is said to be the house. In 1697 William Simcox bought Stratford House, the Rottons' timbered mansion of 1601, and an estate of 20 acres. He or an heir rebuilt the back of the house in brick with sash windows.