GEORGIAN TIMES

The four-arched stone bridge has refuges above the piers and a tollbooth at either end. The old Tame bridge on Aldridge Road is similar in appearance as in date. No bridge is shown over the 'sickle-shaped drain' to which Hutton referred in 1780, the refuse-filled western channel that was still the parish bound. Indeed it is not shown on plan or view. About 1750 the Rea bridge was raised to present a lesser obstacle to floods, but it was too narrow and the low approaches were unaltered: so in 1789 the bridge was replaced by a wider one 'more useful but less handsome' with raised causeways to it. St. John's Chapel was rebuilt in 1735, a brick rectangle with stone decorations: its tower was completed three decades later. The chapel house and a school were built behind.

About mid-century two men moved out of the smoky town where they had made their fortunes to the green pastures of Bordesley. Thirty acres were emparked by John Taylor, manufacturer, who build Bordesley House for himself overlooking an ornamental lake on Bordesley Brook. A long drive led from a portal lodge on Coventry Road to a site off Bordesley Park Road north (now Bolton Road north end). The park's high wall protected a herd of deer. The house became Bordesley Hall, but was not a manor house, though it may have been built near the Somerys' house site and the park was certainly part of the ancient demesne.

Taylor's neighbour was Sampson Lloyd II, miller and ironmaster: in 1745 he bought Owens' Farm of 56 acres, chose a site for a house nearby and planted an elm avenue in front. The plain but elegant house, always called 'Farm' by the family, was begun in 1758: later Lloyds added a pond and stable block, and the fami1y lived there in Quaker sobriety until 1919. Taylor and Lloyd had been lending money for some years before they decided to found a bank, with their sons and namesakes as partners.

Tomlinson's map of 1760 shows Bordesley totally enclosed. Though long narrow closes south of Glovers Lane suggest groupings of furlong strips, elsewhere enclosure had taken place so long before that all evidence of the former open fields, including their names, had vanished. The map shows lanes of very variable width, testifying to the nature of the subsoil and the amount of use, and buildings without names. Some crofts are labelled, but few of these are useful topographically. 'Moors' (boggy meadows) help the plotting of brooks not shown, which must otherwise be deduced from relief. Many 'leasowes' indicate the prevalence of pasture. Patches of wood are all that remain of perhaps a thousand acres of forest.

The name 'Bordesley Wood' has not survived, and indeed the paucity of district names from any source is remarkable in a fair-sized manor. (The name 'Small Heath', strictly applicable only to the area about the junction of the Green Lanes, now (1977) spreads across two-thirds of Bordesley) Just as there are few farms within the oval tract which contained the demesne and perhaps two open fields, so are there few central to the formerly-wooded eastern third. Danford and Haybarn Farms in the south, Dingle and Hobmoor on the island drift patch, and the Green Lane farms, probably encroached on the wood from its edges, exercising the right of tenants in Arden to cut and sell timber and gradually expanding their grazing land. Farms along Coventry Road may have begun as squatters' hovels, permitted by another Arden custom, rather than as approved assarts. Poor water supply and exceptionally difficult travel across the clay prevented the growth of nucleated settlement any-where in east Bordesley. The western third had some suburban mansions by 1760 as well as working farms: Sparkbrook House and The Poplars, Camp Hill, Fair Hill, and Foul Lake Houses among them.

Buck's Prospect of 1750 had shown the valley edge ('Kingston Hill') to be well-timbered. At least hedgerow trees, as he and Tomlinson's map indicate, had survived the demands of Birmingham's ironmasters and builders. Forest clearance had caused faster run-off from the clay: this produced quick floods but a reduced regular flow in the tributaries. Many of the ponds mapped at croft-corners were marlpits, whence the more fertile clay had been dug out to spread over sand and gravel: these filled to provide water for stock. Ponds in clayland are likely to have been filled pits whence material for bricks and tiles had been extracted: these products perforce replaced scarce timber for building. Small kilns gave winter work to farm labourers: stocked with fish the ponds supplemented the low-protein diet of winter.

The 1760 street-pattern of Deritend consists of High Street, Birchall Street leading off Stone Yard, Heath Mill Lane, and Darwin Street - original name unknown. High Street is completely built-up from the bridge to Alcester Street. New Inn, Old Battery House, Golden Lion, are known buildings thereon. The crofts, half-filled with sheds, extend back to Green Street on the south side and to the line of the present railway viaduct to the north. Between Mill Lane and the river there is a scatter of buildings as far as Bromley Street. No others are shown in Deritend apart from Coopers Mill and Farm at the north end. Bordesley High Street is built up only as far as Mount (later Clyde) Street, there are small clusters overlooking the junction gorge, at the brook crossing, and on Camp Hill. Nowhere else is there more than a scatter of farmhouses and cottages. At this period there are 25 'encroachments' on former common land for which fines - rents in fact - are paid.

By 1778 (Hanson's map) Bradford Street has been marked out (one cannot say 'made') down Henry Bradford's land from Camp Hill to the Rea but does not yet cross it. He has offered a freehold plot to the first man who will undertake to build on his street. Alcester, 'Birch Hole', and Lombard Streets are crossed by Cheapside and Moseley Street. The blocks between these and on both sides of Warwick Street are marked out as building plots, few so far taken up and the rest in use as allotments meantime. Pye's map of 1795 shows three new Rea bridges, extending Bradford and Moseley Streets and Cheapside to Bromsgrove Street. On Kempson's map of 1810 the quadrilateral between High and Moseley Streets is infilled from Rea Street to Moseley Road. Green Street is named. The great Rea loop wherein are Apollo Gardens and two smaller ones east of Vaughton's Hole have been cut off by new channels, presumably made to reduce flooding. Richards' Brewery occupies the site of the later Rowton House.