ORIGINS AND OWNERS

In surviving record Nechells is the older name: 'Echells' appears in a document of 1180. The name is said to mean 'separate estate', and as a property of the de Panes family (N)echells was certainly detached from their manor of Handsworth. Dodestone (Dudda's Farm) is first recorded in 1204. Neither Duddeston nor Nechells will be found in Domesday Book: if they existed as small settlements in 1086, their statistics of ploughland and population would be included in the totals given for Estone.

The de Erdington family held Aston until 1272. Simon de Holte bought Nechells in 1331, and John atte Holte bought Duddeston in 1365, going to live in the manor house there. Two years later Aston Manor was also his, and the long possession of these estates, four hundred-odd years and fourteen generations, had begun. In 1438 John Holte owned four houses and 400 acres of ploughland in Duddeston and Bordesley, but others were then styling themselves 'lords of Duddeston'.

The hamlet of Duddeston was said to be part of Bordesley Manor in 1386, and in 1563 Edward Arden claimed the lordship of both. In the latter year Edward Holte, whose family had by then lived on the demesne and held a good part of Duddeston for two centuries, succeeded in his claim to be lord of the manor. Thomas Holte became the first baronet, and moved to the great mansion he had built, Aston Hall, in 1631. The last baronet was Sir Charles Holte, who succeeded his childless brother Lister. Charles had only a daughter, Mary, who married Abraham Bracebridge of Atherstone. When Sir Charles died in 1782 the Holte succession ended. An old childless widower, Heneage Legge, inherited the estate: by 1833 Duddeston and Nechells were in multiple ownership.