EARLY SETTLEMENT

As the whole ridge was well drained, and only lightly wooded at worst, settlement and communication upon it were not restricted. Fields could be readily cleared and ploughed, though the land was more suitable for pasture than for crops. The moated manor house of Duddeston stood on a level site off Vauxhall Road (Spooner Street - Hindlow Close), with meadows sloping gently to the river below. Vauxhall and Saltley Roads probably bound its demesne. The first detailed map, Tomlinson's of 1758, shows enclosure to be then complete in Duddeston and Nechells except for a ten-acre common, Nechells Green, and two much smaller ones at Upper and Lower Gorsty Green, (Gosta Green and A. - B. Row).

All else is a pattern of small quadrilateral closes bordered by hedges: neither from their shape nor their Georgian names is it possible to deduce that certain areas were once in strip cultivation as open fields. The absence of revealing names indeed suggests that enclosure had taken place long before. A tradition of depopulation in Duddeston may be based on the number of taxpayers shown thereat in two consecutive returns whereas in 1327 there were more such in Duddeston than in Aston Manor (13 against 9), only five years later there were but two in Duddeston while Aston had 11. This suggests either an outbreak of a fatal disease or displacement by the manorial lord of his subsistence-farming tenants to make way for more profitable sheep: but we cannot be sure that either happened.

The Holtes prospered, by whatever means, and their home grew in extent and appointment. In Stuart times it was said to possess 13 bedrooms, gallery, chapel, gatehouse, and extensive domestic outbuildings: the great hall and principal rooms were richly hung and furnished. The manor house of Nechells has been so long demolished that no trace or record of it has survived. 'Nechalls Park' is shown on Beighton's map of 1725, and the site of Nechells Park Farm (Stanley Road Recreation Ground) may be suggested as the manor house site. Dugdale refers to 'divers pretty hamlets' hereabout but there was no village anywhere on the ridge in the C18th, and it cannot be claimed that there were ever more than a few scattered farmhouses.