HALLS AND HOUSES

The districts - we cannot properly call them 'hamlets', though this was a common title for them - were reported to be very sparsely settled in early Georgian times: there were but four farms and a cottage in Nechells, five farms and a few other houses in Duddeston. John Tomlinson's fine map of 1758, thirty years later, shows Nechells Park Farm, the other Benton farmhouse near their mill, and two houses on the edge of Nechells Green - squatters' cottages - plus a barn or two: Duddeston Hall, the Farmers' house at the millpool's north end, one barn, two tiny groups of buildings near Gorsty Green, and one south of Hyde Park Corner.

The Dowager Lady Holte, Sir Lister's mother, occupied the manor house of Duddeston, properly called Duddeston Hall, in 1758. A quarter-century later it had been demolished, the formerly moated site becoming a bowling green, and the gardens were open as a public resort named Vauxhall in imitation of the Thames-side pleasance: the surviving buildings were used for balls, concerts, plays. Fireworks, fetes and frolics were held in the grounds. 'What gardens for splendour with these can compare?' (Freeth). Gaming, cock fighting, and barefist boxing attracted the town's riff-raff. The Gardens remained popular until the Grand Junction Railway hid the rural aspect across the valley and the smell from the river became too bad even for Victorian noses! The site was overbuilt by a land society in the decade or so after the 1850 closure. A new small garden with the old name was opened behind the Galton Arms tavern on Duddeston Mill Road, but that did not long survive.

Samuel Galton married Joseph Farmer's daughter in 1746, becoming his partner in a gun-making business: their shop was in Steelhouse Lane, but most of the manufacturing was done at Duddeston Mill. In 1777 Galton took a 99-year lease from Sir Charles Holte of all the land bounded by the Turnpike and the Rea: he then built a porticoed stucco mansion on the west side of the Farmer house, to which it had access by an internal stair, and called it 'Dudson House'. The lodge and entrance gates were on Saltley Road.

The millpool was then and for some decades remained an attractive lake 'bordered with willows and poplars, with leaping fish, swallows skimming water, and cries of wildfowl from sedges and bulrushes', in the words of Galton's grand-daughter. By 1838 the Galtons had gone, and the house - now improperly called 'Duddeston Hall' - was a private asylum run by the Lewis family. Thirty years later, after a proposal to use house and grounds for a beast market had come to nothing, a day school was established there by St. Matthew's Church. Later in 1868 St. Anne's Cato Street was opened, and the school was thenceforward called St. Anne's: it continued in use, pillars and stucco gone, until 1972 as a primary school, and was demolished soon afterwards. The site was halfway along Devon Street.

Dr. John Ash lived in a mansion 150 yards west of the Gardens until 1788, when he retired to Bath. His house, on a commanding site at the corner of Great Brook/Barrack Streets, became St. James's Church Ashted. After the infamous 'Church and King' riots, it was clearly necessary to have troops stationed permanently near the turbulent town of Birmingham: so cavalry barrack blocks were built about a rec-tangular parade ground later bounded by Windsor and Barrack Streets. The Ashcroft Estate has occupied the site since the early 1930s, the only dwellings to survive redevelopment in Duddeston

From Fowler's Plan of Aston Parish 1833 (Map 5) and its accompanying Schedules it is possible to plot individual farms and their tenants. 'Duddeston town', the built-up south end, is studied in URBANISATION below. According to Fowler, Duddeston covers 525 acres and Nechells 419 acres: there are 51 houses, 39 cottages, one tavern, and several other buildings in the two hamlets. Agricultural land comprises eight large holdings and some small ones. 160 acres of Duddeston, including all the property of Earl Howe, are allotments, 'Guinea Gardens' mostly worked by people from Birmingham. Robert Benton lives at Nechells Park Farm (Stanley Rd. Recreation Ground) and John at a nearby farmhouse (Long Acre/Chattaway Street). T. Hutton owns the confluence meadows and perhaps lives at Nechells Park millhouse. Hansom and Welch, architects and builders of Birmingham's Town Hall, rent a house on Nechells Park Road very near the two 1840s dwellings which still stand in 1976. Elizabeth White is tenant of Benton's Mill and the adjacent meadows. North of Nechells Green, now much encroached upon, is the inn kept by J. Cheatham, with three cottages alongside. Two of these are rented from Joseph Green by Cattell Bennett, whose first name may explain Cattells Grove nearby, and Walter Swift. A short row of cottages on Nechells Lane (Place) also belongs to Green, whose home is at the Turnpike corner.

Benjamin Steedman lives at Vauxhall House, probably the surviving residence in the Gardens. Jane Mills and William Bannister live along Thimble Mill Lane: the millhouse is occupied by Mrs. Rose. (Two widows at two mills ? The dust and damp of their work made millers both morose and sickly). Wm. Davis's house is on Rocky Lane at the pool tail and Joseph Robins's on the line of Allesley Street. Primrose Hill Farm, taking its name from the gentle slope later covered by Windsor Street Gas Works, is tenanted by Robert Garbett: it stands near Rupert/Oliver Streets corner.

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