INTRODUCTION: ESTONE

This booklet is about 'Estone', which first appears in Domesday Book (1086-7) as one of the properties of William fitz-Ansculf, Lord of Dudley and is the first record of the name that was to become 'Aston'. It seems to mean Ash or East Farm. Included in Estone then were several estates which were later to have separate identities : Aston Manor itself, Duddeston, Bordesley, Saltley, Castle Bromwich, Little Bromwich, and Water Orton Manors; also the sub-manors of Nechells, Heybarnes, Park Hall, and Ward End.

Water Orton and Park Hall are excluded from this essay because they remain outside Birmingham : only half of Castle Bromwich not including the village is in the City, and that manor is left for others to study. Deritend was not in Estone but in the lordship of Birmingham : it is included here because of its natural associations with Bordesley. All the estates named above were in the large and ancient parish of Aston, but so were Witton and Erdington. Those manors had separate entries in Domesday Book and will be the subject of later work.

The history of settlement in Estone, an area of ten thousand acres, and the circumstances of its coming into single ownership, cannot now be established. For nine miles it borders the south bank of the River Tame, and elsewhere its bounds are the River Cole, Spark Brook, 'Belgrave Brook', the River Rea, Newhall Brook, the Bourne (later called Hockley or Aston Brook), and Shire Brook. This area was naturally divided into four by Aston Brook, the Rea, and Wash Brook. Each of the later manors will be studied separately, but the 1086 statistics are for the whole of Estone. It cannot be claimed that all of the other settlements were then in existence, but some certainly were. The given ploughland, about a thousand acres, is more than the whole area of Aston Manor, of which it is known that only a tenth was arable two centuries later.

There were two thousand-odd acres of wood, which left the greater part of the land, 17 square miles, presumably covered by heath and meadow. 44 tenants (heads of household) were listed, 30 villeins, 12 bordars, one serf and a priest, giving a total population of about 220, or ten persons to the square mile. There was a watermill on the Tame, one of only three within the present City bounds, the others being at Hamstead and Bromford.

Estone Mill, worth three shillings in tax annually, survived with several rebuildings for more than eight centuries. No fishery was recorded, though millweirs usually had traps for fish. The first church is assumed to have been in existence, as there was a resident priest. His spiritual lord was the Bishop of Lichfield. The only other priest hereabout was at Northfield, in Worcester Diocese.

Estone was worth £5 in annual tax, having had modest growth since the 1065 return of £4. Its lord and sitting tenant was an Anglo-Saxon, Godmund. He had held the manor as a tenant of Earl Eadwin of Mercia, whose property had been confiscated by William the Conqueror after his second rebellion. The king retained some lands, e.g. Sutton and Bromsgrove - the latter including (Kings) Norton and Moseley - but he allotted about eighty manors to his ally, Ansculf of Pecquigny.

Estone, Bermingham, Hardintone (Erdington) and Honesworde (Handsworth) were among these. By 1086, when William fitz-Ansculf was tenant-in-chief, most manors had been allotted to his father's or his own followers : this was so at Erdington, but Godmund had contrived to remain in possession of the largest of the local manors, Estone. Stannechetel had been the freeholder of Wytone (Witton), and though he retained the property he did so as a vassal of fitz-Ansculf. The Conqueror had ruled that 'every man must have a lord'.