LOCAL GOVERNMENT CHANGES

Names of manors within Estone appear in documents from the C12th (Saltley, Castle Bromwich, Nechells) and C13th (Duddeston, Bordesley, Little Bromwich): it is probable that the manor bounds which lasted until the recent past were all established by the early Middle Ages. The ecclesiastical parish of Aston, including Erdington and Witton, covered 23 square miles : it was to survive unfrag-mented until later Victorian times, though several chapelries-of-ease had been granted long before. From the reign of Elizabeth I the Civil Parish of Aston covered the same area.

There were then or later Overseers of the Poor and Surveyors of Highways (grand titles for unwilling, unpaid, and untrained tenant farmers), answerable to local Justices of the Peace, for each manor or district. They and the manorial courts baron and leet were the only local government agencies until mid-Victorian times for most of the Parish: Streets Commissioners were appointed for Deritend and Bordesley in 1791, and for Duddeston and Nechells in 1829.

The Aston Manor Board of Health was established in 1869: an off-shoot, the Aston Rural Sanitary Authority, covered the entire Civil Parish that remained outside Birmingham. The Board acquired other functions and was known as Aston Local Board until it became an Urban District Council in 1890. Four years later there was a division into the separate Civil Parishes of Aston Manor Urban District (with Lozells), Erdington U.D. including Witton, and Aston in Birmingham, comprising Deritend, Bordesley, Duddeston, Nechells, Saltley, and Little Bromwich. Castle Bromwich and Water Orton became a single Rural District.

Although Bordesley, Deritend, Duddeston and Nechells had been incorporated into the Borough of Birmingham since 1838, and Saltley and Little Bromwich since 1891, they remained in Aston Parish for Poor Law administration until 1905: then the Guardians of Birmingham, Aston, and Kings Norton & Northfield began to work together, and in 1912 (when all were in the City) they combined.

The Streets Commissioners of Bordesley & Deritend, and Duddeston & Nechells, like those of Birmingham, continued in unelected authority until 1852, when the Borough Council succeeded to their functions. Saltley Local Board District and Little Bromwich Hamlet joined the newly created City in 1891. Aston Manor had sought incorporation since 1876, and this was achieved in 1903. It must surely be the shortest-lived corporate borough ever, because after eight years it became part of Greater Birmingham. The western half of Castle Bromwich (excluding the village to whose annexation the Earl of Bradford was strongly opposed) entered the City in 1931, the year when the Guardians of the combined Union gave up their powers to the City Council. From that date, all but the eastern end of Estone was wholly annexed to and governed by Birmingham.

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