GEORGIAN SALTLEY

Tomlinson's large-scale maps are much more detailed and informative. He shows 9 buildings on or near High Street, 15 scattered along the edge of the heath, which had probably begun as squatters' hovels thrown up overnight in the waste as the law of Arden permitted, and which now made up the township of Washwood houses on the east side of Mill Field and the Furlongs; Saltley Hall and Hall Farm; and buildings on and south of Anthony Road (Shaw Hill Lane?) at 'Over Saltley' - which he does not so name. Shaw Hill House is shown but not named. Garrison is shown with the manor bound along the west wall of the farm buildings. There are less than 50 houses in the whole manor, and the population is a few hundred only. The laneless Saltley Hall demesne has a number of ponds on the hedge-lines of the quadrilateral closes: used for stock watering, some at least of these are marlpits as the names indicate. It was customary to dig out marl and spread it over the lighter soil to increase its fertility. The named copses in the demesne may not necessarily be remnants of primeval forest, but there at least wood has been allowed to regenerate.

Clearly there never was a large village in Saltley. No church provided a nucleus for building, and the Hall lay off the highway within its demesne. So hamlets only were to be found, on High Street and at Washwood. Else-where there was a typical scatter of houses beyond the field edges, some at least indicating medieval assarts. There were no 'greens' in Saltley, but in the north the heath covered 155 acres. There were encroachments all about its edges, and the great Base Meadow in the north-east corner had been divided up: there in dry years rich silt overlying gravel produced long and lush grass. Elsewhere only the open fields lay unenclosed, and there had been groupings therein: demesne and waterside meadows were fully hedged and - perhaps - ditched.

Half of Saltley belonged to two men: Charles Bowyer Adderley who owned 320 acres, and Sir Lister Holte Baronet of Aston Hall, 269 acres. Nine other people owned 132 acres between them. These totals included land held in strips in the open fields. John Jenkins was tenant of Adderley's Saltley Hall Farm with 165 acres, Thomas Jenkins rented 101 acres of Holte land, and John Lowe 64 acres at Garrison. There were five other tenants on the Holte land.

At the time of Tomlinson's surveys a turnpike road was about to be made across both manors. It came by way of Vauxhall Road and Great Francis Street to Saltley High Street. Therefrom a choice had to be made from two bad routes. Alum Rock Road was not chosen because - we may guess - of its narrowness, sharp bends and holloways: Washwood Heath Road became the Castle Bromwich Turnpike. At first travellers got little in return for the tolls they paid at the gate in High Street (commemorated in adjacent Gate Street). But in the 1770s and later there was some real road-making, as opposed to patching. Tolls were raised by a half to pay for the improvements! graded gravel surface was rolled on a firm foundation of broken stones, making a smooth way just wide enough for two coaches to pass, with ditches for the careless on both sides. Wash Brook was crossed by a paved ford, later by a narrow humped bridge. Milestones showing the distance from Birmingham were set up at Saltley Tollhouse (2 miles), at Wash Brook (3), and near the Fox & Goose (4). In addition to that inn there were two in High Street, the Shepherd & Shepherdesses and the Old Gate Inn, which building pre-dated the turnpike by perhaps a century. (The present one of 1879 was built seven years after the gate's removal). Then or later was The Adderley Arms, in whose garden were said to have been buried the still-chained remains of two felons hanged on the Heath.

Improved access to Saltley made it attractive to prosperous folk who wished to escape Birmingham's smoke and smell - though the prevailing wind wafted both across the manor. Elegant mansions in plain or fancy Georgian style were built on the ridge. William Hutton, bookseller, historian, and magistrate, erected his house on Bennetts Hill, in a half-acre close beside the turnpike (at Bennetts Road), and Warren House was put up nearby. Both houses have gone: during the 1791 riots a mob was incited to burn both his town house and his country mansion by enemies who sought revenge for his judgments against them in the Debtors' Court.

Hutton Road and Avenue pay small respect to the memory of a man who well served his adopted town. A grisly warning to the footpads and highwaymen who infested the turnpike was the gibbet on Washwood Heath. The exact spot has not been established at which the two men were hanged in chains for highway robbery and murder in 1781. A hundred thousand people attended an eight-fold hanging in 1832, to the dismay of Saltleians and magistrates alike. No more public executions were held, but the stocks stood outside the Adderley Arms until the middle C19th.