WATERMILLS

Stichford Mill is the oldest in the two manors, being recorded as the possession of Giles de Erdington in 1249. As first shown on maps, a leat led to an embanked pool in the Coleside meadows just south of the ancient Styfec's Ford. (Note: Stechford is a railway misspelling). However, the earliest mill may have been powered by water ponded behind a weir on the river itself, the ford coming into use at that spot rather than another because (except in time of flood) there would be a shallows below the weir. The mill ground corn for some centuries, and was rebuilt in brick with a larger weir and pool in Georgian times. It was then engaged in the grinding of blades and edge-tools as well as of corn, and probably had two small wheels for different functions. Before it went out of use about 1830, it had been a paper-making mill. Although the mill building was demolished during Victorian times, the house survived until 1929. The overgrown ruins and dam, and the tail-race with bordering trees, were removed only recently (about 1970s).

A manorial mill was recorded in Little Bromwich in 1425. T his was Ward End Mill, which Tomlinson shows with two small pools fed by Ward End Brook and a leat from Wash Brook. In the C19th the two pools became one. Always a corn mill, it was probably powered by a small undershot wheel. About 1900, when William Black was tenant as farmer and corn merchant, it went out of use, and the buildings were demolished during the widening of Drews Lane in the 20s. The pool bed is now an allotment area enclosed by Winnington and Ingleton Roads.

Saltley Mill was first recorded in 1526 as the property of Thos. Holte of Duddeston. In that year Edward de Birmingham allowed his manorial tenants to take their corn thither because his own mills were often out of use due to lack of water. In 1540 Holte rebuilt Saltley Mill and built or rebuilt Duddeston Mill on the left bank of Rea. The Steward for the Crown, by then possessed of Birmingham Manor, brought an action against Holte for seeking to usurp the royal milling soke (privilege): but he lost because Holte was able to prove the inadequacy of the town mills.

Saltley Mill was apparently able to perform satisfactorily because unlike Birmingham's Heath Mill, which used the ponded river for its pool and could not retain enough water without flooding the vital Deritend ford, it had its pool in a Reaside meadow, fed by a long river channel which tapped sidestreams along its course. A new mill was built in 1576, and there were two sets of stones at work in 1689. Corn milling was then transferred to the (probably new-built) windmill on the breezy ridge-end north of High Field. By 1760 Saltley Mill was engaged in steel-rolling. So many Upper Rea mills were trapping and storing river water by the early C19th that the supply downstream was often inadequate. In 1822 the then tenant of Saltley Mill raised the height of his dam to increase the pool's capacity.

The Duddeston miller thereupon claimed loss of water, and received compensation after long-drawn-out litigation. But the days of the watermill were numbered hereabout: after a temporary reversion to corn-grinding in 1833, Saltley Mill was engaged in wire-drawing by 1850 - but the machinery in the new building was powered by steam not by the weight of falling water. The pool had been infilled by 1870, and the Rea had become a stagnant sewer except in flood. Industry was pumping water from the river and from the depleted water table, while surface run-off that had formerly swelled the river and helped to clean it was now diverted into sewers that debouched at the Rea/Tame outfall. The Saltley Mill buildings were demolished in the 80s, and the site, until recently occupied by structures of Saltley Gasworks, is now cleared once more.

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