OWNERSHIP OF BROMWICH C13th - 19th

This is a complex and confusing story. The manor was held by the Paynels, lords of Dudley, their successors the Somerys, and Lady Joan de Botetourt of Weoley Castle. These were all absentee lords who had larger estates elsewhere, and the manor house (the Moat House on Alum Rock Road) would be in fact a steward's house, at least until the Bradewells acquired the manor. They are known to have been resident in Little Bromwich at least from 1291, and one might guess that the moated Treeford Hall was their original home. There were only nine taxpayers in the list for Little Bromwich that includes the names of two Bradewells. It was presumably after the death of Lady Joan, in the mid-C14th, that the family bought the manor.

Meanwhile the Ward family were living six furlongs to the north, across the open fields, and after them is the northern part of Little Bromwich called Ward End. Their home was a timbered hall inside the double moat, fed by Ward End Brook, which has only recently been infilled and overbuilt. (Moats served as defences, drains, middens, and fishponds!) In 1512 John Bond, a clothier of Coventry, converted 30 acres of the estate he had bought from the Wards into a deerpark. This was not Ward End Park, for that ground was part of Slade Field and remained in strip cul-tivation until early in the C19th, but was part of the 208 acres' estate whose bounds were Wash Brook, Wallbank, St. Margaret's Road and Bromford Lane.

In 1515 John Brandwood acquired the Bradewell property, and his descendant Elizabeth Spooner claimed 'the lordship of Little Bromwich or Alum Rock' in 1730. John Bond's namesake and descendant had conveyed 'the manor of Ward End or Little Bromwich' to Thomas Bayley in 1658. It would seem that the owners of both estates claimed title to the old name and manorial rights, though each possessed only a part of the manor. By 1725 Charles Blackham, a Birmingham iron master, was owner and tenant of Ward End Hall: it was perhaps he who in 1710 built the small classical hall in brick and stone (which was to survive until the late 1940s) beside the double moat. The old timbered hall was duly demolished, but the moats survived as fishpools in the hall grounds.

The Brandwoods sold out to the Wards in 1797, but whether these were descendants of the ancient Bromwichian family is not known. In 1868 Alum Rock (Farm ?) and Treeford Hall were sold by William Ward, and manorial rights then lapsed as they had done at Saltley. In 1848 the Hall and 100 acres at Ward End were owned by Thomas Hutton, and sixty years later his descendant William was still living at the Hall. It was derelict by 1939.

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