OLD ROADS

There is evidence of a road between Birmingham and Coleshill in 1250 - the ancient way to the Hundred Moot. This was the winding lane now called Saltley Road, High Street, Alum Rock Road, and Coleshill Road, which perhaps began as a local track between the Rea ford, the Moat House, and Castle Bromwich. There was apparently no bridge at Saltley ford earlier than 1738. In the mid-C15th there was a (foot ?) bridge at Duddeston ford, but if the 1760 map is to be relied upon there was then no road on the line of Duddeston Mill and Adderley Roads. Indeed the absence of roads in southwest Saltley - Saltley Hall and Garrison Farms -is remarkable.

Map 32 shows that the ancient road pattern was as much influenced by geology as were the sitings of settle-ments and fields. With very few exceptions the lanes stay on drift deposits: none cross the Rea/Tame con-fluence meadows, and indeed there are none between Saltley ford and Bromford. It may be assumed that at those two places gravel in the riverbed provided wide but shallow and firm footing - though where a crossing-place was needed it had to be used despite its shortcomings. Rotyford (slimy ford) on the Cole tells its own story ! The river terraces were enclosed for pasture, but no lanes are found to give access to them. Tracks of a sort there must have been, thereabout and in the Saltley demesne, along some of Tomlinson's hedgelines linking Garrison and Saltley Hall. When the railway bank was raised in 1837, the bridge provided access over the track now called Adderley Road South.

In the north of Little Bromwich only Drews Lane (not properly defined) and the ominously named Black Pit Lane descend to the clay. This is St. Margaret's Avenue today, but the old name survived to the C20th. It is notable how Green Lane (Belchers Lane North) runs along a southward extension of the drift. Only Bulls Wood Lane (Belchers Lane South), (Cherry) Wood Lane and the Fordrough (Lane) cut across the clay into Bordesley.

Washwood Heath Road (Lane) was made up only in and after 1759, when it was taken directly across Wash Brook. Formerly that crossing of a wedge of marl had been so difficult that the road was little used: it is shown as a 'greenway' across the heath. It left Alum Rock Road just to the east of the ford over Gate Brook. Bordesley Green (Lane) and New Bridge Lane (Yardley Green Road) struck across the clay from the west: but the former petered out beyond Green Lane - it did not reach the Cole until 1914 ! - and the latter was a notoriously bad road, a wide strip of morass in wet weather, leading to a slippery ford. This had had a footbridge from the C15th - when it had not been swept away by floods - but no wain bridge. When a way to Coventry from Birmingham was to be improved and turnpiked in 1745, New Bridge Lane was rejected. William Hutton the historian had harsh words to say of all the turnpikes from the town: of that to Castle Bromwich he wrote that 'every flood annoys the traveller', and he was probably referring to both the Rea and Wash Brook. The new bridge which gave the lane its name was rebuilt in 1810.

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