Birmingham In 1775

From the beginning Will found it a lot easier to adjust to life in the town than his parents did. He found life in the town interesting and even exciting, and very often on a Sunday, the only day in the week when he did not work, he would explore this fascinating and fast-growing town.

Temple Row, seen from Colmore Row

Will only had to walk for about a minute up New Street, away from the markets, before the crowded, dark alleys like the one where he lived stopped completely. The top of New Street and Colmore Row was a park lined on all sides with trees. Will liked to see these trees because they reminded him of the countryside. It was here, on the slightly higher ground, that Will could see the houses of the rich.

These houses were not crammed together like those in Needless Alley, nor were they small. Many of them were obviously owned by people with a lot of money, and from what Will had heard people saying, such people as doctors and lawyers lived there. Will would sometimes see them coming out of their houses and being driven away in carriages.

All of these houses had very big gardens and orchards and beautiful views over the countryside to the north and west of the town, for in 1775 the town of Birmingham ended at these houses. A little further to the west, around the edge of the town, Will was able to see the Birmingham Canal and a wharf that had just been built for unloading the barges.

He liked to wander around this area, for here in the low-lying part there was always a bustle of activity. It was fast becoming the industrial area of the town. Besides, the barges were fascinating, and he had never seen one of these boats until he had come to Birmingham.

Canal Offices

The canals were to bring great wealth to Birmingham because they provided easy and cheap transport for all sorts of goods over long distances at a time when even main roads were little more than country lanes, and in winter were almost closed due to poor condition.

Near here there were some allotments, or 'guinea gardens' as they were called. Will often wished that his father could afford the guinea (about £1 - then) to rent one of these each year, but it was far too much money for the Knight family to afford - like £ 500 today. John Knight could have grown a few vegetables in this garden, and it would have been nice to taste such things as cabbages and beans again. As Will dreamed of this he was not to know that within a few years all these allotments would have disappeared, swallowed up by new buildings.

Old Windmill at Holloway Head

Will enjoyed watching the sails of the nearby windmill at Holloway Head turning in the breeze as they ground corn from the nearby fields into flour to make bread. Holloway Head was a peculiar, deep cutting through a hill, on the edge of Birmingham : with the passage of time many hundreds of feet had trodden a path many metres deep (thus a hollow way) into the earth. It was only wide enough for one person to get through at a time, and when it rained hard it became very muddy and slippery. Old folk in the town were always grumbling and saying that a rail should be built to hold on to, for several people had fallen and hurt themselves very badly.

Sometimes Will would walk down through these streets to the far side of the town where he could see the old moat and the manor house. He had once been told by an old woman that there had been a castle there, built, she had said, some six hundred years earlier. Will sometimes let his imagination run riot and pretend that there was still a castle and knights there, but it was very difficult to do this.

The castle had been knocked down long ago, and a manor house had been built inside the moat - and now even this manor house was used as a workshop ! The River Rea, the one that Will had first seen sparkling in the snow that March morning when they move to Birmingham, ran near to the moat.