John Leyland's Itinerary from Kings Norton to Sutton Coldfield
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John Leyland travelled through England collecting illuminated books from the monastery libraries as they were closed down on the orders of King Henry VIII. He did the job for 6 years and as he went he kept a detailed note of what he saw. He gives a picture of Birmingham and its districts as it was, but REMEMBER he was only passing quickly through and like any visitor to anything he would not have time to see everything. There were probably only about 1500 people here then and at Sheldon only 240. (Think of the number in our school.) 'Northeton is a pretty uplandish town and there be some fair houses
in it of staplers that...buy wool'. Fortunes had been built on wool
: whole manors had been depopulated and turned into sheepwalks. 'Good plenty of wood and pasture and meetly good corn betwixt Northeton and Bremischam that be distant from each other 5 miles.' Leyland probably rode to Birmingham by way of the old Roman road Ryknild Street, passing the hamlet of Streetly. This was later corrupted to Strutley and Stirchley : its meaning is 'clearing settlement on the Roman road'. Having forded the River Rea, Leyland went north through Moseley. Though the roads he travelled were atrocious, miry swaths and holloways, he was so used to them as to think them unworthy of record. Roads were dangerous places because in winter people could drown in puddles. At Kemp's (later Camp) Hill his road, which had joined that from Stratford and Warwick, met the highway from Coventry. The wear of feet, hooves, and wheels had worn the unmade surface into a gorge sixty feet deep. All roads led to Birmingham and its stone bridge across the marshy Rea valley, for there at its market surplus produce could be sold and necessities bought. The town was well-placed as an exchange point for the iron of the 'Black Hills' and the products of Arden and Avon using local wood for furnaces from the forests such as those around Sheldon. 'I came through a pretty street or ever I entered into Bremischam town. This street as I remember is called Dirtey and there I saw a timbered mansion' (later the Crown Inn). This was Deritend, possibly Derry-yate-end, the end of the low road. 'In it dwell smiths and cutlers. Dyrtey is but a hamlet and is clean separated from Bremischam parish. There is a brook that divideth this street from Bremischam. As I went through the ford by the bridge, the water ran down on the right hand and a few miles lower goeth into Tame. Except in flood the two bridges across Rea branches were chained up to prevent wear. This brook above Dyrtey breaketh into two arms that a little below the bridge close again'. Two great bridges of stone were maintained by the Guild of the Holy Cross, but after its dissolution they were allowed to fall into ruin despite their importance to the town. 'The beauty of Bremischam is one street going up along....up a little hill by the length of a quarter of a mile'. This street had several names - Digbeth (perhaps dyke-path), Cock or Well Street, Corn Cheaping, High Street (English and Welsh Beast Markets), and Dale End. A dozen highways funnelled into the street : the growing population, about 1500, was spreading out along nine of them away from the green. 'The lower part of the town lieth very waterish', which was true after rain on the Lickey Hills. Leyland made no reference to the twelve tanyards beside the river, though even his insensitive Tudor nose must have been aware of their stink, nor did he refer to the two watermills and the manor-house he passed by near Digbeth. The mills were powered by the side-streams and a long leat from the Rea. The moated and sandstone-walled home of the de Birmingham family was ruined and unwanted. The unfortunate Edward, last of a line which had held the manor for nearly four centuries, died soon after Leyland's visit following a sentence to the Tower. 'I saw but one parish church in the town'. St. Martin's tower and 'high spire steeple' reared up behind the churchyard. Just above the church was the only clear space on the cluttered green : there, in Corn Cheaping, a ring of iron was set in the ground, to which bulls were tied for baiting by dogs before slaughter. A line of butcher's shops called the Shambles, and the stone High Cross, left too little room for market stalls and traffic. 'There be many smiths in the town that make knives and all manner of cutting tools, and many lorimers that make bitts, and a great many nailers. So that a great part of the town is maintained by smiths. They have their iron and sea-coal out of Staffordshire'. There were open-fronted smithies and workshops all up Digbeth and Cock Street. 'Sea-coal' was so called to distinguish it from the usual fuel for smelting and smithing, charcoal and come from partial burning of trees. Leyland wrote nothing more about Birmingham, so we must look elsewhere for information about the former Guild Hall in New Street and the almshouses alongside, about the newly-closed Priory and Hospital of St. Thomas and the free chapel of St. Mary - these were set back between Bull Street and Dale End. The Hall became King Edward VI School and lasted for nearly two centuries longer, but of the Priory and Chapel only foundations long survived. 'A mile beyond Bremischam I passed over Sharford Bridge of four arches of stone. Tame River goeth under this bridge.' The ancient crossing of the Tame channels was originally Scrafford, the ford by the caves; nearby in the sandstone cliff were the Dwarfholes, prehistoric cave-dwellings.
1553 Survey of Manor for Crown. Population 1500 1555 Thomas Marrow of Berkswell purchased Manor of Birmingham. 1618 Aston Hall begun (Holte family). |
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