1563 Sir Edward Digby of Sheldon

I own both halves of Sheldon, but this manor is small compared with my other estates in Coleshill and Kingshurst. My home is Coleshill Hall, once the stronghold of the de Montfords, a great moated house beside the Cole. I have had Sheldon Hall rebuilt as a home for my son : it is now a fine brick mansion with tall ornamental chimneys outside, built alongside the old hall which was still in use (but since pulled down) and covers part of the moat.

Brick and tiles are very fashionable for building nowadays, while timber becomes more scarce and expensive. Most of Sheldon's woodland is cleared now : wood and charcoal fetch high prices in Birmingham for the furnaces. But there is abundant clay in the manor, and a pit near the hall keeps several kilns busy all the time near the inn at the cross-roads which have gained the name Tile Cross.

West Hall disappeared a hundred years ago. When its last owners moved elsewhere, most of the stone and timber were taken to build the tower of St. Giles's church and other houses. Only the moat is left to remind the passer-by of the once-great house that stood within it, and it is called Kemps Moat after John and Marion Kemp who were the last people to live within it. I have made the demesne land of West Hall into a deer park, strongly fenced, and so I can hunt whenever I am in the district, only my gatekeepers live in it. Anyone caught poaching is very severely punished.

In the old village Mackington, only a few houses remain. Most of my tenants now live on small farms scattered about the manor or in Sheldon village. The great fields are still worked in strips, but some tenants have been able to exchange with others or take up vacant holdings so that most of their land is now in one piece.

I sometimes had trouble with getting my own land cultivated, when plague killed off many tenants for instance, or some of them left the manor to work in Birmingham : so much of my demesne land is now put down to grass, and I grow wool instead of wheat - sheep are much more profitable than crops. But I haven't done what other lords have done, which is to turn over their whole manor into a sheep-walk, turning out the tenants and destroying their homes to maximise grass growing.