Origins & Owners.

These neighbour districts of Birmingham have geographical unity, were always in the same ancient parish, had common ownership for more than four centuries, and came together into the Borough : a large part of both is now redeveloped as 'Nechells Green'. It is appropriate to study them in a single essay.

In surviving records Nechells is the older name : 'Echells' appears in a document of 1180. The name is said to mean 'separate estate', and as a property of the de Parles family (N)echells was certainly detached from their manor of Handsworth. Dodestone (Dudda' s Farm) is first recorded in 1204. Neither D. nor N. will be found in Doomsday Book : if they existed as small settlements in 1086, their statistics of ploughland and population would be included in the totals given for Estone, Aston Parish, which then covered 11,000 acres and was in single ownership.

Prior to the Conquest this large property belonged to the Earls of Mercia. It had been granted by William I to his liegeman Ansculf, with Dudley and other manors, including most of those now in the City of Birmingham : and had des-cended to his son, William fitz-Ansculf, by the time of the Doomsday compilation. Aston was unusual in still having a Saxon tenant, Godmund, when most manors had gone to Norman followers of the Conqueror's commanders.

The de Erdington family held Aston until 1272. Simon del Holte bought Nechells in 1331, and John atte Holte bought Duddeston in 1365, going to live in the manor house there. Two years later Aston Manor was also his, and the long possession of these estates, four hundred-odd years and fourteen generations, had begun. In 1438 John Holte owned four houses and 400 acres of ploughland in D. and Bordesley, but others were then styling themselves 'lords of Duddeston'.

The hamlet of D. was said to be part of Bordesley Manor in 1386, and in 1563 Edward Arden claimed the lordship of both. In the latter year Edward Holte, whose family had by then lived on the demesne and held a good part of D. for two centuries, succeeded in his claim to be lord of the manor. Thomas Holte became the first baronet, and moved to the great mansion he had built, Aston Hall, in 1638. The last baronet was Sir Charles Holte, who succeeded his childless brother Lister. Charles had only a daughter, Mary, who married Abraham Bracebridge of Atherstone. When Sir Charles died in 1782 the Holte succession ended. An old bachelor, Heneage Legge inherited the estate : by 1833 D. and N. were in multiple ownership.