| By the early Middle Ages there were a few herdsmen's cots at a place
called Wyneaden (first reference to Winson Green, 1327). By then the
de Birminghams (who held their manor for nearly four centuries) had
reserved as their hunting ground a large part of the western common.
Rotton Park was enclosed from Dudley Road to Smethwick Lane (Sandon
Road) in Edgbaston, Ladywood Brook probably being its east bound :
it covered about 850 acres, 100 of them in Edgbaston. Enclosures by
richer tenants beyond the open fields of Birmingham ultimately reached
the dwindling woods, so that the poorer folk were left with only the
infertile Heath (first ref. 1232) for their pasture.
Ladywood (no record until 1565, when it had gone) was probably
so called because income from it went to St. Mary's Chapel, the
church of St. Thomas's Priory in Bull Street. Warstone Wood was
already cleared and called a pasture in a survey : its name derives
from an erratic boulder used as a boundary (hoar) stone, now a plinth
in Warstone Lane Cemetery. During the Middle Ages a number of pools
were made on Birmingham's small streams : the largest was Hockley
Great Pool (about 20 acres water surface). Ladywood Brook had four,
of which Little Hockley Pool, about 10 acres, was largest. Sir Thomas
de Birmingham inherited the manor from his brother John in 1390,
but could not gain possession of the manor house until the death
of John's widow. So he built a 'castle' at 'Warstone near the Sandpits',
of which the square moat was still traceable in 1780.
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