Kings Norton (Worcs.)

Norton became royal when William I annexed it, and so stayed until John Taylor bought the lordship in 1804. It was a separate manor from Bromsgrove, its parent manor, from C12 th., but they had a common Court Leet at Lickey and were granted to queens and royal favourites together until Bromsgrove was sold to the Earl of Warwick in 1564. Kings Norton covered 11,726 acres and was 34 miles in perimeter. It had five Tax Yields, admin. divisions - Lee, Rednall, Headley, Moundsley, Moseley. In 1274 part of it, now Solihull Lodge, was granted to the Odingsells. Boundaries were Highgate-Belgrave Roads, Sparkbrook, Billesley Lane, 'cross on Highters Heath' where the woods of three manors met, the Cole to Birch Acre, Weatheroak, Forhill, Blackgraves, Cole to source, Red Hill, Cofton Common, Rubery. Balsall Heath and Moseley, Monyhull, Kings Heath, Moor Green, Cotteridge, Stirchley included in city, Headley Yield and Wythall excluded. Norton Village on knoll above woodland and marshy Rea valley. St. Nicholas' Church, chapel of Bromsgrove, C14th., tower and spire C15th.. Prosperous wool-staplers' houses formerly about green, royal manor house survives. Tudor school in churchyard. Manor was once much wooded, with stony heaths on ridges. Little is known of field systems. There were still 3000 acres of waste in 1650, and 2055 acres remained to be enclosed in 1774. The Bromsgrove Turnpike by-passed both Norton and Northfield: the Alcester Turnpike followed the Rea-Cole interfluve to Inkford. Not until c.1830 when the Pershore Turnpike was made, did Norton Village have a highway nearby. C19th. development on Stirchley Street was connected with the Rea water-mills. Most of the manor was wholly rural until the railways brought population to Kings Heath and Cotteridge.

Moseley. This grand-daughter colony of Bromsgrove had its own field system, meadows, waste, and fishponds. The fields lay between Alcester and Church Roads. St. Mary's Church, a chapelry of Bromsgrove, was built in the early C15th Its tower was begun in 1496: this is the only old part left. The Grevises lived in an old house on the edge of the small green until they grew rich by acquiring church lands and built a new Hall in a park. This was burnt in the 1791 Riots, and the first block of the present Hall was built four years later. The Grevis fortunes had steadily declined and Henshaw, last of the line, sold the Hall and estates, including the lordship of Yardley, to John Taylor in 1766. Moseley had its own officials of Court and Vestry: it stayed small until the C19th when development spread along the Turnpike from Highgate. From mid-century it was a fashionable suburb of mansions and terraces.