Birmingham & Edgbaston

11.1. Map 5

Despite their contiguity, these two communities developed in markedly diffe-rent ways. The initial difference show in their names may have contributed to this. Birmingham was a group settlement, perhaps including several households of related tribesmen. The first task after the erection of a circle of rough shelters and a linking fence as a stock corral was the clearing and ploughing of land for a first sowing. All helped in this and all shared the gain. Each man took his own portion which for convenience in ploughing was a long narrow piece, and as more land was cleared each year so each acquired more strips separated from his others.

Two great fields were fenced against animals, then three perhaps four or more as population grew : each field in turn lay fallow and grazed-over while the rest were under crop. But Edgbaston's name implies that it was a single farmer who first settled on a knoll overlooking a Rea tributary (Chad Brook). Others, per-haps his descendants, chose to strike out for themselves, making their own small enclosures of ploughland. Thus was established a pattern of separate farms without a nucleated village.

Church Field and Moreish (boggy) Field were named on an early C18th map near Edgbaston Hall, but these were only small crofts probably so named long after the term 'field' had lost its ancient meaning of communally-farmed land.