Boundaries

12.1. Map 5

We have no information about how and when the territorial bounds of neighbour communities were established. Agreement was probably reached without bloodshed as there was no shortage of land, but serious disputes might be taken to the Hun-dred Court, the local arbitration and peace-keeping body. Birmingham and Edgbaston belonged to Coleshill Hundred in 799, perhaps much earlier : its jurisdiction covered the northern third of what became Warwickshire.

Water-meadows were greatly prized because their long grass provided summer graz-ing and winter hay for the few beasts that were kept alive. Birmingham owned both banks of the Rea but for 1½ miles only, a narrow front for a manor which stretched westward across woodland and heath for 3½ miles. Towards the west end of both manors, Edgbaston claimed the Rotton Park Brook for the first half-mile of its course. Elsewhere boundaries followed the centre of streams, those convenient and indisputable (if sometimes shifting) frontiers : of Birmingham's 12 miles of border 8 were defined by water, and of Edgbaston's 10 miles only 3 were not along streams.

From the Rea the line of a lost rill 'Bell Barn Brook' was continued almost in a straight line for two miles north-north-west to Roach Pool. As no geographical features define it, this line must have been negotiated. The paths which became roads along it were trodden out by fishermen bound for the pool and by 'good men and true' making their annual perambulations of the bounds at Whitsun. The bound may have been first marked by a shallow ditch and bank or simply by blazed trees or posts - but not by a fence, for that would have hindered the movement of stock : local custom permitted cross-border grazing on commons, as long as the animals were not driven.

West from the pool the boundary went up Rotton Park Brook for three furlongs, then took a long double-curving course to Bearwood. This stretch is hard to explain topo-graphically, since it follows no known feature, natural or man-made. That part which crosses the school site was marked as 'undefined' on the first 0.S. Six-Inch Map of 1889, while field-boundaries of the C18th. ignore it entirely. But that may be explicable by their being enclosures on the Rotton Park Estate which extended across the border (see below). The manors long pre-date the Park, of course, so that their common frontier must once have been marked in some way.

At Bearwood the 3½ mile Birmingham-Edgbaston boundary ends. Therefrom Birmingham was separated from Smethwick by Shireland Brook, and from Handsworth and Aston by Hockley Brook, while Chad and Bourn Brooks, linked by Metchley Lane, di-vided Edgbaston from Harborne and Northfield.