Medieval Land Use

No plan can be drawn of the Norman manors, but for the Middle Ages it is possible to make a provisional map.

18.1. Map 7

Birmingham is perhaps most readily described as being a series of strips parallel to the Rea and bounded by lanes. Beside the ri-ver were the lushest water-meadows; then the best arable on the valley side. These formed the demesne, and within it lay the small manor house, half-timbered with a large moat. A little further up the slope was a sandstone church at the foot of a triangular green edged by wood-and-thatch cottages.

Park and Edgbaston Streets bounded the demesne, and west therefrom common land originally extended right to the manor boundaries : a woodland strip occupied the ridge between the Priory and Newhall Brooks. Open fields lay between demesne and wood, and were pushed west-ward at the latter's expense, especially after a large tract of cleared land near the village had been given to the Priory of St. Thomas. The ridgeway which became Monument Road and Icknield Street was perhaps the west bounding track of the open fields. Beyond were the high moors of Birmingham Heath (first ref. 1232) and Rotton Park. (See below).

Edgbaston had its wide meadows with arable above. Chad Brook ran down through the demesne, which occupied the south-east corner defined by Rea and Bournbrook. The rest of south Edgbaston was the hunting preserve called Metchley Park, and Rotton Park extended into the manor as far south as Sandon and Hagley Roads. The wedge between was where woodland survived longest. The remaining quarter was pro-bably shared by a number of severalty farms : only Church and Moreish Fields near church and hall suggest that there had once been communal agriculture.

The C12th and l3th were times of population growth and expansion, when new farms and hamlets were being established in the waste, well away from parent villages and manor lords. Yet we find little evidence of this general trend in our two manors. Even 500 years later the only grouping of houses that could be called a hamlet in Edgbaston was at Good Knaves' End, on Chad Hill. Had there ever been a village near the Hall ? When Middlemores succeeded de Edgbastons and made Great Pool on Chad Brook, did they move the peasants out of the demesne, creating a park for their exclusive use - or did plague depopulate a village which was then abandoned ?

Wynesdon Green appears in a document of 1327. Georgian maps show it as a rectangular close on the Heath bordered by a few houses. This, and a similar cluster about the manor pound at Hockley, were Birmingham's only colonies, which began as rough shelters, 'day-houses', for herdsmen, and never had their own fields. Folk who moved permanently from the 'Borough' of Birmingham into the 'Foreign' lost their market rights, which discouraged assarting : also, the Heath was poor agricultural land, offering less reward than meat and wool, manufacture and trade, which were the townsfolk's sources of income.

The name 'Rotton' was first recorded in 1275 : it seems to mean something like 'cheerful farm'. 'Rotton Fields' were much later placed east of Warstone Lane. Neither helps to explain the name of the Park. The long-lasting family which sty-led itself 'de Birmingham' established both Metchley Park in Edgbaston, presumably bought or inherited, and 'parc de Rotton juxta Birmingham', first documented in 1307. The exact bounds have not yet been established, but they were probably Shireland Brook and Dudley, Ladywood, Hagley, and Sandon Roads. It seems likely that the roads were already in existence as rough tracks which formed convenient bounds, rather than that they developed from paths made beside the enclosing ditch and palisaded bank.

The Park Lodge, which might have been an early assart in the waste and the source of the name, stood on a slight eminence from which the whole Park could be seen. Its site was at the present crossing of Gillott and Rotton Park Roads. Tracks came to it from Roach Pool nearby, and from the highways to north and south. One from near the Sandon Road junction crossed what is now our schools' playing field.

The Park was always part of the lord's demesne, though a mile away from Holme and Little Parks beside the Rea. Perhaps there were deer within it when it was fenced : some were still to be seen and shot in the early C16, for Edward de Birmingham expressly reserved for himself the right to hunt them. The date of Roach (Roch) Pool is not known, but it was probably made quite early by building a dam below the boggy confluence of three brooks. It served as a fishpond, a lure for game, and a watering-place for stock. Other pools were made in Park and heath, like that on 'Portland Brook', whose hollow is still visible in Bernard Road Playing Field, and the three small ponds on Rotton Park Brook (Gillott-Holly Roads). The drying up of the small streams in summer made the pools necessary on stock-farms. In 1425 'a park, warren, and ten cottages' were listed among the lord's possessions hereabout : they included Rotton Park, the unenclosed heath, and probably the two hamlets at Winson Green and Hockley.

No history of the Park has been written, though P.B. Chatwin wrote an article about it (B'ham Archaeological Society Transactions 45, 46). To the present writer he seems to be in error, for he claims that the whole of Birmingham Heath was in the Park. No documentary evidence is offered for this, which seems to be based on the existence of a lodge on Lodge Read (hence the name), just east of the canal bridge, on the highest point thereabout. But this was most probably the home of the Keeper of the lord's warren, a number of artificial sandy mounds wherein rabbits were bred and trapped in pitfalls. If the whole Heath had been enclosed for hunting, then something very odd happened when the Park was 'disemparked' in or before 1553 : although the land south of Dudley Road was cut up into small crofts and let out, the area north of it was made common !

It is hard to believe that the then owner of Birmingham Manor, John Dudley Duke of Northumberland would thus give away land so recently acquired : and there is no doubt that the heath was still common until 1800. It is much easier to believe that the manor lords had claimed the right to hunt over the Heath as long as there was anything to hunt, but had not deprived the peasantry of this last infertile piece of common where fuel could be gathered and stock poorly fed.