Why Birminghgam Grew

This is not even an outline history of Birmingham, and the reasons for the town's phenomenal growth despite lack of raw materials, sources of power, and good communications must be disposed of in a paragraph. Its position on an unavoidable ford, which brought highways to it from all directions. and early bridges : its regional location, making it a focus for the timber, hides, wool, meat, and iron, salt, dairy produce and fruit of the central shires, and its early market and fairs charters (1150, 1251) : its healthy situation, high, dry, well-watered, its freedom from close control by its often absent lords, its non-restrictive Gild, its manor status : its early transfer from subsistence farming to profit-making pursuits, its concentration on articles of little bulk but skilled making, its adaptable workforce, its merchants' enterprise in seeking markets far afield : the relative nearness of iron and later of coal, and the comparative firmness of the terrain across which those supplies had to be brought on packhorse-back : all these factors help to explain why Birmingham was third in local importance to Coventry and Warwick in 1327, and why it makes its first appearance on a map of Britain three decades later.