Watermills

33.1. Map 10

Until James Watt perfected his rotative steam engine (1782-8) there were only two sources of power available to industry other than the labour of men and beasts. These were the fitful wind, which Hutton employed in his Birchfield paper mill (1759), and running water. Small and variable though the Plateau streams were, they powered perhaps 100 watermills at the time of greatest use, the end of the C18th. More than half of these lay within the bounds of the City of Birmingham. There were seven millsites beside Hockley Brook, water descending by leat from one pool to the next, all on the Handsworth and Aston bank except Thimble and Benton's Mills in Duddeston. Aston Furnace, which used water to work its bellows, was at work in 1615.

Soho Pool and a small metal-rolling mill were built by Ruston and Eaves in 1757 : Boulton leased both two years later. Hammer mills needed plentiful water, so were sited on the Tame, but blade-grinding and barrel-boring were suitable activities on our brooks. The Edgbaston mills, of which the first was recorded in 1231, were engaged in these. Early mills, built by manorial lords, were all used to grind corn, but many were later adapted to industrial functions. When this happened, a windmill might be built nearby to carry on corn-grinding, as at Speedwell Mill on the Rea. The only Chad Brook mills were Over Mill below the Great Pool, and Pebble Mill near the confluence with Bourn Brook, from which the latter also took water. Nearest mills to our district were Thimble and Bearwood Mills, on upper tributaries of Hockley Brook.

Very few traces of the watermills can be seen today : leats have been infill-ed, pools drained, buildings demolished. Over Mill is a ruin, but the great well of its 15-foot wheel can be seen at the outlet of its pond, the depression of Pebble Mill Pool is now occupied by the BBC Centre and the mills' site by the Na-tural History Museum. The farmhouse in Victorian Tudor style that stood beside Averns Mill survives in the Tally-Ho ! grounds. Harborne Mill has been converted : its rounded end and open wheel-chamber can be seen beside the filling-station that has replaced the millpond. Thimble Mill Pool remains as an amenity. Soho and Hockley Great Pools were drained more than a century ago, and nothing is left but a few street-names to remind us of the Hockley Brook and Rea mills. All fell victims long since to that industrial progress of which they were once in the vanguard.