Geology & Vegetation

Covering nearly the whole area of Map 1 are layers of drift material about 50 feet in thickness, overlying Upper Mottled Sandstone layers twice as thick, which in turn overlay pebble beds. We are not concerned with the complex geomorphic events which produced these deposits, but only with their effects on the form, cover, and later use of the land. The drift is not uniform, being a variable mixture of gravel, larger stones, clay, and sand, whose natural cover would vary between the extremes of fairly dense woodland and barren heath, depending on the relative stoniness of the soil.

4.1. Map 2

Most of the surface material would dry out too readily to permit growth of the mighty oaks and impenetrable undergrowth of the Arden claylands to the south; a few clumps of large trees, many lesser ones and bushes, gorse, and tussocky grass would produce a landscape much like parts of Sutton Park today. Here and there great boulders lay partly embedded in the topsoil. Examples of these ice-borne 'erratics' can be seen in the grounds of Birmingham University and in Warstone Lane Cemetery; the War (hoar) Stone was used, its name tells us, as a boundary maker in early times.

Physically our district is a minor watershed between streams flowing north-east to the Tame and south-east to the Rea. Regionally it lies within the Tame-Blythe drainage system of the Birmingham Plateau, and only three miles east of the Severn--Trent watershed formed by the Plateau's western ramparts, the Rowley-Lickey Hills Ridge. A dozen rills have or had their sources within a mile radius of the school but no larger water-course crosses the area. It is therefore a terrain of very gentle relief. The general dip of the land is eastward, but water erosion has created shallow valleys going north-east and south-east.

Of the streams which have lightly grooved the district, few have names which sur-vive, and some do not survive themselves. Their courses are still defined by dips in modern streets, however. Attention to such tiny rivulets may seem pointless, yet all those referred to below (given convenient location names where others are lack-ing) have had some significance in our story. Shireland Brook formerly rose south-west of the Bear Inn, and still flows north-easterly to join Hockley Brook.

A tri-butary 'Portland Brook' rose in Averys' playing field and flowed north-north-east, while 'Shenstone Brook' ran parallel to Shenstone Road from its source in the allot-ments east of City Road. A spring at the east side of our schools' playing field was one of two sources of Rotton Park Brook, which flowed east and north-east; joined by two other rills in what is now the middle of Edgbaston Reservoir, it then (as Ladywood Brook) flowed north-east to Hockley Brook. South of Hagley Road the ground slopes down to Chad Brook (whose source was originally just south of the Bear Inn) and its tributaries, which flow south-east to the River Rea.

All these streams would have a variable flow, and were probably dry after long spells without rain. Their valleys, shallow though they are, still seem much too large to have been caused by the present or recent watercourses, and they are in fact legacies of those torrents of melt-water which surged down from dwindling gla-ciers at the end of the last Ice Age, as are the drift layers.