Urbanisation

The spread of streets and buildings across west Birmingham and Edgbaston must now be looked at more closely. The first published map showing any detail was that of William Deeley : in 1701 he produced his plan of 'the Lordship of Edgbaston' to a scale of 4 inches to a mile. The area is given as 1703 acres, and it shows only the former Middlemore Estate, bounded by Sandon and Hagley Roads hereabout, completely enclosed in small crofts. Woodland patches are shown on the west side of Metchley Park ; at what is now the north end of Norfolk Road (Rook Wood) ; and between Hagley Road and Chad Brook west of Hermitage Road (Stump's Wood and Spring Coppice). The 'bridle way through Rotton Park' (later Stanmore Road) is shown leading from the Two-Mile Stump to the Lodge on Humph-rey Sparry's map of 1718. There are only 64 houses in Edgbaston.

John Snape's map of Birmingham in 1779, at 8 inches to a mile, shows a field pattern continuous across the Park. North of Dudley Turnpike the Heath is la-belled, and the 'Warren Lodge' is mapped with a track leading to it from Little Hockley Pool dam (Lodge Road east end). The central Heath lies open still, but encroachments press in from the west (Winson Green), north (Gib Heath) and east. Its bounds would today lie along Clissold, Pitsford, Icknield Streets, Lodge Road, line north-west to Hockley Brook, the brook to Benson Road, line west to Handsworth New Road, south to and along Winson Green Road, Dudley Road. The prison and asylum sites are an enclosed salient within this area. On the Turnpike the tollbar at the junction with Rotton Park Road is shown. Harborne is correctly shown as Birmingham's parish neighbour to the west of Shireland Brook, for Smethwick was not then enparished as north Harborne.

John Kempson's map for the Streets Commission, 8 inches to a mile, post-dates enclosure of the Heath. It shows Lodge Road complete, an improved enclosure road, and Benson, Bacchus, and Wellington Roads. Development thereabout was doubtless due to Soho Works across Hockley Brook. Soho Branch Canal, 1801, and its wharf off Park Road, are mapped : they had been made specifically for Soho Works, bringing access to the system as near as possible without expensive lockage down to the brookside site. As the map's chief purpose was to mark bounds and highways, it shows no tracks and few hedge-lines, except those touching or approaching the parish boundaries : there they match Snape's exactly. The west tip of Birmingham is occupied by Beaks Farm, whose tenant was Chas. Mottram.

Next to the east were closes in the tenancy of Widow Statham : these were part of Rotton Park Farm. The buildings of both farms were in Edgbaston, Beaks on Sandon Road (Smethwick Lane, Bear Lane) opposite Poplar Road, and Rotton Park Farm on City Road at Fountain Road corner. The Park Lodge was tenanted by Sam. Baker, whose farm extended along the border as far as the Ladywood Loop. The substantial buildings of the Lodge Farm would today lie in the area between Gillott, Rotton Park, and Wheatsheaf Roads. Birmingham Heath Farm looked across Dudley Turnpike at Bellefield House lying west of Winson Green Road.

The bounds of Rotton Park Farm were Shireland Brook, Selsey Road line to and across the border, and on the east side the line of Ravenshaw and Stanmore Roads. It will so often be found that modern roads follow or parallel ancient hedge-lines. The schools lie wholly within the confines of a farm that was certainly in existence two centuries ago and may have been established in the mid-C16th. The farm-house, latterly the estate bailiff's home, outlasted the Lodge, which was demolished early this century. It had lain in 10 acres of gardens, orchards and grass.

Kempson showed suburban development on Summer Hill, where Camden Street had been laid out across a moated site established by Thomas de Birmingham in 1300, half a dozen houses along Dudley Road, a few on Lodge Road, the Gooch residence Brookfields and Col. Vyse's Ladywood House. The latter was but a stone's cast from Pest Heath : this, a triangular close now occupied by Gamgee House, is right on the boundary.

It is the site of two great pits into which plague vic-tims were thrown during the C17th. At Gib Heath Murdoch's last home, Nineveh, was plotted, as were the buildings of Soho Works by the brook, with Boulton's house beyond. The western part of the parish was still 'Foreign' on Kempson's map. He called Brindley's cut 'Birmingham Old Canal', to distinguish it from the later Birmingham & Fazeley Canal. Two small detached suburbs were those on Summer Hill and Islington on glebe land east of Five Ways - which became six in 1810 when Calthorpe Road was made off Harborne Lane to provide a new thoroughfare into the Estate.