Domesday Machitone.

Dial shows 877 years ago. Heath around still, but clearing and rough ploughing begun. Garretts Green Lane has appeared, a rutted track. Children skirt Elder Field, women harvesting with scythe and sickle, children gleaning. Machiton being visited by Conqueror's surveyors. Still inside defences, but ditch full of rubbish, fence falling down. Houses larger, but little better, Alnod's house the usual Hall, but with outbuildings. Alnod lucky to keep manor : his master, Turchil, was Earl of Warwick, who had not fought against William, so kept title and lands for the present.

Alnod owed military service to Turchil, and the villeins of Machitone owed him week-work on his strips and extra work at sowing and harvest. His Reeve was watching them now on Rye-Eddish Field. 14 houses around trampled green, about 60 people. Four lanes led from village: to Yardley, Coleshill, Odingsell Hall (Hobs Moat), and to the spring. Of manor's 3 ½ square miles surveyors were noting that only ¼ was cultivated, all in the north. But Machitone was prosperous and growing - it had doubled in value in 20 years, now worth twice the place called Bremingehame five miles away. Talk of sending younger sons, landless, to start village in south - all usable land in north needed by present tenants for pasture.

Woodland was 1.5 miles long by .75 miles wide, still home to wolf and bear. To reach south of the manor, surveyors, taking our pair on pillions, had to cross Platt Brook, easy now but not in winter, and follow the south side of the peaty valley - track above flood level, later the Radleys. Thence a woodland track led south to meadows of a (Kingshurst) brook, where a few herdsmen's huts were seen. Surveyors went south, children stayed. Later led through wood to new Ashole Field, not yet cleared, ringed trees dying, undergrowth burnt off - and along lane to Machitone (?) in Cockshutt Field.