Watermills

The watermills of the Cole and its tributaries are dealt with in "Watermills of the Cole and Blythe Valleys". Sarehole Mill has its own history / guidebook.

Swanshurst Quarter has had three Cole mills and one on a side-stream. Two others were fed by the brooks on the south bound but were sited in Solihull. Of all these only Sarehole survives; of nearly sixty mills once to be found within the borders of Birmingham (1974 additions) very few buildings still stand, and of these Sarehole is the only one to have restored waterwheels. They do little practical work, but shake the building quite considerably.

Greet Mill is known to have been in existence from at latest 1261 until about 1840, with at least one rebuilding. It was the manorial mill of Greet, whose manor house was three-quarters of a mile downstream. Greet's open fields lay over Sparkhill, fairly near the mill but separated from it by the boggy valley of Showell Green Brook.

The chosen millsite was at a small break of slope, a minor waterfall on the Cole, which could be weired to create a good 'head' of water. When this had been done, with a bank of clay and stone, there would usually be a shallows below, and this combined with the gravelly riverbed (the gravel still piles up and creates an island above the modern bridge and must be removed periodically) made Greet Mill a favoured fording-place, whether or not it had been so originally. Little is known if its early history.

Always a grist-mill, it also used waterpower for blade-grinding, sub-contracting during the Civil War and later for army and company suppliers. In 1775 Greet was advertised as a new-erected Corn Mill with regular supply of water, adjacent to the turnpike road; and estate of 75 acres was attached, for milling was not a full-time occupation in this pastoral region. Supply was directly from the Cole; the new mill was built over a brick culvert which lay between the river, falling over a weir on the west side, and a side-race for flood-water which rejoined the Cole 200 yards north of the turnpike - that is, too far downstream for the excess water to back up and 'tail' the wheels.

The ponded Cole, a pool of about three acres surface area, stretched upstream nearly to Green Road ford; that was a right of way which could not be drowned, so the pool's size was restricted - and much water went to waste down the side-race. In drought the reserve was insufficient, and it was not replenished until upstream mills had refilled their pools by diverting the river into them; Greet received water from these only when they were working.

After being engaged in steel-rolling during its last years, Greet Mill was out of use in 1843. Economic or other factors may have contributed to its closure, including the availability of steam power at sites much nearer the sources of iron, but lack of water was probably the main reason. By '68 the pool had fallen below the top of the weir, the river wound through a bog to find its way down the side-race, and the mill buildings had been demolished.

Rubble filled the dry culvert, nettled silt covered the site, and the mill was quite forgotten - though the name Greetmill Hill (Shaftmoor Lane) outlasted it - until excavation of a new central channel for the Cole in 1913 disclosed the culvert. Long-buried brickworks from the mill buildings went to fill the old channels, along with material from the two humped bridges, and a wide two-arched bridge was given a stone balustrade to show Birmingham's intention to do its new territories proud.

Next in age was probably Sarehole Mill, property of Maxstoke Priory before the Dissolution.

After rebuilding in 1542 it still received water only from Bully (Coldbath) Brook. In 1768 a half-mile was cut from the 'whirl-hole' on the Cole to the small pond. Three years later a rebuilt mill was advertised for letting; this was the building we see today, built against the pool dam, though it then lacked barn, engine house, and chimney.

Like Greet, this was a speculative venture by one Richard Eaves, who saw that there was a lack of waterpower in Birmingham for corn-milling, because the streams there were over-used for industry, and hoped to fill the gap with his Cole mills, despite their distance from the town. The expenditure bankrupted him, and others gained the benefit. About 1840 the forge at the south end, beyond the overshot wheel, was converted into a cottage, the barn was added, and a steam engine installed to give extra power. Sarehole has two 12-foot diameter wheels, both now restored, a wide breast wheel for corn-milling and a narrower overshot wheel which powered blade-grinding and boring machinery.

This had ceased work by 1873, but corn-grinding continued until 1919. Forty years later the son of the last miller, George Andrew, died and the neglected property passed to the City. Vandals came close to destroying the unguarded buildings, but thanks to the efforts of many people the mill was restored and opened as a branch museum (1969). The workshop has since been restored. The Cole leat, largely infilled, is traceable in The Dingle; sluices can be seen at Four Arches Bridge and at Coldbath Road corner.

In 1783 the finest millpool now in the city was constructed in the Coleside meadows at the confluence with Chinn Brook. Titterford Mill does not appear in record before the advertisement in Aris's Gazette of a new mill with two waterwheels, four pairs of stones, and garners for 2000 bags of wheat. A leat from the Chinn came down to a small pond whose main supply was by leat from the 7.5 acre pool beside the Cole. Only 6 hp was provided thereby, and in the mid-C 19th a 20 hp steam-engine was installed to work steel-rolling machinery brought from Sarehole. This was to continue producing pen-nibs until a fire in the 'twenties destroyed the mill. The house and extensive farm buildings survived until Trittiford Road was made across the site a few years later. Diversion of the Chinn into a long tail-race to avoid 'tailing' the wheels is still to be seen in the Dingle.

Titterford Mill's long head-race leaves the Cole just to the south of Slade Lane, only a few yards north of the spot where the tail-race of Colebrook Priory Mill enters it. It seems odd that the head-race should start above the ford instead of just below it, since this made necessary the provision of a bridge over it for Slade Road; there must have been a good reason, and it may be that the ford gravel acted as a natural weir to divert water into the race.

A removable plain weir nowadays performs this function when required. Bach Mill was in existence when the boundary presentment was written in 1495; it may have been associated with the pre-Dissolution priory nearby. Mill, priory, and the later tower windmill were all on the Solihull side of the border. It was called Bates Mill in 1609. Originally a corn mill, it may have converted to needle-grinding in 1843, a few years after its rebuilding in brick. Water came to it by Cole leat into a small pond.

The millpool, Bampton's Pool (Brompton Pool is a map mistake), whose dam takes Priory Road across the brook valley, was originally a fishpond, but it must also have provided water for the mill at times. After World War I both wind and water mill were out of use, replaced by Shirley roller-mill. The open wheel-chamber was visible on the millside until the building was demolished a few years ago. Across Cole on Shirley Brook there was a mill which had apparently gone out of use before the Beighton map 1725. That showed a pool (with the legend 'Old Mill'), which is still traceable between Watwood and Geoffrey Roads.

On Coldbath Brook from at latest the C 15th there was a mill called Lady Mill, probably because its revenue went to support St. Mary's Church in Moseley from about 1500, but earlier called Greethurst Mill. The site was below Coldbath Pool; Stoney Lane (Yardley Wood Road) lay along the millpool's dam, whose dry bed survived in part the raising of the road in 1924 until the making of Linkswood Close a few years ago.

There are still prefabs on the site of mill and house, which stood either side of the brook, now culverted, until about 1830, but former sheltering trees survive. Having converted to wire-drawing the mill was replaced as a corn-grindery by a timber post-mill at a corner of the ancient earthwork. This was called Wake Green Mill, and David Cox drew it in ruin. On Yates's map of 1789 a postal is shown on Yardley Wood Common, in what is now a schools' playing field, but this may be an incorrect siting of the tower mill.