WHERE IS MOSELEY?

So that we shall know what is meant by 'Moseley' in this series, let us perambulate its bounds. Until last century, Moseley Tax Yield was one of five in the huge manor and civil parish of Kings Norton, and it included the heaths to north and south. Let us go back five centuries in time and walk the boundaries of the Yield in company with twelve jurors, meeting along the way men of neighbouring manors who will confirm with us our common borders. It is Rogationtide, just before Ascension Day.

Parting from the Northfield jurors at Bourn Brook (south end of Cannon Hill Park), we greet the Edgbastonians and walk with them northward along the meadows of the River Rea. Watercourses are indisputable boundary lines, but they have a habit of shifting at times and need to be watched. After a mile and a half down the valley, we see the parishioners of Bordesley, our northern neighbours, waiting on the east bank at a point where a rough track comes down beside a brook.

As we climb the hill with the Bordesleians, we are on the line of what will eventually become Belgrave and Highgate Roads. This straight track is the negotiated border between the counties of Warwick and Worcester, and it marks an even earlier tribal division. At Stoney Lane the jurors of Bordesley are replaced by those of Yardley, for that large manor is Norton's neighbour from Spark Brook to Highters Heath.

The brook is the common bound, and Stoney Lane going south beside it is in Norton. Near the source the border continues along 'the greenway', called Belle Walk and Billesley Lane in later times, along the edge of Kings Heath. We need to go no father south; the significance of 'Moseley in Yardley' will be made clear later.

In 1891 Balsall Heath, administratively separate from the rest of Kings Norton in some areas of local government for several decades, voted to become part of the City of Birmingham. Thereafter Moseley and Worcestershire had their northern boundary along Edgbaston Road and field-paths which zigzagged east from Alcester Road to Stoney Lane just south of the Barracks. Thus Chestnut, Woodstock, and Anderton Park Roads are in Moseley (the last down to Birchwood Crescent only), but the top end of Trafalgar Road (north and east sides), Newport Road, and Birchwood Road and Crescent are not. East of the railway bottom-garden fences still define the boundary.

Having answered the question "Where Is Moseley?" we shall seek to find out What and Why it has been and is. The largely Victorian suburb we know clearly has features surviving from several periods of the past, and buildings up to the present. It is not static in appearance, function, or population. We shall be looking at Moseley as it was at significant periods, starting with its Saxon foundation, and shall also consider such fascinating topics as ancient names, churches and schools, Moseley Hall, the history of settlement and travel hereabout, and Moseley today and tomorrow.