THE FOUNDING OF MOSELEY

From Bromsgrove, founded by families who had moved on from original colonies in Severn Vale, younger sons and their kin and stock moved north along a crumbling Roman highway we call Bristol Road to establish Norton (North Farm). Their descendants in turn came down the ridge on Rea's east side, probably following an existing track, in search of new grazing grounds. The site they chose or took over for a summer camp was found to be suitable for a permanent community, so there they settled.

The chosen spot was a level 'bench' of dry, gravely soil, a clearing in patchy woodland. To east and south were stony heaths; oak forest covered the valley sides to the west and the ridge to the north, wide boggy meadows bordered the much-winding river. Falling steeply just below the bench was a tributary valley, whose stream could be dammed to provide a fishpond and watering-place for stock. (Moseley Pool is the descendant of this). Shallow wells yielded plenty of clear water, there was ample rough grazing, timber for building and fuel, and a superabundance of birds and animals to fill the cooking pots.

The first village at Moseley was probably a rough circle of timber and reed-thatched huts, linked by a tall fence and a ditch; the central enclosure served as a stock-pound at night, safe from bears and wolves if not from men. Hunting and herding gradually gave way to agriculture as land was cleared and ploughed. The extent of Moseley's communal fields has not been established, because they had been enclosed into small crofts long before the advent of maps. One of them certainly lay between what we call Alcester and Church Roads, Five Lands House recalling an ancient grouping of lands, the furlong strips into which the fields were formerly divided; but a handful of field and meadow names which survive in record cannot be placed.

The Moseleians and their forebears were of Saxon race. They called themselves Hwicce, and Worcester was their tribal capital. Wigorn, the old name for the shire, is derived from Hwiccan. In AD 680 Worcester became the seat of a Bishop and parishes were established. Bromsgrove's early church was the centre of a huge one which included all the berewicks, and these were also joined in Came Hundred. This was the Anglo-Saxon unit of administration and justice, nominally comprising a hundred families. Came Moot was at Lickey, whither Moseleian heads-of-households went with the rest; thus for spiritual solace or temporal justice, they had a long way to go!

Across the Rea and to the north, the settlers in the same period were Anglian folk, descendants of earlier immigrants from overseas. They moved into the forested Midlands from north and east, establishing Birmingham, Aston, Edgbaston, and other vills thereabout. When the shires were established locally about AD 1000 the Anglian manors went to Warwickshire, and the Saxon ones - including Norton and its eastern neighbour Yardley - to Worcestershire. This division was to last for nine hundred years.

We have been speaking of 'Moseley', but what did its first inhabitants call it? In Domesday Book it appears as 'Muselei'; the ending is the common one for a farm or hamlet in a forest clearing, and the prefix seems to be the Old English word for (field)mice. If you don't care to have it known that you live in Mice Clearing, comfort yourself with the thought that the name may have been corrupted by centuries of slovenly speech from a more impressive one before written records!