TUDOR MOSELEY

From other sources we know that Kings Norton, of which Moseley was the northernmost part, was a separate manor from the C 12th, though it had a common court with Bromsgrove at Lickey. Despite its size, 12,000 acres. 34 miles all round, Norton remained a mere chapelry of Bromsgrove Parish until 1849!

Let us pay a visit to Moseley Village as it was in early Tudor times. A dozen, perhaps a score, or low half-timbered cottages faced onto a triangular green of about an acre : the present building-lines of Alcester Road and St. Mary's Row probably define the limits of the old green, for it is road-widening rather than encroachment which has caused the area to shrink. Across the west side the deep-sunk highway wound towards Norton and Birmingham.

There was no cross-roads, for Salisbury Road would not by but until four centuries later. Set back from the highway was Moseley Old Hall which today we should find behind the church on Chantry Road corner had it not been demolished in 1842. This was the home of the Grevises, about whom we will read later.

East from the green a rutted track led up the hill beside the chapel then divided into the unmade ways to Lady Pool, and Wake Green. The former had been the bounding lane of one of Moseley's open fields, now hedged and ditched following enclosure, and the latter led to Lady Mill on Coldbath Brook.

At the time of our visit St. Mary's Chapel, a small building with steep-pitched roof, was perhaps a century old, but its tower was newly-erected after long delay. It had been built with 48 wagon-loads of stone blocks from Bromsgrove's old Parsonage. This is the worn tower which we see in 1981.

One of the cottages facing the green was open-fronted, housing a blacksmith's forge, and another was an ale-house. This was the ancestor to the Bull's Head. No tavern called The Fighting Cocks had yet appeared, but vicious pastimes which involved cruelty to animals were popular activities on the green. There were ancient rights which frontagers maintained jealously : no building for private profit was allowed. Even today, the only structures on the green are those for public use and comfort - toilets, callbox, 'bus shelters', seats and signs, taxi rank and town guide.

It would be interesting to discover whether today's frontagers still possess the ancient privileges : until someone tests this by putting a cow to graze on the few square yards of grass that remain, we shall not know ! As successor to the Yield's Thirdborough (unpaid constable), the beat bobby would have to decide whether to take the animal to the (car) pound.

The likeness of the chapel tower with its battlemented top to a castle keep is not simply a matter of fashion in building. When it was begun the Roses War was still fresh in memory, and a defensible tower could save villagers' lives, if not their property, when troops or outlaws approached. From embrasures one would have a wide view of a landscape greatly denuded of trees.

The willow-fringed Rea lay green and marshy below, but northward it was hidden by smoke from the many forges of Birmingham, whose huge appetite for charcoal Moseley's timber had gone to satisfy.