MOSELEY VILLAGE IN 1838
| Let us go back in imagination to the summer of 1838, and take a
walk around our district. We will start at the first milestone on
the Alcester Turnpike, on Highgate Hill. The trees and hedges of Balsall
Heath are well-grown, for the 'waste' was enclosed sixty years ago.
Most of its smallish crofts, pasturing stock, but there are a few
mansions along the highway, and development of the Edwards estate
has begun. A street-pattern comprising Edwards, Wenman, George, Tindal,
and Vincent Streets has been laid down, and on the last a Wesleyan
chapel is under construction. (This alone survives into our time,
with a neglected mansion behind the shop-fronts at Cromer Road corner.)
Climbing the hill, we find that the worn gorge has been reduced by infilling, and that the road surface is smooth, if dusty. As we pass the 2-mile stone, a horn sounds beyond the tollgate ahead. The keeper runs to swing wide the gate, and the stage-coach from Alcester thunders through in a choking cloud of dust. The guard expertly tosses a shilling to the keeper. Park Farm is on our right, and not far beyond stands the ancient farmhouse of the Grevises, in disrepair and soon to be demolished. Through the Hall Park gates, on the site of Victoria Parade, we can look across the valley of Moseley Brook to the tree-shrouded Hall and the extensions which James Taylor is building. Opposite Park Farm we saw a building we recognise - Five Lands House. Farther along is a Dutch-gabled mansion mis-called 'Manor House'. Therefrom round to the chapel is a continuous row of shuttered cottages some decades old. The first is an inn, the Fighting Cocks, and on the bend are the village shop, the old Bull's Head, and the smithy. Three Georgian houses which survive to 1981 complete the row. Behind the cottages are brewhouses and workshops, wherein rural crafts employ whole families. The green is a surprise : the turnpike goes up past the cottages and down again, and the only open space lies between it and the park wall. Two years after our visit the highway will be straightened and the triangular green we know will appear. The chapel is a sad sight, looking like a factory in its drab brick casing. We press on southward past Moseley House and a few more cottages, climbing the hill past the brick cattleshed and dovecote, seeing little of the formal garden behind its shrubs and ornamental trees. Following the path beside the sunken wall (Reddings Road), with the old lane to Kings Norton off to the left, we have a splendid view of the Hall front and can admire the vistas created by Humphrey Repton. Soon we reach the scattered hamlet of Moor Green, and descend Holders Lane. To the left is the bulk of Moor Green Hall, and to the right is Pitmaston, known before rebuilding as Moor Green Cottage, now the home of the Holders family, millers and distillers. Lower down is Moor Green Farm, whose house still stands in '81. Back in 1838 we have a fine view of the Rea Valley, still wholly rural except downstream where hundreds of tall chimneys cast a smoke pall over the town. Below is the long narrow pool of Moor Green Forge, and farther down are the three mills of Edgbaston.
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