There is an unremarkable rise in the land next to Icknield St where it passes through today’s Kingstanding on its way out from Birmingham to Lichfield. Today this rise is one of Birmingham’s 13 scheduled ancient monuments as it is a Bronze Age burial barrow. It was called “The Kingstanding” probably for the vantage point that it gave those of noble blood in the Royal Hunting Grounds after the conquest in 1066. Later legend has it that Charles I stood there in 1642. Having finally split with Parliament and after starting to raise his army in Nottingham in August, he was marching South towards his Court at Oxford recruiting his army as he went prior to the opening of hostilities at Edgehill in October. It is said that on this mound he stood addressing his new recruits from the Birmingham area completely unaware that they were standing on the edge of land that was to become important to the Wells family known as Kings Vale Farm and Warren Farm.
Kingstanding as a village therefore has little history, but where it now exists along with Perry Barr, Great Barr, Oscott, Hamstead, and Witton back then all formed a large rural area of heavily farmed agricultural land containing either small hamlets, or gatherings of a few houses or farms, or parts of Manorial estates all separated from the growing Birmingham by streams and tributaries of the River Tame with few crossing points. The area lies on the edges of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, filling in the gap between larger places such as Handsworth, Aston, Sutton Coldfield (and Sutton Park), to Barr Beacon and across to Walsall, Wednesbury and West Bromwich. It is an area crossed by Icknield Street, evidenced by Roman finds at Wellington Road and Romans Field. The Chester Road pre-dates the Romans and was previously an important Ridgeway route for droving cattle from North Wales to London. Later it was used as one of the early Turnpike Roads. Patches of what would have been ancient woodland still show on the 1890 Ordnance Survey maps. “Perry” relates to pear trees, whereas Barr comes from an old Celtic word for “hill top”.
There was industry in the area from early times. Water from Perry Barr, Great Barr and from Hamstead Hill supplied streams leading to the River Tame providing waterpower for mills. The Manor at Hamstead was one of the few in Birmingham where a mill was mentioned in the Domesday Book in 1086. Hamstead Mill stood on the south side of the Tame where the Old Walsall Road crossed at Hamstead Hill. Small-scale iron founding had probably begun in this area as early as the 15th century, but it is in the 16th century that the industrial activity first appears in the records. Iron ore was mainly mined in the Black Country, but timber to make high volumes of charcoal necessary for the smelting process was already scarce there and some industry consequently relocated to the Tame valley where wood and waterpower were more readily available.
Smelting involves the separation of metallic iron (wrought iron) from its ore (pig-iron) and charcoal was the only fuel capable of generating the necessary heat. But pig-iron coming from a charcoal furnace was an alloy of 96% iron and 4% carbon impurities. In a molten shape it could be moulded by hammering but once it cooled it could crack or shatter under a hammer and an increasingly sophisticated marketplace demanded more flexibility in the product. The original bloomeries developed into forges consisting of two or more furnaces – Finery furnaces and Chafery furnaces – with large trip-hammers driven by waterpower. The Finery furnace oxidised the carbon impurities which could be hammered out and sold to rolling mills for further refining or returned to the Chafery furnace where they were reheated and hammered into long bars of decarbonised iron for sale to blacksmiths, coopers, tool-makers and wheelwrights.
The earliest site to be recorded in this area is an Iron Bloomery forge at Perry Smithy in 1538 which was rebuilt after a fire in 1597 as a furnace for melting and casting iron using water-powered bellows. Out of use by 1887 it was demolished by the 1890s. By 1548 there was an iron hammer mill at Handsworth. By 1725 there was a blast furnace at Hamstead Forge. It closed by the end of the century but the buildings remained intact until 1960 when they were demolished. The reported windmill at Hamstead was long gone by 1794 with the work probably transferred back to the original watermill but the original Hamstead Mill, some 800 years after its mention in the Domesday Book, was still there being operated by Frank Andrews as a two-wheel mill driving four pairs of millstones where it continued to grind corn until 1920.
The hamlet of Oscott stood by Oscott Brook at the junction of Old Oscott Lane and Old Oscott Hill, in the north-eastern corner of the Perry Barr division of the ancient parish of Handsworth. North of Pheasey between Beacon Road and the Chester Road and as far north as Foley Road was known as Great Barr Common; originally part of the manor of Perry Barr, this common land was enclosed by 1814. Hamstead Hall was replaced around 1800 with a new Hall described by Charles Pye in 1818 as being “..difficult to conceive a more beautiful residence than this, as it contains all that hill and dale, wood and water, aided by extensive views, can do, to make a place delightful and desirable: these seem here to have been combined in the most beautiful manner; for the river Tame meanders through this enchanting and extensive domain; on whose banks are numerous groves of trees…”. It all sounds to be a most green and pleasant land. A huge lime tree 70ft high with a girth of 23ft near the base is also described, bound together with iron over the years to keep it from breaking, growing on a huge rock out of which a considerably sized Grotto had been carved. This “new” Hall was demolished in 1935 and is now below the roads called Greenway and Croftway, although the ruins of its Ice House may still be able to be found near the River Tame.
A bridge at Perry takes the Aldridge Road across the River Tame. The original Roman river crossing was by a ford, perhaps paved, some 200m east of this bridge at Holford and probably provided the main crossing point until medieval times after which a wooden horse-bridge was built here in 1612. The present stone bridge was built 1709 by order of Staffordshire Quarter Sessions probably by Sir Henry Gough of Perry Hall to replace the old wooden one. The bridge was built with twelve arches however all but four were bricked up as the land was landscaped by Thomas Telford and only three of these are now partially visible above ground. The profit from tolls was sufficient for the Handsworth Bridge Trust to found a new school in 1862 which became Handsworth Grammar School around 1890. A footbridge alongside was built when Perry Barr came under the administration of Birmingham City Council in 1928. In 1932 a new single-span bridge was built in an Art Deco style to take motor traffic leaving the old stone zig-zag bridge restricted to pedestrians, now a Scheduled Ancient Monument.
The (Old) Walsall Turnpike was among the first Birmingham toll roads, being set up in 1727. It followed the existing route via Hamstead Road, Handsworth Wood Road, Hamstead Hill, Old Walsall Road, and on to Walsall via the Birmingham Road. It was used by stagecoaches from 1752. The Old River Tame footbridge is a late-18th-century bridge over the river with added 19th-century balustrades. William Hutton the Historian was reserved in his opinion of the 10 miles of road to Walsall describing it as “rather below indifferent”. In 1831 a more straightforward route was made by improving lanes and field tracks by opening the New Walsall Road. This is the modern Birchfield Road/ Walsall Road and was the last to be turnpiked in Birmingham. There were tollgates at the junction of Birchfield Road and Heathfield Road known as Perry Barr Gate, and at the Scott Arms crossing at Newton Road/Queslett Road. Unusually here the railway was built before the canal. The Grand Junction line to Liverpool was Birmingham’s first railway opened in 1837 and the Tame Valley Canal was Birmingham’s last canal opened in 1844. Perry Barr Station on Birchfield Road was one of the first stations to be opened on the line in 1838 and was presumably named after the tollgate just south of the station. This eventually led to the focus of Perry Barr moving from the hamlet on Church Road to this area where a replacement major shopping centre, the One-Stop, was opened in the 1990s. The lock flight at Perry Barr is known as the New Thirteen as opposed to the Old Thirteen at Farmers Bridge on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal in the centre of Birmingham. From 1850 a pumping station between locks 12 and 13 pumped water by pipe from the 302-foot level to the 408-foot level. Three steam-powered beam engines were replaced by two sets of vertical triple-expansion engines in 1895 which continued in steam until 1958, the last on the Birmingham Canal Navigations. No evidence of these pumping stations survives, although off Deykin Avenue and Walsall Road are original lock-keeper’s cottages. The top two locks and the Horsley cast-iron bridges are Grade II Listed.
Even by 1888, with hamlets on Church Road, at Perry itself and at Newton and Oscott (and even Erdington) this was still very much a rural area. By 1900 however ribbon building development was continuing northwards from Handsworth especially along Birchfield Road to the junction of Aston Lane around the station. Often these were the expensive houses of Birmingham businesspeople.
Even so this area was full of Farms which changed sizes and changed hands as new leases were bought and sold. These were occupied by farming families that were synonymous with the area for hundreds of years up to the 1920s and 30s and after whom many of the roads are named today – Warren House Farm (Augustine Wells, George Baines), Halfway Farm (George Ryman), Manor Farm (Bayliss, Baines), Witton Lodge Farm (George Wells, Francis Baines then Thomas Wells), various farms at Witton (Short, Brown, Cockrill, Potter), Kings Vale Farm (George Wells, Robert Wells and Oliver Wells), Messuage Farm (Judd and Cooksey), Kettlehouse Farm (George Judd – the first to be sold for building in the 1920s), Oldford Farm (Bernard Baines, Foden, George Wells), Blakelands Farm (Lawrence), Biggins Farm (Biggins, later College Farm, taken over by New Oscott College), Doe Bank Farm (Pickering), Barr Common Farm (Baker), Salt Box Farm (Brown), Queslett Rd Farm, Pool Farm and Aldridge Rd Farm (Thomas Wells), Pear Tree Farm, Gorse Farm, Hembs Farm (Smith) Rock Farm, Park Farm (Cooper, Foden) Tower Hill Farm and Booths Farm (the infamous coin forger William Booth from 1808 until he was hanged in 1812 having set up his own mint only two miles from Boulton’s Soho Mint. The farm was later run by the Fodens), Brooklands Farm (Maybury) and many more.
Catholicism enters the story here. The Declaration of Indulgence enacted by James II in 1687 had been followed by the Act of Toleration of 1689 allowing Christians of all denominations to openly profess their faith. However, after the pro-Stuart uprisings of 1715 and 1745, a series of Penal Laws were passed to counter the threat of Roman Catholic subversion. In reality these laws stayed on the statute book and were largely ignored and rarely enforced as long as the Protestant majority did not feel threatened.
Following the Act of Toleration a Roman Catholic Mission to the Midlands was set up by Father Andrew Bromwich before 1700 on Old Oscott Hill. He was one of a family of wealthy landowners in the district, and he bequeathed his home, Oscott House, to pay for a Roman Catholic priest in the area. At the instigation of Bishop Hornyold the house was rebuilt in 1752 as St Mary’s Institute. In 1758 a new chapel was built. Bishop Hornyold was one of the 4 Vicars Apostolic appointed by the Pope for England. He was responsible for a Midlands area that included Oscott and would have travelled through the district, sometimes with a servant, on horseback or in a light carriage. Being polite and prudent, little animosity is recorded against their activities but the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780 and the Protestant Priestly Riots of 1797 (basically anti anyone who did not follow Puritan thinking, so Catholics, religious dissenters and the scientists and philosophers of the Lunar Society) would have impressed upon Catholics the need to keep their heads down. The first surviving registers of the Confirmations that they carried out start in 1768 but they are not complete. Initially Services and Confirmations were usually centred on private chapels of Recusant Catholics who had contrived over the years to keep hold of their estates. One of these was James Wells who lived at Short Heath House (on the site of now 136 Short Heath Rd). He was one of the Congregation at Oscott and it is said that the first Mass in Erdington since the Reformation was said at his home.
But Came They All to Birmingham 