Mapping Birmingham: Rivers and Brooks

Showing posts with label Rivers and Brooks. Show all posts

Ancient Sites: Search For the Holy Well

The emerging, infant waters of Holy Wells have long been valued for their healing properties, on both body and spirit. They were holy because it was believed they had been sanctified by a saint or had issued after some miraculous intervention. Pilgrims journeyed to them for absolution and renewal, and communities gathered round them in seasonal reverence, enacting adornment rituals. I am drawn to such places as curiosities, but even more so to those that have been lost to time. So, when I found the words “Holy Well”, written in a Gothic typeface on a Victorian Ordnance Survey map of hilly outlands at the southern edges of Birmingham, my curiosity was piqued. Beneath was written “Chalybeate” – a term referring to natural springs containing iron salts, which often give the water a metallic taste and, sometimes, a reddish-brown tinge. The iron content was thought to provide healing properties. All this was enough to prompt me, with a characteristic lack of planning, to set out in the direction of the holy site to discover what, if anything, remained.

Aston Church in Aston, near Birmingham, with the River Tame nearby, before the railway
cut it away from Aston village, c. 1830s.

Today the River Tame seems to skirt past the Aston area; taking a sharp turn under Witton Bridge, and then creeping behind the houses and industries of Tame Road, only to emerge under the Aston Expressway at the other end of Witton. But the old village of Aston grew up along the river, its shape determined by it and especially a large meander, later called the Serpentine. The Tame and its meander formed the north-east border of what was called Aston Manor, a smaller administrative division in the huge parish of Aston, set out at least by the time of George III.* This watery boundary line stretched from Witton Bridge (where the Shire Brook once joined the Tame, forming itself the north-west boundary) to just past Salford Bridge, where the Hockley Brook comes in (which formed the south-east boundary).

An Iron Forge, by Joseph Wright of Derby (1772)

The first mention of the Bromford mill as a forge was in 1605, but the site had previously worked as a water-powered mill, possibly dating back to Domesday, but definitely the thirteenth century. Like many mills it had been converted from corn grinding to fulling, the pounding of wool to remove oil and dirt.* From working as a fulling mill it was an easy conversion to become a forge to hammer iron instead of wool, as seen in Joseph Wright’s 1772 painting of an iron forge (above). Wright was inspired by the industries of the Midlands, and although there is no reason to believe that he visited Bromford, there would be similarities.

Aston Furnace in 1753, drawn by R. R. Angerstein.**

Aston Furnace, now demolished, was on the Hockley Brook, near where Porchester Street is today. The current site is grade A listed, although it has been built on. The original furnace was for iron and was first noted in 1615. In the late 1600s it was run by the renowned Jennens ironmasters, who also worked Bromford Forge. British History Online states that there is no evidence that the furnace itself was water-powered, but that the brook was used to power the bellows.*

Castle Bromwich Mill, 1895. Held at Birmingham Archive.

Castle Bromwich mill was the manorial corn mill, probably dating from the thirteenth-century. Not much can be discovered about the history of the mill, but it was a constant presence in the area for centuries, and still being worked in the 1890s (images above and below).

The miller in 1895.

Brookvale Park in Pictures

Brookvale Park, 1912.

The areas around Witton are very watery with Salford Lake, the Upper and Lower Witton Lakes, as well as the lake at Brookvale Park. None of these are natural lakes, they were all formed to bring drinking water to Birmingham from the 1830s onwards, utilising the waters of the River Tame, and the lesser known Hawthorne brook, that comes into the Tame under Spaghetti Junction. Much of the Hawthorne Brook flows underground now, but you can find it here and there, including in Brookvale Park.

Here is what the park looked like over the last 100 years (from the Aston & Erdington, Past & Present site: here).