Bournbrook
Bournbrook is an industrial and residential district in southwest Birmingham, England, in the ward of Bournbrook and Selly Park and the parliamentary constituency of Birmingham Selly Oak. Before 2018 it was in Selly Oak Council Ward. Prior to what is commonly termed the Greater Birmingham Act, which came into effect on 9 November 1911, the Bourn Brook watercourse was the North Eastern boundary of Worcestershire, and the area was locally governed by the King's Norton and Northfield Urban District Council.
Bournbrook was once known for its Victorian Leisure Park known as Kerby's Pools. The industry that followed the construction of the canals transformed the ancient manor of Selley. The junction of the Worcester and Birmingham Canal and the Netherton Canal via the Lapal Tunnel created a distribution centre for heavy raw materials from the Black Country. Major industries developed along both sides of the two canals. Terraced housing, for the better off working people, was constructed on the former Selly Hill, Selly Grove, and Selly Oak estates. The High Street provided retail, entertainment, and public services.
The property of Sir Henry Gough Calthorpe of Edgbaston was protected by clauses in the Canal Bill prohibiting the construction of wharves, warehouses, and other buildings along with other restrictive concessions. The Bournbrook rifle range, on the Warwickshire side of the watercourse, was opened in 1860 as the training ground for the Birmingham Rifle Corps later known as the First Volunteer Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. Trams from Birmingham initially stopped at Selly Oak Gate, the county boundary on the turnpike road, or at the Gun Barrels Public House. Extended services ran at weekends to Kerby's Pools.
Located adjacent to the main campus of the University of Birmingham, numerous houses in the area have been converted from private housing into HMOs for students at the university. In response to this practice, fourteen of Selly Oak's community groups have formed a federation 'CP4SO' to address the major issues that the 'Buy to Let, to convert' might be causing. The Local Action Plan, adopted in July 2001, identifies that: an area of restraint was proposed for the area between Bristol Road, Heeley Road, Raddlebarn Road, and Bournbrook Road. Within this area planning permission for further purpose built student accommodation may be refused. Planning permission is required for the conversion of dwellings for more than six people, or where people do not live as a single household. Planning approval may be refused throughout the Plan area, but particularly within the area of restraint."
Toponymy
The name 'Bourn' is derived from the Old English burna or bourne for brook or stream when it had gravel beds and was characterised by clear water and submerged water plants. By contrast 'broc' usually denotes muddy streams with sediment laden with water. Normally both words were used for streams of a considerable size.Transport and Communications
RoadsImage:Bournbrook Tram.jpg|thumb|280px|BCTC's Car No. 104 outside the tram shed in Dawlish Road, Bournbrook, in 1891. This vehicle still survives at the Black Country Living Museum.
The Bristol Road was turnpiked in the early 18th century. The original line of the road, before 1771, went by way of Edgbaston Park Road which began opposite Bournbrook Road, alongside Edgbaston Park, along Priory Road, Church Road, Arthur Road, Wheeley's Road, Bath Row, Holloway Head, and Smallbrook Ringway. A new section of the turnpike was made in 1771 at a cost of £5,000, starting at Bristol Street and joining the old road at the Gun Barrels.
The first horse-drawn tram service from Birmingham began in the 1870s and went as far as the Bournbrook Hotel. Hughes ran an experimental steam powered service between Monmouth Street and Bournbrook on 2 July 1880, the latter distance being covered in twenty-five minutes with a car load of passengers attached to the engine. From 1890 to 1900 accumulator battery trams were in use connecting Birmingham to Bournbrook. A year later electric cables were introduced to replace the batteries. The tram sheds between Dawlish Road and Tiverton Road are now the Douper Hall of Residence. The depot in Dawlish Road was replaced by one opened in 1927 in Chapel Lane. The depot in Harborne Lane was used for buses which replaced the trams. The former Bristol Road tram route and its depots were replaced by buses in 1952. The depot closed in 1986 and is in use as Access storage centre.
Canals
The Lapal Tunnel and the Dudley Canal were completed in 1798 and raw materials, especially coal and lime, for heavy industry were transported into Selly Oak from the Black Country and then to the River Severn, or to Oxford and London via the Stratford-upon-Avon Canal. The Worcester and Birmingham Canal commenced in 1791 and was completed in 1815 with the lifting of the Worcester Bar in Birmingham. Industrial activity developed along its banks from Bournbrook to Lifford. The industry stopped abruptly at the boundary with Edgbaston because of clauses inserted in the Bill that protected the property of Sir Henry Gough-Calthorpe by prohibiting the construction of wharves, warehouses and other buildings without his consent. The embankment near Wheeleys Road, gave way on 26 May 1872 causing considerable damage to the properties nearby. By an agreement of 1873 this canal was sold to the Gloucester and Berkeley Canal Co, otherwise the Sharpness Dock Co. A boatyard on the Dudley Canal was established and run by the Monk family for many years. A final roof fall in 1917 resulted in the closure of the Lapal tunnel. The canal continued to be used transporting bricks from the California brickworks. Planning is underway to reopen the section of the canal through the new Sainsbury's site. Eventually it is hoped to re-connect the canal at Halesowen.
Railways
The Birmingham West Suburban Railway line from Granville Street to King's Norton was opened in 1876 with five stations. The single track was doubled and extended from Granville Street to New Street, at an estimated cost of £280,400, so that the Midland Railway had a direct run through the town. It was later incorporated into the Midland Railway and the terminus changed to New Street. During the Great War casualties were brought to Selly Oak and transferred to the First Southern and General Military Hospital which was housed in the new University of Birmingham buildings. The railway was carried over the Bristol Road by an embankment and multi-arched viaduct. In the 1920s the central part of the viaduct was replaced with the current steel bridge in order that the new higher trams could pass underneath. The new bridge followed a slightly different alignment. The arches that were used as by Vincent's timber depot have recently been cleared. The current car park occupies the area that once housed significant goods sidings that could hold up to 300 wagons. The sidings were mainly used for the conveyance of coal and a coal merchant's stood on the site for many years. Bournbrook is served by Selly Oak railway station on the Cross-City Line, providing services to the Birmingham New Street, Lichfield Trent Valley, Bromsgrove and Redditch stations.
History
PrehistoricAlong the Bourn Brook evidence has been found of Bronze Age burnt mounds. As these have been interpreted as having domestic use, for beer-making, or saunas the implication is that there may have been a prehistoric settlement nearby. Small pieces of prehistoric, Probably Iron Age, pottery and a piece of worked flint were found on the Selly Park Recreation Ground in 1996 which may indicate the site of an Iron Age farmstead in the vicinity.
Roman
Metchley Fort occupied a site nearby distributing goods such as salt from Droitwich to places further north and west. It is probable that they upgraded existing tracks. At some point they would have needed to ford the brook and Bournbrook seems a likely place with the possibility of local support for periods when the area was flooded.
Anglo-Saxon
Until 1911 the Bourn Brook was the ancient Anglo-Saxon boundary between Worcestershire and Staffordshire, and Warwickshire. The boundaries of the Midland shires were possibly established during the reign of the Danish Kings from 1016 to 1042 based on the former tribal kingdoms. Physical features were frequently used to identify the boundary of a region or estate. The Hamlet of Bournbrook developed at a crossing point of the Bourn Brook. Potentially it was a meeting place for the nobility of each of the shires. The Bourn Brook, which flows into River Rea near in Cannon Hill Park, is the Ward boundary.
Bourn Brook Mills
The Bourn Brook was in continuous use to power mills for several centuries. Harborne Mill was in Staffordshire until 1891. Pebble Mill and Edgbaston Mill were both in Warwickshire. Another mill was shown in 1787–9 on the most westerly of the streams from Edgbaston Pool where it joined the Bourn Brook near the Bristol Road. This may be the old silver rolling mill owned by Mr Spurrier referred to by Leonard, located near the present Eastern Road that was fed by the brook that ran from Edgbaston Pool.A miller was mentioned in the Lechmere Tax Rolls for Weleye and Selleye in 1276–82. An archaeological excavation identified that the straightening of the Bourn Brook and the construction of the mill leat suggests that the site of the Bourn Brook Mill was medieval in origin and that a mill or mills had existed in roughly the same location for 500–600 years. Deposits from the relict water channels were radiocarbon dated to the 15th and 16th centuries. The fishponds that the leat drained into would also have to be of late medieval date. Further opportunity to discover the location of the medieval mill will be useful to inform the local and regional research cycles.
In the 16th century the King family had a fulling mill on the Bourn Brook. Henry Cambden the elder, a knife cutler, built a blade mill on part of Gower's Farm in 1707. In 1727 the mill was assigned to Henry Carver, a brass founder. The Gunsmiths, Heeley and Company, is recorded as occupying the mill in 1816. The Tithe Map of 1839 shows the land owned by James Kerby included a forge. An 1861 advertisement for sale of the Bourn Brook Estate describes a rolling mill in the occupation of the Bourne Brook Iron Company within a short distance of the mining district. An iron founder and metal roller, Noah Fellows occupied it in 1863. Arthur Holden, a paint manufacturer was the occupant in 1873. From 1880 Frederick Spurrier worked the mill for rolling joined in 1908 by Henry Spurrier.