A little more history of this fascinating Building...with thanks to Marie Fogg's book on the Smalbrokes, and the Birmingham Library
The Smalbrokes of Birmingham
The Parish of Yardley, in which Blakesley Hall stands is first mentioned in 972AD, when it belonged to the Benedictine Abbey of Pershore. The population grew until 1348, when the Black Death (bubonic plague) wiped out over two hundred villages in the Midlands alone. One effect of the Black Death was that surviving families became wealthier, as the available land was shared between fewer people.
The Smalbroke family are known to have been living in Yardley as early as 1275, and in 1440 John Smalbroke was Yardley's first recorded yeoman (yeomen were landowner-farmers who could be called on to serve as jurors) - so this family survived the plague years. The Smalbrokes and another ancient Birmingham family, the Colmores, rivalled each other for wealth and status. At times the rivalry led to fisticuffs, running battles and lawsuits, though there were also marriages between the two families.
The Smalbrokes have been a long established family in Birmingham dating as far back as the 13[SUP]th[/SUP] Century.' The family appear again in the 15[SUP]th[/SUP] Century in Tax Rolls and Court Records. John Smalbroke, yeoman/ was mentioned in 1440 when he was reported for:
having on Monday after the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle ....
broken at Solyhull the close of John Fulford of Solyhull and ravished Margaret, his wife, and taken her and 10s of silver coin with other goods of the said John, to wit, a bed worth 13s.4d, three pairs of sheets worth 14s 4d and a paten of brass worth 6s, and was outlawed for the same, though at the time of the proclamation ....
He was in the King's service beyond the sea in the town of Caen, therefore the King pardons him the said felony and outlawry.
A Richard Smalbroke is recorded on the charity deeds of Yardley in 1463 and in 1468 a William Smalbroke is mentioned in relation to the Guild of Knowle.
In 1498 John Smalbroke and others were granted a croft by Thomas Mason, called 'Demes Croft' lying in the lea leading to the Manor House." In
1511/12 Richard Smalbroke was recorded as holding 'one croft of pasture called Alcotts More with four other crofts adjacent to the same, near Yardley Waye and the bridge called Newe bridge and the torrent called Cole Broke' for which he 'pays 3s.l0d, per annum.' The name John Smalbroke is mentioned again on a list of persons receiving the King's general pardon in
1509/10
It states:
John Smalbroke of Yardley, Worcs; weaver, yeoman, Hostrekeeper, rentgaderer, under-bailiff and receiver, of Yardley, 8 June
Both John and Richard Smalbroke are mentioned again in the Yardley Tax Roll 1552, as having houses in Church End Quarter. Richard also had land in Bromhall Quarter, near lands belonging to the Lords of Blakey.
By the 1550s, Richard Smalbroke (I) owned land at Yardley and in Birmingham, where he was a prosperous mercer and a bailiff. In the 1553 Survey of Birmingham, Smalbroke land appears to include the building now known as the Old Crown in Deritend. The building (which did not become an inn until the seventeenth century) had been the priest's house, guildhouse and school of the Guild of St John the Baptist, which was dissolved in 1547.
After the Dissolution, Richard Smalbroke was involved in negotiations to use land of another dissolved Birmingham guild, the Guild of the Holy Cross, for the new King Edward VI School at the former Guild Hall in New Street. He became one of the first governors of the new school, which replaced the school in Deritend. Perhaps as a reward
for his role in the negotiations, somehow he came into possession of the Deritend building and quickly sold on the priest's house in 1551.
When he died in 1575, the remainder of the building was inherited by his elder son, Richard (II). In 1589 Richard (II) sold it, almost certainly financing the building of Blakesley Hall in 1590 from the proceeds. He may well have had an earlier house demolished to make way for his new home. Shards of cooking pots and jugs, dating from the thirteenth century, have been found associated with an area of cobbled floor beneath the present house. Blakesley was modern and fashionable: it had fireplaces with brick chimneys, glazed windows, and an upper floor with rooms opening off a gallery. Opening the massive front-door, made of two layers of thick oak boards and still with its original hinges and locking system, Richard would have passed beneath the carved lintel over the porch which reads:
'OMN(I)POTENS D[OMI]N[U]S P]RO]TECTOR SIT DOM[US] HUI[USj'
('May the Almighty Lord protect this House'); below this are Richard's initials.
Richard's son Robert Smalbroke was dead by 1603, so when Richard himself died in 1613 Blakesley passed to his granddaughter, Robert's daughter Barbara. In 1614 she married.Henry Devereux of Castle Bromwich Hall.
After his death she married Aylmer Foliot of Pirton Court, Pershore. Aylmer and Barbara lived at Blakesley Hall through the period of the Civil War, the house resounding with the chatter of their twelve children. Their eldest son, Aylmer junior, inherited the house on his mother's death in 1679, when he was 59. He died unmarried in 1684 and
left the house to his brother, Robert Foliot. A year later Robert sold Blakesley to the Reverend Dr Henry Greswolde, Rector of Solihull. Over the next two centuries the Greswoldes lived at Malvern Hall, Solihull, and let Blakesley Hall to tenant farmers.
Three generations of the Hopkins family lived and farmed at Blakesley from 1768- 1849. In the 1880s a succession of short tenancies led to the house and farm buildings becoming dilapidated, and in 1899 the Greswoldes sold it. It was bought, with two acres, by Henry Donne. He had the house restored and gardens laid out.
The following year he sold the property at auction. This time the buyer was Thomas Merry, a Birmingham paint and varnish manufacturer. The Merry family lived at Blakesley Hall until Tom's death in 1932, when it was again put up for auction, and bought by the Birmingham Common Good Trust on behalf of Birmingham Corporation, and from 1935, is now a Museum.
There is lots more, and the story of the feuds with the Colmores here:
https://nonsequitur.freeforums.org/post6991.html?hilit=Blakesley Hall#p6991
