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Castle Site Near Camden St

I was wondering if Hutton's statement about Sir Thomas being "unwilling to quit the place of his affections and nativity, erected a castle for himself at Worstone" was using the word 'castle' in the sense that a man's home is his castle. Might it therefore have been a house, a mansion, a moated house or whatever ? Viv.
 
I doesn't add much as it is too small a scale , but for information here is the area as seen in the first Ordnance survey of 1814.

map_around_icknield_st_1814.jpg
 
Another observation about Hutton's description. He mentions "Chub-Brook". This was said to feed Hockly Pool. I expect Hockley Pool was a fish pond in the time of Sir Thomas. 'Chub' is a word for a variety of fish. Most castles/large houses would have been located near to its own fish pond- either natural or created - to provide one of several sources of food. Viv.
 
image.jpeg Thanks Mike. Very interesting. If I've understood your map correctly is the green dot Spring Hill, the blue dot Camden St and the red dot roughly Hutton's position for the castle? I see there's a brewery around there in 1814. You can also see Camden St isn't complete as per Camden St today. I'm asking myself why would that part of Camden street exist just to come to an apparent dead end? Was this over the original footprint of a driveway/lane into the grounds of Sir Thomas's home? If that's the case, could we in any way detect the outline of the moat walls from this ? Viv.
 
Was the area we're looking at once known as Birmingham Heath? Or is that nearer Handsworth? Viv.
 
Thanks Lyn. Now wondering if there's any aerial views of the area. I'm working on the basis that a moat (its faint outline or its course) isn't that easy to disguise in the landscape, even after a very long time (unless it's completely filled in and concreted over). This area of Birmingham wasn't intensely developed very quickly. Maybe an aerial view could give a few hints, albeit minor glimpses. Clutching at straws I know, but be interested to see if any aerial views reveal anything. Viv
 
ive also got thomas hansons map of the area 1778..will have a good look tomorrow at them
 
not what we are looking for but ive got another 1838 map showing camden lodge..its a shame i cant scan these maps but they are too large...what i could do is take a photo of the relevant area we are looking at and post them..
 
Yes Viv , your dots are correct.

Camden st is shown going a little over what later was Icknield st on the c 1828 map, though if that was also so in 1814 the scale would not let it show for that small length. This does not seem to be following a driveway, but is just on a field boundary
 
Lyn
Is the map you are talking about the one from the ?Society for the Diffusion of useful knowledge. If so then the relevant portion is below

1839_NW_Birm_outer_red.jpg
 
yes mike that is one of the maps i have...this is the one that shows camden lodge..dont really think they will be of much use though in sorting out if there was a castle around there..
 
The map shows a very acute bend in the stream/brook here - red dot. Would this be natural at this point? Viv.


image.jpeg
 
I could be, and that is a good point. The stream is shown on my 1824 (or 1828 depending on where you see it) map as the boundary of the green area where the pasture referred to would have been, which might have been the site of the castle
 
Yes. Seems such a dramatic change in the course of the stream to be coincidental Mike.

And does the Gough map tell us anything I wonder? May be a bit of a long shot, I can't make head nor tail of it! Hope someone else can. There's a digital link below ... Viv.

https://www.goughmap.org/map/
 
received this info off carl who has no knowledge of a moated castle...so was the building pye talks about really hockley abbey built by richard ford and dated 1473 to deceive and make it look like an old castle..pye would certainly have seen it from the bottom end of icknield st...i am also wondering if the burning he talked about could have been the slag or cinders that we know surrounded hockley abbey..

Hello Lyn

As far as I am aware there never was as moated castle in that area. There was a folly owned by Richard Ford made to look like a castle and I have appended below my write up on it.


Best wishes


Carl






Hockley Abbey was a most strange and remarkable structure that drew the attention of Charles Pye one day in the summer of 1818. He was in the midst of making excursions in and around Birmingham to research a guide to the town that he was intending to publish. On this particular occasion he had headed northwest, on what was then the road to Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury via Wednesbury, eight miles distant.

Pye proceeded down Snow Hill and going along what would become Constitution Hill and Great Hampton Street, he was struck first by the ‘extensive view over Barr-beacon, and the adjacent country, including the lofty trees in Aston park; over whose tops, the elegant spire of that church is seen’.

Then, as he began to descend Hockley Hill, his eye was ‘delighted, on the right hand’ with the sight of Hunter's nursery grounds – hence Nursery Road and Hunter’s Road, Lozells. Turning to his left, Pye’s gaze was pulled to Hockley Abbey. It had been erected in about 1779 by Richard Ford upon a piece of waste and boggy land by Hockley Pool, also known as Boulton’s Pool after Matthew Boulton.

Praised as ‘an ingenious mechanic of Birmingham’, it was said that, among other things, Ford had invented a one-wheel carriage constructed entirely of iron. For this inventiveness in the Society of Arts had presented him with their gold medal.

He employed seven workers but ‘several of them expended nine or ten shillings each week at the alehouse. Ford himself was not given to drink and so as an example to them, he put aside between two shillings a week for each of them. When trade was slack instead of laying off his men he used the sum saved to pay them.

One of the tasks they carried out was to help build Hockley Abbey. According to Pye, Ford’s business required him to keep a horse and cart and when his men:

were at leisure, he sent them to Aston furnace to bring away large masses of scoriae, usually termed slag or dross, that lay there in great abundance. Having collected together a large quantity of it, he began to erect this building, to represent ruins; and to add to the deception, there is in the front of the house, in small pebble stones, the date, 1473; and all this was done, as he informed the writer of this article, without advancing any other money than the fourteen shillings per week.

By the time Pye saw Hockley Abbey, Hubert Galton lived there. He was a member of the Quaker gunmaking family that also became involved in banking. As for the house, it was nearly overgrown with ivy, and he noted that if no account had been given of the materials with which it was erected, then ‘posterity might have been at a loss to know what substance the walls were built with’.

Ten years before Pye’s description of Hockley Abbey ‘this curious freak of industry’ inspired a poem by J. Bissett in his ‘Magnificent Guide’ to Birmingham:

Close by yon Lake's pellucid stream, behold

A Gothic Pile, which seems some cent'ries old,

Vulcanic fancy there display'd her taste,

And rear'd the fabric on the barren waste;

The Forge materials for the work provides,

Rude cinders clothe the front—compose the sides.

Where bogs and brakes, and marshy fens were seen,

We now behold a turf-enamel'd green;

It's hoary sage, withdrawn from toil and care,

Both ease and solitude possesses there;

The moss-clad turrets, ivy-clasp'd, o'er-grown,

Look as if peace had mark'd the spot her own.

Hockley Abbey has long since gone, but it is recalled in Abbey Street whilst Ford himself is remembered in Ford Street, Hockley. But it was not the only prominent building that was associated with the slag from Aston Furnace – so too was Aston Hall.

Built for Sir Thomas between 1618 and 1635, the bricks for the shell of the hall were made from local clay and were dressed with soft grey sandstone. The rest of the house was made of timber, for which several hundred oak trees were cut down on the Holte estates; whilst the foundations were made of big bands of iron slag, most of which probably came from the Aston Furnace.

This works for the smelting of iron ore into pig iron had begun operations in about 1615 and it would seem to have been associated with the Cowper family of smiths and scythemakers – who are perhaps brought to mind in Cowper Street just down Newtown Row. Be that as it may, the Aston Furnace was certainly working by 1641 as it is mentioned in the marriage settlement of Sir Thomas Holte and Anne Littleton.

Whatever its origins, the furnace’s bellows for the blast were worked by a wheel powered by water from the Aston Brook (called the Hockley Brook until it entered Aston). This was fetched up an open channel called a leat to a long narrow pool.

By the 1650s the wealthy John Jennens of Erdington Hall owned the Furnace and another at Bromford. He had moved the making of pig iron there from his works in Wednesbury because of the lack of local supplies of wood due to the cutting down of the trees over generations to produce charcoal for the smelting of iron. After the iron ore was dug out at Wednesbury it was carried by packhorse to Aston and Bromford.

In 1653 Jennens left property in Aston consisting of the ironworks, 100 loads of charcoal, and 30 tons of pig iron. After his death, the Aston Furnace continued to play an important role in the making of iron, and with Bromford, turned out 400 tons of pig iron annually. They also produced a huge amount of waste or clinker as it was called in Birmingham.

In the later eighteenth century, in his ‘History of Birmingham’, William Hutton declared that ‘from the melted ore, in this subterranean region of infernal aspect, is produced a calx, or cinder, of which there is an enormous mountain. From an attentive survey, the observer would suppose so prodigious a heap could not accumulate in one hundred generations.’

It was said that one Birmingham jeweller availed themselves of this material. According to Hutton, he ‘cut and polished some cinders from the calx of the Aston furnace, set them in rings and brooches, calling them fragments of Pompey's Pillar, and sold a large number of them before the imposition was detected’.

In 1711 the Aston Furnace were leased from Sir Charles Holte by Riland and Vaughton of Birmingham. Later it was taken on by the important Stour partnership associated with the celebrated Foleys of Stourbridge and then Spooner and Wright. The latter had to use a Newcomen steam engine for power after 1768 because the supply of water from the Aston Brook was inadequate to do so.

This engine steam pumped water back to the headpool for continued re-use by the wheels of the mill. As a new contraption it attracted great crowds ‘who used to stare and wonder at was then known commonly as the fire machine’.

However by the 1790s the Furnace was finally blown out and the clinker that had accumulated was used to make and repair the roads. By the 1830s the buildings were used as a paper mill and in the next decade by a firm of wire drawers. In 1865, that business moved to new premises in Alma Street but took the name ‘Aston Furnace Mills’. The Crocodile Works later occupied that site.

However the name of the Aston Furnace lived on. In 1849 White’s ‘Directory, a street called Aston Furnace Mills was named. This became the strangely-shaped and narrow Furnace Lane, a passageway which ran from half-way up Portchester Street, across Clifford Street and up to Gower Street, Lozells. It survived until it was swept away in the post-war redevelopment of Aston.



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image.jpeg
Here's Hockley Abbey in 1868. It does have a few castle features, but I've still to be wholly convinced. A few questions. Can someone pinpoint it (Abbey Street) on a map please? Was that a moat in the photo? And why did Camden Street come into the frame; Sir Thomas was reported to have had his own 'castle', so Hockley Abbey built in the 1770s wouldn't fit the bill in terms of date - too late. Viv.
 
image.jpeg And Hockley Abbey looking less castle-like. It's on a hill, very little else around except woods. Was this Birmingham Heath? No sign of a moat, although there might be water in the foreground. If it was a folly it wouldn't need a moat! Viv.
 
Returning to the extract from Wm Hutton's: An History of Birmingham here

image.jpeg

This extract mentions Birmingham's ancient moats, one of which is the building ('castle') we discussed of Sir Thomas de Birmingham (brother of Sir John de Birmingham). It was moated and fed by a small rivulet from Rotton Park near Sandpits. And the moat is described as square.

I believe there's absolutely no connection with Hockley Abbey. I think our earlier exploration still stands and there was once a moated building ('castle') somewhere in the Warstone (Worstone) area, and that as we've discussed, it was most probably in the vicinity of Camden Road. Just need a bit more evidence!


Viv.
 
I agree with you Viv. I don't think this is Hockley abbey, and do believe there was a construction with a moat ( though note from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moat that in medieval times it was often only a ditch and did not have to be filled with water), though possibly not a castle in the terms that we normally think of one, but possibly a partially fortified house
 
One thing occured to me, Wills. Thomas de Birmingham died before he could inherit lands of his brothers widow Elizabeth. Instead his two granddaughters inherited. It means that he would have left a Will naming them, to prove that he did indeed build a castle, and, more importantly, where it stood. I should have a readers ticket to Kew, I'll check to see if they hold the early Wills.
 
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I agree with you Viv. I don't think this is Hockley abbey, and do believe there was a construction with a moat ( though note from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moat that in medieval times it was often only a ditch and did not have to be filled with water), though possibly not a castle in the terms that we normally think of one, but possibly a partially fortified house

mike i did wonder if maybe it was a dry ditch..also wondering why we cant find a castle marked on any maps especially as it was still there when charles pye saw it..
 
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Thanks Di that's a very good idea.

Thanks Mike. A good point about the moat possibly being a ditch, although Hutton describes it as a "fluid bulwalk". We also now know it was a square moat/ditch. I too am almost convinced that the building was a fortified house of some sort.

Lyn, are you up for a geophysics mission to survey the ditch if we locate it?!! Viv.
 
morning viv...i am now leaning towards a fortified house of some sort..a castle as we know them just seems out of place in that area but what do i know lol...up for anything so long as the baby has been born (very soon i hope)...kind of confined to barracks and i wont go far until he arrives:rolleyes:
 
image.jpeg This is an aerial view from the 'Britain from above' site from 1948 (albeit around 600 years later!). The ground which we discussed in earlier posts as a possible site on Camden Road, was by 1948 developed in a different way to the other nearby roads. Can we detect anything from this?

The site's roughly square in shape. Don't know if someone can work out the size of the site bounded by Camden/New Spring/George/Icknield St/Roads, as in an earlier post we have the size of Sir Thomas's land (20 perches/605 sq yds approx). Although that might have included some surrounding land. Viv.
 
I have checked all likely places for Thomas's will but so far no luck. But the Library do hold a
bundle of papers relating to Thomas and John de Birmingham, 1402/1436 and 1437/1494.
More pertaining to Thoms 1367/1397. Is it worth a look?
 
Think they'd be worth a look Di. Thanks for tracking down the papers. If someone has time to have a look it would be great to see if there's any mention of the building at 'Worstone', a moated building or the general area we've discussed. I expect there will be something in there about Sir Thomas inheriting his brother's (John de B) money, but not John's home as this went to John de B's widow. Viv.
 
In terms of who might have inherited the 'Worstone' building after the death of Sir Thomas de B the following info might be useful:
Sir Thomas had a daughter - I think the only child- called Elizabeth, who married Sir Thomas DeLaRoche in 1392, at age 19. (Elizabeth was born circa 1379 in Birmingham). Elizabeth and Sir Thomas DeLaRoche had 2 daughters: Ellen de Ferres (born DeLaRoche) and one other child, details unknown. Sir Thomas DeLaRoche passed away in 1440, at age 67.

Viv.
 
Hi Caroline
What an encentric building that was to live in I wonder just how many years it
Had taken to grow all that ivy to cover the frontage cracking picture
Best wishes Alan,,, Astonian,,,,,
 
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