Welcome to Birmingham

Birmingham, the City of a Thousand Trades, came to prominence as a major powerhouse of the industrial revolution. As Britain’s second city it remains the cultural and economic capital of the West Midlands, whose gentle landscape was the inspiration for The Shire of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Birmingham is host to more national and international sporting championships than any other city in the UK, home to Britain’s finest concert venue (the world class Symphony Hall) and Europe’s busiest exhibition centre, the National Exhibition Centre. The 500 million pounds Bullring Centre development and Selfridges contribute to Birmingham’s status as one of the UK’s leading retail capitals.

Although the period of growth since the Industrial Revolution has been the most significant in the creation of the Birmingham we know today, the town itself is of considerably more ancient origins. The first clue to that origin is the name itself: Birmingham comes from the Saxon language brought to England from the continent during the two centuries following Roman withdrawal. The Saxons would eventually conquer large swathes of England, settling in large part into agriculture in farms organised around a family or group of families. Birmingham would appear to be one of these early Saxon settlements; it is derived from Berm (a man’s name) ing (meaning family) and ham (meaning home).

The period of Saxon dominance in England came to an end with the Norman Conquest led by William I in 1066. He commissioned the Domesday Book to survey his new kingdom. It is in the Domesday Book that the first historical record of Birmingham, then called Bremingeham, appears. At this time it was little more than the tiniest hamlet consisting of 4 peasant households, four ploughs, 5 tenant farmers working forty acres and 4 working ten, as well as a wood, half a mile long and four furlongs broad. This entry for Birmingham concludes that it was worth 20 shillings.

In 1166, exactly 100 years after the Norman conquest, King Henry II granted Peter de Birmingham, the local Lord of the Manor, the right to hold a weekly market. Subsequently a number of merchants and craftsmen settled in the town. In 1250 permission to hold an annual fair was granted in recognition of Birmingham’s growing status. During these centuries the town developed a reputation for its woollen and metalworking industries and to some extent leatherworking. When Birmingham’s oldest surviving houses, the Lad in the Lane Pub in Erdington and the Crown House Inn, were constructed at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, the population of the town would have been around 2000.

Over the 16th and 17th centuries Birmingham continued to grow largely due to its increasing reputation as a centre for metalworking. The 16th century writer, Campden, described Birmingham as “full of inhabitants, and echoing with forges”. In this, the town benefited greatly from being close to natural sources of iron and the coal used to fuel the furnaces.

It was primarily these same natural resources which stood Birmingham in such good stead when it came to the Industrial Revolution. Birmingham’s major strength was Metalworking. Its eighteenth century metalworks were famed for producing anything and everything from blades of all kinds, bolts, buckles (especially for shoes) buttons, nails, pins and screws. Birmingham was also famed for its locksmiths and gunsmiths. Sarehole Mill was built in 1765, replacing an earlier mill built around 1540. Although for most if its working life it was used for grinding corn, by the end of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th, it was used for blade grinding, testament to the demand for Birmingham’s metalworks - yet it was just one of Birmingham’s 50 mills, which were used for this purpose at this time.

Sarehole Mill and the area surrounding it are known for their connection with J.R.R. Tolkien, writer of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Family moved to 5 Gracewell Road (now Wake Green Road) in 1897, located just opposite Sarehole Mill. The young Tolkien lived out his childhood here, sneaking into the mill only to be chased off by the miller and his son (who Tolkien called the “white ogre”) and playing in the woods of Mosley Bog behind the family home. It is thought that Moseley Bog gave the young Tolkien the inspiration for the Old Forest in his famous books, while the surrounding countryside for The Shire, home of the hobbits. Perfectly preserved, Sarehole Mill remains today as an interesting tourist attraction dedicated to Birmingham’s industrial past and the famous writer.

Although metalworking remained the forestay of the local economy, Birmingham also became renowned for glassworking and jewelry. The first railway line arrived in 1837, testament to the fact that it had become one of the country’s most populous and important towns. Before long carriages for these trains were being made in Birmingham. Birmingham was made a city in 1889; by around 1930 its population had reached the million mark which has been maintained to this day.

In recent years Birmingham has been at the forefront of the shift away from the UK’s traditional industries towards the service sector. Yet owing to the city’s dynamism it has taken much of these changes in its stride, largely reinventing itself as a retail capital and as a host for sporting events and conferences. Nowadays, Birmingham is a cultured, cosmopolitan and truly modern city.