Northfield is a residential area in outer south Birmingham, in the county of the West Midlands, England, near the boundary with Worcestershire, which it was historically within. It is also a council constituency, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the wards of Kings Norton, Longbridge, Weoley Castle and the smaller ward of Northfield that includes West Heath and Turves Green.
Mentioned in the Domesday Book and formerly a small village, then included in north Worcestershire, Northfield became part of Birmingham in 1911 after it had been rapidly expanded and developed in the period prior to World War I. The northern reaches of Northfield fall within the Bournville model village and the southern housing estates were originally built by Austin Motors for their workforce.
A centre of the Midlands nail making industry during the 19th century and home to both the Kalamazoo paper factory and the Austin motor company's Longbridge factory in the 20th century, today Northfield is predominantly a residential and dormitory suburb of metropolitan Birmingham. Northfield stands on either side of the main A38, heading south from the centre of Birmingham to Bromsgrove and onwards all the way to Cornwall.
History
Pre-history Northfield was occupied or visited in the Stone Age as evidenced by a yellow Chert neolithic scraper discovered in Quarry Lane and a stone axe-head found on Tessall Lane, dated to the New Stone Age. It is also possible that Northfield was occupied in the Bronze Age as large burnt mounds of heat-shattered stones have been identified alongside Northfield's streams evidencing occupation of the area over a lengthy period of time. One of these mounds found near Merritts Brook Lane is 16 metres across. Two further mounds, one on Griffin's Brook near Woodlands Park Road and another at the foot of Bell Hill, were radiocarbon-dated to and respectively. The usage evidence is not totally conclusive, but the hot stones are believed to have either provided heating for domestic cooking or Bronze Age saunas.
Roman, Saxon and Norman periods
Before Roman times the area round Northfield most likely belonged to the Celtic tribe, Dobunii, there is little evidence of Saxon settlement and the area was probably mainly Celtic. The name was original nord feld, an Anglo-Saxon phrase and Northfield was probably named because the area is to the north of Bromsgrove. Northfield was also near the northern edge of the Saxon kingdom called Hwicce as were Kings Norton and Yardley and was near the northern edge of the area settled by Saxons arriving from the south.
What is now the route of the Bristol Road South through Northfield had become known as the Upper Saltway (part of the historic Ryknild Street), because it was one of the routes used to transport salt extracted from the Droitwich brine springs all the way to Saltfleet on the Lincolnshire coast. The salt was then loaded onto ships and exported to France and Scandinavia for trading purposes.
The Romans also used the road that became the Upper Saltway as a frequent route between settlements and marching forts. Roman occupation evidence was discovered by chance near the Bristol Road South in Northfield when Pigeon House near Hill Top Road was demolished in c1921 (as the Bristol Road was being widened) and the Northfield hoard of 16 Roman coins was found buried. The trove included coins of Claudius II Gothicus (268–270 CE), Diocletian (284–305 CE), Maximian (285–286 CE), Constantius (305–306 CE), Constantine (306–337 CE) . The excavation also revealed a Roman aqueduct that indicated a Romano-British building of some status had once stood on the site. In 1963 a Roman coin was found in nearby Rednal by a Janet and Stephen Harris. The coin was a dupondius struck during the reign of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius who ruled Rome and Britain from 138 to 161 AD. The tiny coin was struck from brass and would have been worth about the price of a loaf of bread.
Northfield was in a Saxon settlement or a Celtic area that Saxons had conquered in North Worcestershire, which in 1086 became part of the lands of William Fitz-Ansculf, a Norman knight. The village Nordfeld is described in the Domesday Book as having a priest as well as seven villeins, sixteen bordars, six cottars, who shared enough land for thirteen ploughs, two serfs and a bondswoman (a slave). St. Laurence's Church, Northfield dates from the 12th century, nearby is the Great Stone Inn with a medieval timber framed hall and the 17th Century village pound where stray animals were kept; the large rock in the pound, a glacial "erratic" (see Geology below), was formerly in the road at the corner of the inn, and was used as a mounting-block by horse-riders; it was removed in the interests of road safety in the 1950s. The area round the church, the inn and the pound are a conservation area because of their historic importance. A local joke describes Northfield as "where they sell beer by the Stone and ale by the Pound".
Civil War period During the English Civil War Northfield stood on the northern border of royalist Worcestershire and right next to parliamentary Warwickshire and there were regular minor skirmishes and conflicts between the forces of the two opposing sides. Hawkesley House in West Heath, which belonged to the royalist Middlemore family, was besieged and seized by parliamentary forces who fortified the building but were re-expelled subsequently by royalist forces in May 1645 and the house was then razed to the ground.Mason Henry "The Austin Village", page 65. publisher unnamed. 2007 Prince Rupert of the Rhine, commander of the Royalist cavalry, lived in Longbridge House and used it as his headquarters throughout the siege of Hawkesley House. Hawksley House is now an archaeological site.
There are traditions that Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, slept in Selly Manor on his way to the Battle of Bosworth Field. Later Robert Catesby, of the Gunpowder Plot fame, and Oliver Cromwell are both said to have also visited Northfield and also stayed at Selly Manor House.
19th century
Throughout the early part of the 19th century Northfield was known for its nail making industry based in cottages and small workshops next to the Church. Within the ward in 1831 there were 122 men recorded as being employed in the industry. However the industry was already in decline – in 1841 there were 74 nailers and in 1884 there were only 23 with seven of those in West Heath. Nailer's workshops had been present in Northfield, Groveley, West Heath and Turves Green. By the start of the 20th century nailing had moved to central Birmingham factories, ceasing to be a cottage industry. Also nearby were a number of grain mills on the banks of the River Rea, where locally grown corn and wheat was ground.
Northfield was on the main road between Birmingham and Worcester. In 1762 this route was turnpiked and the Northfield tollgate was on the site of the modern-day corner of Rochester Road. Today the original turnpike is known as the Bristol Road South. The 'Bell and Bluebell Inn' at the junction of Bell Lane and Bell Holloway was a coaching station for travellers until a new 'Bell Inn' was built on the Bristol Road in 1803. There was a small separate hamlet on Bell Lane where several late 18th-century and early 19th-century cottages still survive. From 1766 a cross-country route was also turnpiked from Northfield to Wootton Wawen, Henley-in-Arden.
In 1868 N E S A Hamilton's The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland described the parish as follows:
Northfield, a parish in the upper division of the hundred of Halfshire, county Worcester, 6 miles South-West. of Birmingham, its post town, and 2 West of the King's Norton station on the Gloucester railway. It is situated on the small river Rea, and on the road from Birmingham to Worcester.
The parish contains the hamlets of Selly, Hay, Shendley, and Bartley. A portion of the inhabitants are employed in nail making. There are chemical works and freestone quarries. The surface is flat towards the East, but hilly in the West. The soil is a fertile loam, producing good crops of wheat and beans.
In 1870 Northfield railway station was opened providing new business opportunities. Charles Pegram, a local industrialist built houses for railway workers, also a roller skating rink and a temperance hotel all near the station.
20th century Victoria Common was laid out and landscaped on the site of the former public common land called Bradley's Field by Birmingham City Council as a municipal recreation area to mark Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, was never completed and reopened to the public until 1901. The park has changed little since it was first opened (though trees have grown and matured), excepting the additions of several tennis courts laid in the 1930s and a children's play area built in the 1950s and renewed since. A tributary of Griffin's Brook ran through the park but was piped underground as far as St Lawrence Road during landscaping. The original grand entrance gates, park-keeper's residential lodge, gardeners' workshops and nursery greenhouse all stood on the Bristol Road South where the Northfield Shopping Centre precinct now stands.
During the first decade of the 20th century Austin Motor Works and Kalamazoo both entered the area, providing plentiful and well paid employment for Northfield residents.
In 1900 visitors arriving via Northfield railway station could visit the skating rink on West Heath Road next to the bridge over the River Rea. Unfortunately the skating rink was used during the First World War as a munitions factory and following an accident the rink was destroyed by fire. Another notable building of the area was The Bath Tub open air lido (now demolished), opened on 1 July 1937 in Alvechurch Road, where 20,000 people had gathered to watch the opening ceremony by Gracie Fields with Mantovani and his orchestra and the M.P. for Northfield and Kings Norton, Ronald Cartland, the brother of Dame Barbara Cartland, the novelist. The lido which had been built by Percy Hollier, who intended it to be "Birmingham's brightest entertainment spot" and which included a 180-foot-by-90-foot swimming pool as well as a putting green, lawn for archery and a children's playground, only operated for three years and was closed due to commercial failure.Richards Peter. "The History of Northfield", page 5. Northfield Library 1986Caswell Pauline. "Images of England Northfield", page128. Tempus Publishing Ltd 1996 Laughtons took over the site with Eddystone Radio during World War II, when its semi-rural location helped it to avoid attack by German air raids. The lido site is now covered by a housing estate.
Northfield Library serves the area. It was opened in 1906, but was destroyed by fire in 1914 in a suspected arson attack by the Suffragettes. It was rebuilt in the same year by the Free Libraries Committee. The façade remains the same; however, in 1984, the library building was doubled in size to accommodate more books. The library celebrated its centenary in 2006. West Heath library also serves the area.
As recently as 1900 Northfield was still a village within the rural north Worcestershire countryside. The residential Austin Village was built during World War I to house factory workers. Later a succession of private and council housing developments had completely swallowed Northfield up into the City of Birmingham. The extensive housebuilding continued before and after World War II through extensions to the Bournville Model Village and several estates of temporary Prefab housing in West Heath, although new house provision has slowed down to a much less dramatic rate since the 1970s.
In 1911 the civil parish had a population of 31,395. On 9 November 1912 the parish was abolished and merged with Birmingham.