The sad case of Mary Ashford and trial by battle

A sad event which occurred in Erdington in the early nineteenth century was the murder and rape of local girl Mary Ashford. The most notable aspect of the case was that it was the last time trial by battle (or combat) was used by a defendant in a British court.

Mary Ashford was a twenty year old woman who attended a dance at the Three Tuns public house (nowadays known as the Tyburn House) on the 26th of May 1817. She met Abraham Thornton from Castle Bromwich at the dance, later she was seen leaving the pub with him and seen in his company walking along a local lane. However this was the last time she was seen alive, the next time she was seen she was found dead in a water filled pit. Thornton was arrested, a search revealed he had blood on his underclothes.

Despite evidence and public opinion against him Thornton was acquitted in the resulting trial on the direction of the Judge. This caused local and national outrage, Mary's brother William Ashford received funding and encouragement to challenge the acquittal under an ancient law which allowed the relatives of the murder victim to appeal a case. The case returned to court and that is when Thornton claimed the right to trial by battle. Thornton said he would fight William Ashford to decide the case, if he defeated Ashford then he would be acquitted. The last time trial by battle had taken place was in the late 16th century however it remained on the statute books. Ashford declined to fight Thornton, the case was closed and he was allowed to go free.

Trial by battle (and private appeals) was finally abolished in 1819. Thornton's unpopularity with the public forced him to emigrate to the US. It is said he died in Baltimore in 1860.

Scene of the crime [1]

Tyburn House

Ashford Drive, not too far from where Mary Ashford was found

[1] Thornton's second trial ... : the whole proceedings of the extraordinary trial of Abraham Thornton, for the murder of Mary Ashford (1818)

Broken crockery

While digging a hole in the garden awhile ago I found a few pieces of broken crockery. Its funny how you always find these little bits of broken cups and plates if you dig deep enough. I wondered why this was so.

Did people in the past often drop cups and plates in their gardens and then leave the shards in the garden? I'm not the only person to ponder this, and their thought that maybe these shards were put in the bottom of pots and over time ended up in the soil seems feasible.

As well as these pieces of crockery I also found a large rusty metal bolt. Maybe it fell off a Spitfire... well as i live opposite the Castle Bromwich Jaguar factory which in the war made Spitfires perhaps that isn't quite as far fetched as it might seem. Probably more likely off an old lawn mower though!

Churches (6) : All Saints, Shard End

After the end of World War 2 Birmingham needed new houses to replace the bombed out suburbs and Shard End was changed from rural farmland to a new housing estate as a result in the late 1940s. The new suburb of Birmingham needed a church and All Saints' was built in the mid-1950s to serve the new community. The new church was consecrated in 1955.

The church was designed by local architect FJ Osbourne and was the first new church built in Birmingham in the post-war period. The church has a modern and fairly striking design if maybe not as pretty as churches from earlier centuries. A statue of Christ, sculpted by William Bloye, was installed above the main entrance.

Personal note: the author's parents were married here!

10 fascinating facts about Erdington

Some years ago I thought about creating an Erdington history blog though in the end the project lost interest. I did however research some "fascinating facts" about the village in which i live so i thought i would post them here...

1. Chester Road, which runs through Erdington, probably predates the Romans and as you can thus imagine is one of the oldest roads in the area. Between Kenilworth and Brownhills the road follows the route of the ancient Welsh Road.

2. The Dwarf Holes were mysterious artificial caves, which were lost due to the construction of the Gravelly Hill Interchange. They may have dated from the Stone Age. They were mentioned in deeds dating from the 15th century in any case.

3. The brick factory on Holly Lane supplied the bricks for many of Erdington's houses up until WW2. Twenty million bricks were used to build Fort Dunlop.

4. Fort Dunlop was at one time the largest tyre factory in the British Commonwealth, it was built where in Erdington because of the ready supply of water from the River Tame and surrounding fields. My Great Aunt worked there in the early 20th century, amusingly there is a typo on the census record about that as she is described as a "ruber worker".

5. The murder of Mary Ashford in Erdington in 1817 and the resulting trial ended up with the British legal system being changed after the defendant Abraham Thornton challenged his accuser (Mary's younger brother) to a duel - trial by battle. The brother, as he was just a young lad, declined thus forcing the case to be dismissed. News of this case travelled far and wide, when Thornton tried to emigrate to the US he had a lot of trouble trying to get a ship in Liverpool as the fellow passengers did not want to share the same boat as a "murderer".

6. Number 2 Fern Road was the last house with a thatched roof in Birmingham though it's roof was replaced in 1944 due to the fire risk.

7. Six Ways is reputed to be the oldest traffic roundabout in the UK and certainly is one of the oldest.

8. In the 1900s Birmingham Council planned to build a gas works on the Glenthorne estate, luckily they built the Birches Green housing estate instead.

9. The Acorn Hotel was located on the High Street on the junction of Church Road up until the Second World War, a pub called The Acorn occupies part of the same site.

10. Two companies bid for the railway line from Birmingham to Sutton Coldfield, the winning company building what is now the Cross City Line. The alternative plan envisaged a rail route to Erdington that would have gone along the Tyburn Road and Wood End Lane with stations on Mason Road and Orphanage Road.

Bibliography
Arkinstall M & Baird P (1976), 'Erdington Past & Present', Birmingham Public Libraries
Baxter M & Drake P (1995), 'Erdington', Tempus
Baxter M & Drake P (2003), 'Erdington Vol 2', Tempus
Maxam A (2008), 'Vintage Images of Erdington Birmingham', Adlard

A trip to Stratford

To have a break from all the railway stuff just for a moment... i went to Stratford-upon-Avon yesterday. Of course the town is very familiar to me, my dissertation of my History Masters was on the economic effects of the horse drawn tramway on the town - at one stage i was going to Stratford nearly every week to go to the archives.

I don't go very often now, maybe once or twice a year. Yesterday i was taking a family friend from overseas on their first trip to the town, it was nice to do a bit of "touristy" stuff for once especially at the church of the Holy Trinity where Shakespeare is buried.

Walking the waterways (6) : Coventry Canal

The Coventry Canal is a 38 mile canal that stretches from Fradley Junction near Lichfield where it is connected to the Trent & Mersey Canal. The canal company was formed in 1768 [1] with the canal opening the following year though delays in raising sufficient finance (financially the company was quite weak compared to most contemporary projects) meant it was not completed until 1789.

Fradley Junction

As you might imagine the other end of the canal is in Coventry, and indeed the canal terminates here at Coventry Basin. Though before that there are connections to the Lichfield (originally the Wyrley & Essington), Ashby, Birmingham & Fazeley and Oxford canals. The Coventry Canal performed a useful role in connecting the various canals to the East and North of the Birmingham complex.

One complication with plotting the Coventry Canal is that while in reality it is a continuous stretch of waterway some maps treat it as two separate sections connected by part of the Birmingham & Fazeley. This confusion dates from the days of private ownership of the canals which often could be quite Byzantine, but now the canals are all owned by British Waterways the canal should really be treated as it physically is.

Approaching Coventry Basin

Narrowboat near the Ricoh Arena on the outskirts of Coventry

Coventry Basin

[1] J.R. Ward, The Finance of Canal Building in Eighteenth Century England (Oxford University Press, 1974) p. 31

The social history of 1970s fireplaces

Social history, especially of the late 20th century, is one of the main aspects of the great subject of history that fascinates me the most (the other is the Roman republic, so as you can see i have quite a wide area of interest). Adverts are often overlooked as a source material but they can provide an insight into the mundane and the intimate that more "worthy" academic-friendly texts and sources may miss or overlook.

Take this example of an advert for gas fires from the August 22 1977 Evening Mail (scanned from a reproduction). You can get a lot of information on life in ordinary British homes in the late 1970s. The 1970s aesthetic design of course (though there is nothing wrong with these in my opinion, especially as the gas fire in my living room right now is listed in this advert...)

The brand names are different, could you imagine someone trying to sell home items branded Radiation these days post-Chernobyl and Fukushima? The prices also show the effect of inflation. £2.25 might get you a thin magazine these days but back in 1977 it was a monthly payment for one of these fires. The total price of £80 and higher might not seem so much these days but back in the late 1970s it was a large amount of money for an average family.

In fact the Measuring Worth website estimates that £80 in 1977 is the equivalent of over £400 today.

Berwood Bridge

Berwood Bridge, one of the Listed Buildings in Erdington, is one of the last remaining traces of the Berwood sub-manor of Erdington.

Berwood Hall, which once stood where the modern day Farnborough Road is now, dates from the 13th century. The land originally, it is recorded, was given by Hugh de Arderne[1] to the Abbey of St Mary of the Meadows in Leicester for use of a monastic grange. A moated hall is recorded in the 13th century but by the 17th century it had fallen in disrepair. A chapel on the manor (built by the canons in return for the gifts of land to sing masses for the souls of Hugh's descendants) fell into disuse by the early 15th century. The manor remained the possession of the abbey until the dissolution of the monastries and the manor was sold to Thomas Arden in 1540.


It remained owned by the Ardens until a later descendant (Dorothy) married into the Bagot family of Staffordshire[2]. The Reverend Walter Bagot was lord of the manor in 1783, his son was also later lord of the manor at nearby Pype Hayes Hall. The Bagot Arms pub still bears their name.

Much of the land was sold in the 1880s by the Bagots to the Birmingham Tame & Rae Drainage Board (a sewage farm is listed as being here in the late 1800s before it was moved to its current location in Minworth) but by then the manor probably no longer existed in any real sense.

December 1945 view of Berwood Bridge (via Google Earth), the bridge can be seen just left of the centre of the image.

A farmhouse built on the site of the former manor house served as the officers' mess at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome during the First World War[3] though by the Second World War the farmhouse and much of the rest of the Berwood estate had been swallowed up by the airfield. Following the war the Castle Vale estate was built on the site of the old airfield.

A few names survive here and then on new buildings and roads but it is likely the only surviving remnant of the old manor is Berwood Bridge which was built in the early 19th century to allow Berwood Lane to cross the then-new Birmingham & Fazeley Canal. Nowadays the bridge allows people to travel between a main road and industrial units to a housing estate, when the bridge was built though it would have been a very different environment!

1) L. F. Salzman (editor). "Parishes: Curdworth." A History of the County of Warwick: Volume 4: Hemlingford Hundred (1947): 60-67. British History Online. Web. 26 March 2012. <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=42656&strquery=berwood>
2) William Fowler. "A history of Erdington: an address to the members of the Erdington Institute... delivered April 27th, 1885 (London:British Library)"
3) William Dargue. "A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames . . . from A to Y" Berwood, Berwood Common <http://billdargue.jimdo.com/placenames-gazetteer-a-to-y/places-b/berwood/>

The case of the Birmingham Ship Canal(s)

Birmingham is famously supposed to have more canals than Venice (albeit over a wider area) but lacks easy access to the sea by larger vessels. In the 1880s there were a number of schemes to enlarge some of the canals linking Birmingham to the major rivers of the country to create a ship canal that could allow vessels in the 200-300 ton range (depending on the scheme).

River steamer on the Severn
at Worcester

The scheme which probably came closest to getting the go-ahead was a link to the river Severn above Worcester by enlarging the Worcester & Birmingham Canal[1]. The scheme envisaged going through Droitwich so presumably the Droitwich Canal would also have been enlarged. The Birmingham City Council formed a Ship Canal Enquiry Committee to look into the scheme which would have allowed vessels up to 200 tons right into the centre of the city. The cost of the scheme was estimated at £2 million (when of course this was real money).

However in 1888 the Council declined going ahead with the scheme and disbanded the committee, citing that it was outside of their municipal concerns[2]. Of course by now the canals were being surpassed by the railways and there were also worries that the railways would undercut the new canal (which would be a considerable engineering and financial undertaking) making it economically unviable.

This wasn't the only scheme however, a number of the city's great and good also proposed a ship canal scheme linking Birmingham to the river Mersey[3]. This canal, which would have allowed ships up to 300 tons would have linked Birmingham to the Weaver Navigation Canal and then through to the Mersey, Liverpool and the sea. This canal would have been 60ft wide and 11ft deep and would have passed through South Staffordshire, the Potteries and Cheshire[4]. However this scheme (which would have cost a mere £1.6 million) came to naught as did a scheme to link Birmingham to the Thames[5].

By the late 1890s canals were beginning to be seen as old hat as the railway network continued to grow and few if any canal schemes were in development anywhere. In many ways it is a shame none of the ship canal schemes came to anything. Ships up to 300 tons would be much larger than anything that usually chugs through the canals at Birmingham's heart. The Edwardian steamer TSS Earnslaw perhaps can give us an idea of the sort of boat we could have expected making it up to Birmingham in the early 1900s (although it would be slightly oversize at 330t). The canal schemes came to nothing though may have inspired this song...

Photo (c) trakesht at Wikipedia

(1) Charles Anthony Vince MA, History of the Corporation of Birmingham Vol 3 1885-1899 (Cornish:Birmingham, 1902), p. 365
(2) Vince, p. 368
(3) Birmingham & Liverpool Ship Canal (Pamphlet, 1888), p. 5
(4) Birmingham Daily Gazette 6th July 1888
(5) Birmingham & Liverpool Ship Canal, p. 17

The trolleybuses of Walsall and elsewhere

Nowadays light rail tramway systems are all the rage but no one talks about bringing back the trolleybuses.

Of course in hindsight losing such a network (and the tram networks) was a mistake the latter though is slowly being rectified via various costly new tram schemes. You have to wonder sometimes why trolleybuses are not given a go, they can use the existing roads so the start-up costs must be much less though they would suffer from the same road congestion problems as motorbuses of course and more importantly arn't as sexy as light rail...

I haven't seen a working trolleybus in the UK (i have seen one as a boy abroad but i can't remember where!) but i have seen a number of preserved examples including one of the Walsall trolleybuses which used to be in the AMRTM collection (is it still there?)

A Walsall trolleybus with 2 motorbuses at the AMRTM

A London trolleybus at the LT Museum Depot, Acton

Trolleypoles seen here were used to collect the current from overhead wires

Examining the deeds

Last week while my Mum was having some work done on her house (new guttering in case you were wondering) an elderly couple were seen by the workmen taking photos of the house. They came and spoke to the workmen, apparently they were from New Zealand and their father had lived in the house just before the war. For some reason they just went off then and didn't stop to speak to my Mum who was in the house, hopefully they didn't come all that way just to see that house!

This got me interested anyway to try and find out who the father of the people from New Zealand may have been. I had a look in the house deeds, which is a thick folder of old documents. A Mr & Mrs Pugh bought the house from new in 1929 for £440 and they sold it to a Mr Charles Henry Alexander in 1939 for £450 (house prices obviously did not rise much in the 1930s). The Pughs went to live in Marston Green so we can assume that it was their son who went to New Zealand. For completion Alexander sold the house in 1949, and it was sold again in 1956 before my parents bought it in 1975.

The old documents are fascinating (i of course have quite a lot of experience in handling old documents from when i did my History Masters). The spelling in some of the oldest from the 1920s and 1930s is atrocious! Obviously people did not have auto-correct and spell checkers back then...

Also of interest is a court summons from the 1910s. I'm not sure why that is in there unless it relates to the land the house is built on (i'll have a closer look another time). I found while doing my Masters that odd documents often appear where they shouldn't be so maybe a filing clerk at a solicitors got a bit careless once long ago.

Royal cypher

A Royal cypher is a "monogram-like device of a country's reigning sovereign" (Wikipedia) which in the UK is most commonly seen on postboxes which usually bear EIIR standing for Elizabeth II of course. However there are still many postboxes which still bear the names of earlier monarchs. Most of these are for George VI and George V but even some for Edward VIII during his short reign and earlier monarchs.

In Four Oaks is a postbox which bears the cypher GR which dates it from the reign of George V which means it was probably installed between 1910 and 1936.