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William Dargue

A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames . . . from A to Y

From Acoks Green to the Yenton, from Ashstead to Gyrdleahe, from Hasfurlong to Yorks Wood,

here is the story of Birmingham's places and placenames from A to Y.

Many Birmingham placenames date back to the Anglo-Saxon period over 1000 years ago. Here are their meanings and a history of their localities. There are suggested sights to see, historical overviews, a glossary with local examples and an extensive list of weblinks.

Click here for the Postcode Gazetteer - Click here for the Placenames Gazetteer

or click on the alphabet below:

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Google Maps

Interactive maps on the Gazetteer pages are from Google Maps. See below for other map sites.

Online Maps

Google Maps

There are Google maps on every page of the Gazetteer. If you lose the original focus of the Google map, press function key F5 on your keyboard to refresh the page. The map will then recentre on its original location.

Other map sites well worth looking at are -

Ordnance Survey Get-a-map. Use the grid references in the text with this website.

Jef Poskanzer's ACME Mapper, based on and similar to Google Maps, but with additional features.

Multimap which shows not only maps, but aerial and bird's eye views - and now Ordnance Survey maps.

Andrew Rowbottom's website, Popular Edition - Old OS Maps 1920s-30s, a site of Ordnance Survey maps of England & Wales of the 1920s-30s, particularly useful as it has Google map overlays. The Birmingham map was published in 1921.

New Popular Edition OS Maps website has Ordnance Survey maps of the 1940-50s, by Richard Fairhurst, Nick Burch, Andrew Rowbottom, Mike Calder, Dominic Hargreaves, David Sheldon, Matthew Westcott. The Birmingham map was published in 1953.

British History Online - Maps: 1880s-90s

Ordnance Survey 1:2,500 Epoch 1, The County Series maps at scale 1:2500 for Birmingham and other major cities -

Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire.

Ordnance Survey 1:10,560 - Epoch 1, the County Series of Ordnance Survey maps for Great Britain; begun in 1840, the first comprehensive historic mapping of England, Scotland and Wales.

Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire.

Newly added links

Photographs - West Midlands Exploration: Birmingham This gallery will showcase photos taken during my various explorations of the Birmingham area over the last few years, and will feature images relating to the local area and its transport network. You can also visit the other local WME galleries to explore more of the West Midlands and surrounding areas. The personal site of Paul M Walker.

Added February 2010