William Dargue - A History of Birmingham Places & Placenames . . .  from A to Y

Greet, Greet Common, Greet Hill

B11 - Grid reference SP100839

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Greet: first record 1275; Greet Common 1830

The Old English word greot means 'gravel'. Variations of the word can be found in a number of placenames across the country. The name would indicate to travellers that the ford across the River Cole on the Warwick Road was on glacial drift and ensured a firm crossing. As Birmingham's rivers and streams wind their way through sticky clay and marshy alluvium, good crossing points would be worth a detour to access, especially in wet or winter weather.

Greet was probably a Saxon daughter settlement of Yardley, Worcestershire's most northerly manor. Where sand and gravel drifts are found on top of red clay, there is no dense forest but scattered trees. The land is easier to clear for cultivation, ploughing is easier and there are drier places to build houses. Springs of fresh water can often be found at the edge of the drift. These were the first places people settled, often on the warmer south-facing slopes.

The medieval open strip fields of Greet lay south of the Warwick Road and west of the Stratford Road up to the River Cole. Hean Field (ie. High Field) lay between Stoney Lane, Showell Green Lane and Stratford Road; Gravel Field between the Stratford and Warwick roads and the River Cole; Berry Field lay to the east of the Warwick Road and north of the Cole.

Standing within a moat close to the River Cole, a timber-framed hall was the home of the steward who administered the manor on behalf of Studley Priory to whom the sub-manor of Greet belonged. The house was bought with the manor by the Greswolde family in the mid-16th century and subsequently rebuilt alongside as Greet Hall manor house. Known later as Manor Farm, it was rebuilt again in late Georgian times and finally demolished by 1930. The first Greet Inn was built alongside the hall in the early 20th century and a modern successor stood on the site until 2006 when it too was demolished to make way for a supermarket.

When the turnpikes were set up, bridges were often built to replace fords. Greet Bridge was a two-arch bridge over the River Cole on the Warwick Road by 1725. However, during wet weather the bridge and its approach served to hold up the water which then backed up and flooded onto the road. Forty years later the bridge was extended to five arches, the outer ones designed to allow floodwater to escape. Nonetheless, a torrential flood in 1777 led to the rebuilding of a yet wider bridge. In 1807 the Yardley Overseers were indicted for failing to repair flood damage which had made the bridge unusable, and the bridge had to be restored. In 1902 the bridge was rebuilt by Yardley Rural District Council to take the tram-line on to Acocks Green.

While most of Birmingham's main roads were laid with tramlines as far as the city boundary by the end of the 19th century, the Warwick Road needed so much widening, straightening, raising, draining and rebridging before lines could be laid, that work was still in progress during World War I. Along the narrowest part of the road through Greet, only a single track could be laid. This was controlled by traffic lights at either end, probably the first traffic lights in Birmingham. By 1916 the line reached Broad Road and was extended to Shirley Road in 1919. However, because of the narrowness of the Warwick Road, trams never did reach the city boundary, and the terminus remained at Acocks Green.

Greet never developed as a village around the manor house. In 1834 it was a small rural community on the Warwick Road with cottages standing around Seeleys Road and Weston Lane on both sides of side of the River Cole. During the 1870s, housing development began west of the River Cole on Greet Farm's Petty Fields now Albion Road and Bertha Road. These terraced rows were aimed at artisan workers and probably built with the workforce of the BSA Birmingham Small Arms factory in mind.

Greet Farm near St Johns Road was probably medieval in origin, was a large holding of over 50ha, much of it along the water-meadows of the Cole. The farm buildings stood until the 1880s when Percy Road was laid out; Greet School was built on the site soon afterwards. By 1888 urban development had spread along the Warwick Road and gradually outwards from Sparkbrook as farmland was bought up, streets laid out, and terraces built. By World War I Greet was almost fully developed, but as a district had no clear focus.

The name Greet means 'gravel' but this represents only an island of gravel in a surrounding sea of clay which was exploited commercially during the late 19th century. Very extensive claypits and brickworks lay east of the River Cole between Formans Lane and Weston Road. Many of the houses of Sparkbrook and Sparkhill were built of brick from these sites. Most of the brickworks had gone out of use by the 1920s and the claypits were infilled. The last remaining was Burbury's brickworks which lay west of the River Cole on the Riddings Field of Greet Farm. This too was out of use by the 1950s and the pits were infilled with industrial waste. During the last quarter of the 20th century work was carried out by the City Council to include the site as part of the green corridor along the River Cole. The area of wetland here is currently expanding as the water table rises throughout the city. This is thought to be in part due to the decrease in water extraction from on-site wells by local factories. The Burbury's brickworks site is noted for its wild orchids.

Greet Common lay south of College Road on the west bank of the River Cole.

Greet Hill was either the first part of Shaftmoor Lane leading up from the river at Greet Mill or the similar slope on the adjoining Stratford Road (See Greethurst immediately below). The hill was later known as Greenbank, a name recalled in nearby Greenbank Avenue. These names are shown on the first Ordnance Survey maps in the 19th century but have since fallen out of use.

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William Dargue 06.03.09

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For 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps of Birmingham go to British History Online - Maps.

Map below reproduced from Andrew Rowbottom’s website of Old Ordnance Survey maps Popular Edition, Birmingham 1921. See Acknowledgements. Click the map to link to that website.