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

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

 

Harpers Hill

B3 - Grid reference SP062876

Use the grid reference on the Ordnance Survey website - Get-a-map.

 

Harpers Hill from Samuel Smiles 1865 'Lives of Boulton and Watt' a work now out-of-copyright downloaded from Grace's Guide website. See Acknowledgements to link to that site.Harpers Hill from Samuel Smiles 1865 'Lives of Boulton and Watt' a work now out-of-copyright downloaded from Grace's Guide website. See Acknowledgements to link to that site.

Harpers Hill, the rising ground at the top of James Street in the Jewellery Quarter, Hockley, is probably named from a previous landowner.

 

A blue plaque commemorates the fact that from 1775 to 1790 James Watt lived at a house called Regents Place on Harpers Hill, its entrance at the north end of the street. It was a large double-fronted house built in brick with stone facings, at that time on the outskirts of the town.

 

The house itself was demolished c1885, but the caretaker's house at Deakin & Francis Ltd, 17 Regent Place, is one of the outbuildings of the original house. In 1790 as the town came nearer, Watt moved to Heathfield in Handsworth.

 

William Dargue 21.03.09

 

  

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