Kingswood/ Kings Wood

Kingswood Unitarian Meeting House. © Copyright David Stowell and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence: Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. Geograph OS reference SP0777 - see Acknowledgements to link to this site.

Originally part of the royal manor of Kings Norton, this wood covered an area between Hollywood and Walkers Heath. The 1834 Ordnance Survey map shows a hamlet of this name at the junction of Crab Mill Lane with Bells Lane.

William Hutton in his 1783 History of Birmingham relates a tale about the enclosure of Kingswood by Roger de Mortimer, Earl of March. The Mortimers had built up extensive possessions in the Kings Norton area and were finally granted the manors of Bromsgrove and Norton by Edward II in 1317.

Roger de Mortimer was a ambitious and ruthless man who forced Edward to abdicate and later had him murdered, making himself Edward III's Regent. About the same time, during the 1320s, Mortimer had a great bank dug to enclose what had previously been common land shared by the parishes of Kings Norton, Solihull and Yardley.

Upon King's-wood, five miles from Birmingham, and two hundred yards east of the Alcester-road, runs a bank for near a mile in length, unless obliterated by the new inclosure; for I saw it complete in 1775. This was raised by the famous Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, about 1324, to inclose a wood, from whence the place derives its name.
Then that feeble monarch, Edward the Second, governed the kingdom; the amorous Isabella, his wife, governed the king, and the gallant Mortimer governed the queen.
The parishes of King's-norton, Solihull, Yardley, uniting in this wood, and enjoying a right of commons, the inhabitants conceived themselves injured by the inclosure, assembled in a body, threw down the fence, and murdered the Earl's bailiff.
Mortimer, in revenge, procured a special writ from the Court of Common Pleas, and caused the matter to be tried at Bromsgrove, where the affrighted inhabitants, over-awed with power, durst not appear in their own vindication. The Earl, therefore, recovered a verdict, and the enormous sum of 300l. [£300] damage. A sum nearly equal, at that time, to the fee-simple of the three parishes.
The confusion of the times, and the poverty of the people, protracted payment, till the unhappy Mortimer, overpowered by his enemies, was seized as a criminal in Nottingham-castle; and, without being heard, executed at Tyburn, in 1328.
The distressed inhabitants of our three parishes humbly petitioned the crown, for a reduction of the fine; when Edward the Third was pleased to remit about 260l [I = £].

The importance of common land in the Middle Ages to farming people is well demonstrated here even in the face of a so powerful an adversary as Mortimer.

A Unitarian meeting house was built in 1708 on Dark Lane, Hollywood by a group from Birmingham. During the 'Church and King' Riots of 1791 which were sparked off by a dinner in celebration of the French Revolution, rioters created a trail of destruction in and around Birmingham. Linking non-conformity with republicanism, they had already burned the two meeting houses in town and the houses of a number of wealthy people they thought may be dissenters. A gang of rioters travelled out as far as out as Kingswood where they burned down the chapel as well as six houses in Kings Norton. The meeting house was rebuilt in nearby Packhorse Lane by 1793 by members of the congregation.

Kingswood remains an area of farms and fields beyond the city boundary.