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

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

 

Marston Green, Marston Culy/ Marston Culey, Wavers Marston

B37 - Grid reference SP168855

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

Merestone: first record in the Domesday Book 1086,

There are many Marstons across the country. In Old English mersc tun means 'marsh farm'. To this has been added green, a term which which usually signified common grazing land. Marston Green lies between Hatchford Brook to the west and and Low Brook to the east which both run northwards to join the River Cole.

 

Listed as Merestone with the Warwickshire entries in the Domesday Book, the manor was divided into two parts in the 12th century. In order to distinguish between them the new manors were to take the name of their lords, Marston Culy and Wavers Marston. The de Culy family are first known in the area c1248, but on their extinction a hundred yearas later, the manor passed to Sir Fouk de Birmingham. The Wavers family held Wavers Marston from the end of the 12th century until 1476.

 

Marston Culy was known as Marston Green by 1830, but Marston Culey Farm is still shown on the 1891 Ordnance Survey map as a (medieval) moated site in the area now overlain by Farndon Avenue. It was presumably the site of the manor house. Another moated site, presumably the manor house of Wavers Marston, is shown south of Chelmsley Lane in the area where Wayside has now been laid out. Culey Place, perhaps its successor stands on the north side of Chelmsley Lane.

 

By the time of publication of the 1834 Ordnance Survey map Marston Green was compact village around the junctions of Coleshill Road, Bickenhill Road, Elmdon Road, Chelmsley Lane and Holly Lane. Its preoccupations were entirely agricultural.

 

In 1838 the London-Birmingham railway opened passing very close to the village centre. Marston Green Station opened six years later. It was rebuilt in the 1970s not long after the London line was electrified.

 

Although the railway line opened up the district to Victorian commuters to Birmingham and some large houses were built as a result,  it was not until some years after the First World War  that house building began here in earnest.

 

Private houses were built along Elmdon Road, Elmdon Lane, Chelmsley Lane and Holly Lane. The busy shopping parade on Station Road dates from this time.


In the 1970s, although Marston Green was effectively tacked on to the enormous housing development of Chelmsley Wood, it has still retained its identity as a village. The expansion of Birmingham International Airport has gradually taken up all the farmland south of the London railway line and efforts have been made to reduce the noise of aircraft by the erection of earth banks on the airfield boundary.

 

William Dargue 06.04.09

 

 

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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.