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

Wheeleys Hill

B15 - Grid reference SP058855

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

Wheeleys Hill is now Wheeleys Road and is probably named after a landowner. Certainly the surname Wheeley is found in Edgbaston in the 18th century.

In 1727 the Bromsgrove Turnpike opened following the old road to Bristol via Edgbaston. This route left Birmingham from Smallbrook Street (Queensway), going via Holloway Head, Wheeleys Lane, Wheeleys Hill now Wheeleys Road, Arthur Road, Church Road and Priory Road. It then went via a lost road which skirted Edgbaston Park where evidence of the holloway survives. It crossed the Lower Pool dam and then the Bourn Brook at the bridge on Bristol Road near Bournbrook Road.

In 1771 a straighter route was made from Smallbrook Queensway via Horsefair, Bristol Street and Bristol Road to join the old road before Bournbrook Bridge. There was a tollgate at Priory Road/ Edgbaston Road. A tollbar at Edgbaston Park Road was manned on market days to catch travellers hoping to use the old road through Edgbaston Park. The next tollgate was at Longbridge.

Eliezer Edwards writing in First Impressions in 1877 mentions Wheelys Hill in his description of the town as it had been 40 years previously on his arrival here:

The Hagley Road had a few houses dotted here and there [The Plough and Harrow], . . . was all was open country. Calthorpe Street was pretty well filled with buildings. St. George's Church was about half built. Frederick Street and George Street - for they were not 'Roads' then - were being gradually filled up. There were some houses in the Church Road and at Wheeleys Hill, but the greater portion of Edgbaston was agricultural land.

By 1877 much of it was built up.

A Birmingham Civic Society blue plaque in Wheeleys Road commemorates Joseph Sturge (1793-1859), the noted anti-slavery campaigner. He lived at No.64, now demolished, from 1824 until his death in 1859. Eden Croft flats replaced the original building at the junction with St James Road and Charlotte Road.

William Dargue 21.01.09

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