Birmingham has seen 1400 years of growth, during which time it has evolved from a small 7th century Anglo Saxon hamlet on the edge of the Forest of Arden at the fringe of the early Mercia into a major city. A combination of innovation and civic pride helped to bring about major social and economic reforms and create the Industrial Revolution, inspiring the growth of similar cities across the world.
The last 200 years or so have seen Birmingham rise from market town to the fastest-growing city of the 19th century, spurred on by a combination of civic investment, scientific achievement, commercial innovation and by a steady influx of migrant workers into its suburbs. By the 20th century Birmingham had become the metropolitan hub of the United Kingdom's manufacturing and automotive industries, having earned itself a reputation first as a city of canals, then of cars, and most recently as a major European convention and shopping destination.
At the beginning of the 21st century, Birmingham now lies at the heart of a major post-industrial metropolis surrounded by significant educational, manufacturing, shopping, sporting and conferencing facilities.
Prehistory
Stone Age
The oldest human artefact found within Birmingham is the Saltley Handaxe: a 500,000-year-old brown quartzite hand axe about long, discovered in the gravels of the River Rea at Saltley in 1892. Other parts of Birmingham are quite similar in this way, as people seem to have lived there for millennia . This provided the first evidence of Lower Paleolithic human habitation of the English Midlands, an area previously thought to have been sterile and uninhabitable before the end of the last glacial period. Similarly aged axes have since also been found in Erdington and Edgbaston, and bioarchaeological evidence from boreholes in Quinton, Nechells and Washwood Heath suggests that the climate and vegetation of Birmingham during this interglacial period were very similar to those of today.
The area became uninhabitable with the advancing glaciation of the last ice age, and the next evidence of human habitation within Birmingham dates from the Mesolithic period. A 10,400-year-old settlement – the oldest within the city – was excavated in the Digbeth area in 2009, with evidence that hunter-gatherers with basic flint tools had cleared an area of forest by burning. Flint tools from the later Mesolithic period – between 8000 and 6000 years ago – have been found near streams in the city, though these probably represent little more than hunting parties or overnight camps.
The oldest man-made structures in the city date from the Neolithic era, including a possible cursus identified by aerial photography near Mere Green, and the surviving barrow at Kingstanding. Neolithic axes found across Birmingham include examples made of stone from Cumbria, Leicestershire, North Wales and Cornwall, suggesting the area had extensive trading links at the time.
Bronze and Iron Ages Stone axes used by the area's first farmers over 5,000 years ago have been found within the city and the first bronze axes date from around 4,000 years ago. Pottery dating back to 2700BC has been found in Bournville.
The most common prehistoric sites in Birmingham are burnt mounds – a form characteristic of upland areas and possibly formed by the heating of stones for cooking or steam bathing purposes. Forty to fifty have been found in the Birmingham area, all but one datable to the period 1700–1000 BC. Burnt mound sites such as that discovered in Bournville also show evidence of wider settlements, with clearances in the woodland and grazing animals. Possible Bronze Age settlements with later Iron Age farmsteads have been discovered at Langley Mill Farm in Sutton Coldfield. Further evidence of Iron Age settlement has been found at Berry Mound, a hill fort located in the Bromsgrove district of Worcestershire, near Shirley.
Romano-British era, c. 47–c. 600
In Roman times a large military fort and marching camp, Metchley Fort, existed on the site of the present Queen Elizabeth Hospital near what is now Edgbaston in southern Birmingham. The fort was constructed soon after the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43. In AD 70, the fort was abandoned only to be reoccupied a few years later before being abandoned again in AD 120. Remains have also been found of a civilian settlement, or vicus, alongside the Roman fort. Excavations at Parson's Hill in Kings Norton and at Mere Green have revealed a Roman kiln site.
Although no archeological evidence has been found, the presence of the Old English prefix wīc- in Witton (wīc-tūn) suggests that it may have been the site of a significant Romano-British vicus or settlement, which would have been adjacent to the crossing of the River Tame by Icknield Street at Perry Barr.
Roman military roads have been identified converging on the Birmingham area from Letocetum (Wall, near Lichfield) in the north; from Salinae (Droitwich) in the south east; from Alauna (Alcester) in the south,; and from Pennocrucium (Penkridge) in the north west. In many places the courses of these roads – including the points where they met – have been lost as they pass through the urban area, though a section of the route from Wall is well preserved as it passes through Sutton Park. Roads are also likely to have led via the known Roman settlements at Castle Bromwich and Grimstock Hill near Coleshill to Manduessedum (Mancetter), and to the fort at Greensforge near Kinver. The existence of straight road alignments coinciding with early parish boundaries suggests another Roman road may have passed through Birmingham from east to west through Ladywood, Highgate and Sparkbrook, along the line of Ladywood Road, Belgrave Road and parts of Warwick Road. The Roman routes from Wall and Alcester were together named Icknield Street during the later Medieval period, though the implication that they were viewed as a single route by the Romans may be misleading, and it is possible that the road from Droitwich was originally the more important of the two southern routes.
Anglo-Saxon and Norman Birmingham, c. 600–1166
Foundation Archaeological evidence from the Anglo Saxon era in Birmingham is slight and documentary records of the era are limited to seven Anglo-Saxon charters detailing the outlying areas of King's Norton, Yardley, Duddeston and Rednal. Place name evidence, however, suggests that it was during this period that many of the settlements that were later to make up the city, including Birmingham itself, were established.
The name "Birmingham" comes from the Old English Beormingahām, meaning the home or settlement of the Beormingas – a tribe or clan whose name literally means "Beorma's people" and which may have formed an early unit of Anglo-Saxon administration. Beorma, after whom the tribe was named, could have been its leader at the time of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, a shared ancestor, or a mythical tribal figurehead. Place names ending in -ingahām are characteristic of primary settlements established during the early phases of Anglo-Saxon colonisation of an area, suggesting that Birmingham was probably in existence by the early 7th century at the latest. Surrounding settlements with names ending in -tūn (farm), -lēah (woodland clearing), -worð (enclosure) and -field (open ground) are likely to be secondary settlements created by the later expansion of the Anglo-Saxon population, in some cases possibly on earlier British sites.
Anglo-Saxon settlement The site of Anglo-Saxon and Domesday Birmingham is not known. The traditional view – that it was a village based around the crossing of the River Rea at Deritend, with a village green on the site that became the Bull Ring – has now largely been discredited,; and not a single piece of Anglo-Saxon material was found during the extensive archeological excavations that preceded the redevelopment of the Bull Ring in 2000. Other locations have been suggested including the Broad Street area; Hockley in the Jewellery Quarter; or the site of the Priory of St Thomas of Canterbury, now occupied by Old Square. Alternatively early Birmingham may have been an area of scattered farmsteads with no central nucleated village, or the name may originally have referred to the wider area of the Beormingas' tribal homeland, much larger than the later manor and parish and including many surrounding settlements. Analysis of the pre-Norman linkages between parishes suggests that such an area could have extended from West Bromwich to Castle Bromwich, and from the southern boundaries of Northfield and King's Norton to the northern boundaries of Sutton Coldfield.
During the early Anglo-Saxon period the area of the modern city lay across a frontier separating two peoples. Birmingham itself and the parishes in the centre and north of the area were probably colonised by the Tomsaete or "Tame-dwellers", who were Anglian tribes who migrated along the valleys of the Trent and the Tame from the Humber Estuary and later formed the kingdom of Mercia. Parishes in the south of the current city such as Northfield and King's Norton were colonised during a later period by the Hwicce, a Saxon tribe whose migration north through the valleys of the Severn and Avon followed the West Saxons' victory over the Britons at the Battle of Dyrham in 577. The exact boundary between the two groups may not have been precisely defined, but is likely to be indicated by the boundaries of the later dioceses of Lichfield and Worcester established after the 7th century conversion of Mercia to Christianity.
The late 7th century saw the kingdom of Mercia expand, absorbing the Hwicce by the late 8th century and eventually coming to dominate most of England, but the growth of Viking power in the later 9th century saw eastern Mercia fall to the Danelaw, while the western part, including the Birmingham area, came to be dominated by Wessex. During the 10th century Edward the Elder of Wessex reorganised western Mercia for defensive purposes into shires based around the fortified burhs established by his sister Æthelflæd. The Birmingham area again found itself a border region, with the parish of Birmingham forming part of the Coleshill Hundred of newly created Warwickshire, but other areas of the modern city falling within Staffordshire and Worcestershire.
The Domesday manor The first surviving documentary record of Birmingham is in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it is recorded as the small manor of Bermingeham, worth 20 shillings.
At the time of the Domesday survey, Birmingham was far smaller than other villages in the area, most notably Aston. Other local manors recorded in the Domesday survey were Sutton, Erdington, Edgbaston, Selly, Northfield, Tessall and Rednal. A settlement called "Machitone" is also mentioned in the survey: this was to later become Sheldon.
The manor-house of Birmingham was located at the foot of the eastern side of the Keuper Sandstone ridge. Originally a small house, it was later developed into a timber-framed house surrounded by a moat fed by the River Rea.
The medieval market town, 1166–1485
Establishment and expansion
The transformation of Birmingham from the purely rural manor recorded in Domesday Book started decisively in 1166, with the purchase by the lord of the manor, Peter de Birmingham, of a royal charter from Henry II permitting him to hold a weekly market "at his castle at Birmingham", and to charge tolls on the market's traffic. This was one of the earliest of the two thousand such charters that would be granted in England in the two centuries up to 1350, and may have recognised a market that was already taking place, as lawsuits of 1285 and 1308 both upheld the claim that the Birmingham market had been held without interruption since before the Norman Conquest.; Its significance remains, however, as Peter followed the investment with the deliberate creation of a planned market town; within his demesne, or manorial estate.