The Birmingham Manor House or Birmingham Moat was a moated building that formed the seat of the

Lord of the Manor Lord of the Manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The lord enjoyed manorial rights (the rights to establish and occupy a residence, known as the manor house and demesne) as well as seig ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

during the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

, remaining the property of the

de Birmingham family The de Birmingham family (or de Bermingham) held the lordship of the manor of Birmingham in England for four hundred years and managed its growth from a small village into a thriving market town. They also assisted in the invasion of Ireland a ...

until 1536. The buildings were demolished and the moat filled-in in 1815-16, but the remains of medieval stone structures excavated in 1973-75 survive intact beneath the buildings of the

Birmingham Wholesale Markets The Birmingham Wholesale Markets are the largest combined wholesale fresh produce markets in the United Kingdom, with 90 trading units totalling . Located at The Hub in Witton and easily accessible to the M6 Motorway, they include markets selling ...

. The date of the first settlement of the site is unknown. Although Birmingham's origins lie in the

Anglo-Saxon The Anglo-Saxons were a Cultural identity, cultural group who inhabited England in the Early Middle Ages. They traced their origins to settlers who came to Britain from mainland Europe in the 5th century. However, the ethnogenesis of the Anglo- ...

period and the manor of Birmingham definitely existed at the time of the

Domesday Book Domesday Book () – the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book" – is a manuscript record of the "Great Survey" of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

, no evidence from earlier than the medieval period was found during the archaeological investigations of the site in the 1970s and 2000s. The circular form of the moat suggests eleventh- or twelfth-century origins, and the entrance to the site pointed away from the centre of the medieval town at the site now known as the Bull Ring, suggesting that it preceded the twelfth-century development of the town around the marketplace. Birmingham Moat 1814

Excavations during the construction of the Birmingham Wholesale Markets between 1973 and 1975 revealed a sandstone wall that included a moulding similar to those found on other sites in the West Midlands such as

Sandwell Priory Sandwell Priory was a small medieval Benedictine monastery, near West Bromwich, then part of Staffordshire, England. It was founded in the late 12th century by a local landowner and was only modestly endowed. It had a fairly turbulent history and ...

, probably dating it to the twelfth century. This wall had been incorporated into a later structure about 11m long and 4m wide with chamfered

ashlar Ashlar () is finely dressed (cut, worked) stone, either an individual stone that has been worked until squared, or a structure built from such stones. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruv ...

stonework – possibly a tower, an oriel window, the base of a stair or the end of a building – with a buttress that indicates a likely thirteenth century date. Further excavations as part of the redevelopment of the Bull RIng in 2000 showed that the moat was 2.5m deep. Documentary evidence of the site is slight. The moat may have been associated with the ''castrum'' mentioned in the

royal charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, bu ...

of 1166 that granted

Peter de Birmingham The de Birmingham family (or de Bermingham) held the lordship of the manor of Birmingham in England for four hundred years and managed its growth from a small village into a thriving market town. They also assisted in the invasion of Ireland a ...

the right to hold a market in Birmingham, though this isn't certain. The site was mentioned again in a survey of Birmingham of c. 1529 that describes the moat and a

drawbridge A drawbridge or draw-bridge is a type of moveable bridge typically at the entrance to a castle or tower surrounded by a moat. In some forms of English, including American English, the word ''drawbridge'' commonly refers to all types of moveable ...

and claims that the buildings were in a ruinous condition. Another sixteenth-century document describes an outer court to the south east of the site. By the time the site was first illustrated in William Westley's 1731 map of Birmingham there appear to have been no medieval buildings remaining apart from a large circular

dovecote A dovecote or dovecot , doocot ( Scots) or columbarium is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn. They generally contain pige ...

, and later maps of 1750 and 1778 show four buildings running across the site in a north-south direction. A single illustration of the site survives from 1814, the year before its destruction.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Authority control History of Birmingham, West Midlands Houses in Birmingham, West Midlands Buildings and structures demolished in 1815 Demolished buildings and structures in the West Midlands (county) Manor houses in England