King's Norton and Northfield Urban District was a local government administrative district in north
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a Counties of England, county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which ...
,
England, from 1898 until 1911. Much of its area was afterwards absorbed into the neighbouring
Borough of Birmingham, under the ''Greater Birmingham Scheme'', and now constitutes most of the city's southern and southwestern suburban environs.
Creation
The District was originally created in 1894 as the King's Norton Rural District, under the ''
Local Government Act 1894
The Local Government Act 1894 (56 & 57 Vict. c. 73) was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that reformed local government in England and Wales outside the County of London. The Act followed the reforms carried out at county level un ...
'', and succeeded the former King's Norton Rural Sanitary District upon which its area was largely based. It was later reconstituted as an
urban district on 1 October 1898, by the ''Local Government Board Order, No. 38,127'', and was accordingly renamed the King's Norton and Northfield Urban District. Both as a rural and an urban district it comprised only those
civil parish
In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...
es of the King's Norton Poor Law Union then wholly within the Administrative
County of Worcester, namely the parishes of
King's Norton
Kings Norton, alternatively King's Norton, is an area of Birmingham, England. Historic counties of England, Historically in Worcestershire, it was also a Birmingham City Council ward (politics), ward within the Government of Birmingham, Engl ...
,
Northfield and
Beoley.
Governance
Electoral Wards
The District was arranged into the following wards for the election of local councillors:
King's Norton Civil Parish
*King's Norton Ward
*Moseley (Moor Green) Ward
*Moseley (Wake Green) Ward
*King's Heath (East) Ward
*King's Heath (West) Ward
*Stirchley (North) Ward
*Stirchley (South) Ward
*Rednal and Rubery Ward
*Wythall Ward
Northfield Civil Parish
*Northfield Ward
*Selly Oak (East) Ward
*Selly Oak (West) Ward
*Bartley Green Ward
Beoley Civil Parish
*Beoley Ward
Committees
The District Council was organised into several committees with responsibility over a number of areas:
General Purpose Committee
Baths, Parks and Cemeteries Committee
When the committee was initially set up it was as the Cemeteries Committee, with a separate sub-committee that had specific responsibility for baths and parks. However, from May 1898 onwards, the Baths & Parks Sub-Committee ceased to exist and the Cemeteries Committee assumed their duties, altering its title to reflect this change.
Building Committee
Education Committee
The committee was formed on 1 June 1903, and consisted of 40 members, of whom 28 were District Councillors.
Pensions Committee
The committee had distinct sub-committees for the following areas of the District: King's Norton & Stirchley, Moseley & King's Heath, Wythall & Beoley, Northfield, and Selly Oak.
Distress Committee
The Committee consisted of 25 members, of whom 12 were District Councillors, 8 were Guardians of the King's Norton Poor Law Union, and the remaining 5 were "persons experienced in the relief of distress".
Demography
According to the 1911 census the District had a population of 81,153, large enough to become a
county borough
County borough is a term introduced in 1889 in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to refer to a borough or a city independent of county council control, similar to the unitary authorities created since the 1990s. An equivalent t ...
.
Amenities and services
During its existence the District Council provided public amenities for its populace in the form of two cemeteries, two swimming baths, several parks and recreation grounds, and a handful of free libraries. The council also ran a number of elementary schools, as well as being responsible for the local volunteer fire service:
District Cemeteries
Public Baths
Public Parks
Free Libraries
Proposals for the provision of Free Libraries in the District were first mooted in 1902, and following the adoption of the
Libraries Acts the next year, a scheme to establish libraries throughout its area was set up.
['The Library, Selly Oak', in the Souvenir Programme for the ''Selly Oak and Bournbrook Shopping Week Festival, May 11th to 17th, 1911, inclusive'' (The Selly Oak and Bournbrook Traders' and Ratepayers' Association, 1911), p. 35.] Between 1905 and 1909 seven new libraries were built across the District, with the land being donated by local philanthropic businessmen and the building work funded through the benevolence of Dr
Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie (, ; November 25, 1835August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist and philanthropist. Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in ...
.
Council Schools
Until the
1902 Education Act, elementary education within the District was provided through a combination of a number of
voluntary schools established by religious organisations, such as the
Church of England
The Church of England (C of E) is the State religion, established List of Christian denominations, Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church record ...
National Schools and the non-denominational
British Schools, together with those schools built and maintained by the local
School Boards
A board of education, school committee or school board is the board of directors or board of trustees of a school, local school district or an equivalent institution.
The elected council determines the educational policy in a small regional ar ...
for King's Norton and Beoley, who had been set up in the wake of the
Elementary Education Act 1870
The Elementary Education Act 1870, commonly known as Forster's Education Act, set the framework for schooling of all children between the ages of 5 and 12 in England and Wales. It established local education authorities with defined powers, autho ...
. Under the 1902 Act the Urban District Council was designated a
Local Education Authority
Local education authorities (LEAs) were local councils in England that are responsible for education within their jurisdiction. The term was used to identify which council (district or county) is locally responsible for education in a system wi ...
, and thereafter assumed the duties of the former King's Norton and Beoley School Boards, which were accordingly abolished, inheriting their existing school buildings, as well as being given the power to establish new elementary schools within the area.
Fire Service
Abolition
The Urban District was finally abolished in 1911 as part of the provisions of the ''Greater Birmingham Act'', when much of its area was incorporated into the
County Borough of Birmingham, and thereby became associated with Warwickshire. This included the greater part of the civil parish of King's Norton, with the exception of a substantial still largely rural area in the south-east of the parish, which afterwards constituted the new civil parish of
Wythall, as well as a small part of
Rednal in the far south-west, which was added to the civil parish of
Cofton Hackett
Cofton Hackett is a village and civil parish in the Bromsgrove District of north east Worcestershire, England. It is southwest of the city centre of Birmingham and northeast of Worcester. In 2011, the village had a population of 1,893 but w ...
. It also included most of Northfield civil parish, save for a little under 200 acres at its extreme north-western tip which was transferred to the civil parish of
Illey, then part of the
Halesowen Rural District. It did not, however, include Beoley civil parish, which remained in Worcestershire, and which, along with Wythall, initially formed a separate rural district temporarily administered by the
Bromsgrove Rural District Council, until both became part of that district on 31 March 1912.
[, ''Local Administrative Units'', Vol. II, p. 473.]
References
Notes
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External links
Vision of Britain
{{DEFAULTSORT:King's Norton And Northfield Urban District
History of Worcestershire
History of Birmingham, West Midlands
Local government in Worcestershire
Local government in Birmingham, West Midlands
Districts of England created by the Local Government Act 1894
Urban districts of England
1911 disestablishments in England