Wiggins Hill (sometimes spelled Wigginshill) is a hamlet situated in the Minworth area of the civil parish of Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands. It lies within the City of Birmingham on its northeastern outer fringe, where it forms part of the Sutton Walmley and Minworth electoral ward and borders the North Warwickshire district.
This settlement is a rural hamlet, probably not much bigger than it was a thousand years ago when the manor of Wiggins Hill was listed in the Domesday Book. The name derives from the Old English Wicga's ing hyll meaning 'Wicga's people's hill'. The 1086 Domesday survey has Winchicelle.
But there were people living here long before Domesday. Two mesolithic flint cores, from which flint flakes and blades were struck, were found near Wiggins Hill Road. This suggests that over 5000 years ago this was a centre of flint tool manufacture, and therefore of settlement, perhaps a semi-permanent base-camp for hunting. It is interesting to conjecture why here, as flint is not found in our area.
Also off Wiggins Hill Road many scattered pieces of Roman pottery have been discovered. Broken pottery was usually thrown onto the farm's dung heap and later scattered onto the fields with the manure; clear evidence that a settlement was not far from the present village. And in a small urn buried in the ground was found a Roman coin hoard. This included coins of the emperors Gallienus (253-268), Victorinus (269-271), Tetricus (271-273), Claudius II Gothicus (268-270). Why the coins were buried here sometime after 270 AD and why they were never collected remains an open question.
The Domesday Book lists 3 virgates of land with one ploughteam in the demesne. There were 8 acres of meadow and woodland 2 furlongs long and the same wide. For tax purposes it was worth only 5 shillings. Bruning/ Browning as the tenant of Earl Thorkell both before and after the Norman Conquest. He was fortunate: most Anglo-Saxon lords were replaced by Norman lords. The overlordship subsequently passed to the Earls of Warwick, who held it until at least 1407. In 1403 ¼ knight's fee was given to Margaret, the widow of Thomas, Earl of Warwick. For a small manor Wiggins Hill had a complicated descent. William Bonchevaler held Wiggins Hill in 1235 with Cherington near Shipston-on-Stour and Bedsworth near Monkspath as one knight's fee. Four years later Bartholomew de Turbervill conveyed 3 carucates of land at Wiggins Hill and Cherington to William de Wylinton. John de Wylington, his son?, held the fee in 1315, but by 1347 Wiggins Hill was held as ¼ knight's fee by William de Lucy of John de Hull, who held it of John de Wylinton. Baldwin de Bereford held it in about 1362 with Langley, with which it then descended to John Hore, who held 3 dwellings here in 1431. Subsequently Robert Pudsey sold them to Thomas Gibbons of New Hall but in 1589 reserved to himself and his heirs an ancient rent of 46s 2½d. Wiggins Hill was not specifically referred to as a manor until shortly before 1596 when it was conveyed by Thomas and Francis Gibbons to Edward Burrowes. He conveyed it at that date to Nicholas Wilson. The manor was later divided probably between two co-heiresses. The rights of one descended to Anne wife of Nicholas Wolley and Mary wife of John James. They with Robert Milner and Anne, Anne Wolley's daughter?, and Edward Crompton and Mary, Mary James's daughter?, conveyed half the manor in 1691 to John Addyes, Thomas Homer and the widow Anne Burgoyne. They were probably the inheritors of the co-heiress since the whole manor was conveyed in 1766 by widow Mary Homer, Richard Pitts and Mary his wife, spinster Elizabeth Homer, Edward Felton and Jane his wife, to Richard Geast. The descent thereafter is unknown and was presumably lost. The first reference to open fields here is in 1418. Wiggins Hill open fields appear on Sherriff's map of 1791 which shows three large fields called Church Field, Wigginshill Field and Greaves Field. The scattered ownership of the selions in Wiggins Hill open fields is preserved on maps as late as 1825.
The name of nearby Minworth Greaves may derive from a surname, or from the Old English/ Middle English word graefe meaning 'brushwood' or 'scrubland'. This farming hamlet lay just east of Minworth on the Kingsbury Road west of Water Orton Lane.
The 1841 Census records the hamlet as Graves and lists nine families of agricultural labourers, one boat builder, John Jefferies, presumably working alongside the Birmingham & Fazeley canal, and a cordwainer. The latter was a shoe-maker and mender; many small hamlets could usually boast a cordwainer and his son following in his father's footsteps.
The Minworth Greaves 14th-century cruck-framed cottage stood originally here but was dismantled and re-erected in Maple Road, Bournville in 1932. Its exact original location is now unknown. By the late 19th century it was being rented as two dwellings and was in poor condition. Sometime after 1880 it was decided to strip out the house and sell anything worth recycling leaving nothing but the framework of timbers. In 1911 George and Laurence Cadbury bought the frame, had it dismantled to be rebuilt on Bournville Green. It was not in fact rebuilt until the 1930s when it opened as a public museum owned by the Bournville Village Trust. It is a Grade II Listed building.
Still in situ is Minworth Greaves Farm on the north side of the Kingsbury Road. This large 3-storey Georgian farmhouse was built in the late 18th century. With its extensive outbuildings it was converted in 2001 into separate dwellings. During the building work an archaeological watching brief revealed a number of 13th- and 14th-century features. These included ditch boundaries, a gully, a post hole and a rubbish pit. However, no evidence of contemporary buildings was found. Later buildings had probably been built on the earlier site. The evidence suggests that the hamlet dates from c1300. The 13th-century ditch fill contained 16th-century pottery, confirming occupation at this time. A 15th-century timber-framed barn survives.
This settlement was named after 'Pede's marshland', a named derived from Old English Peoda's (a personal name pronounced Pedder) mor.
However, this is a site of much more ancient habitation. In a field west of the hall a neolithic flint and a flint scraper were found, evidence of people living here over 5000 years ago. A Roman coin was also found close to the hall itself. And extensive ridge and furrow possibly dating from late Anglo-Saxon period remains visible both west and east of Peddimore Hall, because the site has remained in continuous agricultural use since that time.
Peddimore Hall is a 17th-century hall built in brick with sandstone dressings by William Wilson from 1660-1671 for William Wood, Warden of Sutton Corporation. The hall's history certainly goes back to the 13th century, but it must have fallen out of use sometime before the 17th century. The antiquarian William Dugdale visited the site in 1656, and noted that nothing remained but a large moat.
The present house therefore stands on a 13th-century site and is surrounded by a medieval double rectangular moat whose remains can be seen. A chapel here was licensed in 1360. The timber-framed barn dates from 1385.
The manor of Peddimore is first documented with Curdworth c1281 in the hands of the de Arden family from the Earls of Warwick. One of the latter, William de Beauchamp gave Thomas de Arden and his heirs rights of piscary, ie. fishing, in Plantsbrook adjacent to his lands, rights of pannage, ie. allowing pigs to eat acorns and beechmast, on Sutton Chase, the right to take timber from the Chase to repair buildings within the manors and also the right to sell twenty pounds' worth of timber. Peddimore descended with Curdworth in the Arden family until the beginning of the 17th century.
A cousin of the Arden family was William Shakespeare, who may well have visited the original house. Sutton Coldfield is mentioned by Falstaff in Henry VI Part 1 Act 4 Scene 2 where Henry's friend, Sir John Falstaff is on the road near Coventry raising an army to support the king against rebel barons:
In Anglo Saxon hyrst means a 'wood on a hill', thus Hurst Green is the 'green on (or by) the wooded hill'. Medieval greens were common grazing land to which all tenants had access. The location of the 'hurst' is more problematical. The land in the immediate vicinity is very gently undulating, not to say flat.
Evidence of Stone Age occupation has been found west of Wishaw Lane. Neolithic flint cores were unearthed in a ploughed field dating from a time of settled agricultural communities over 4000 years ago. Cores are only the waste left from tool making, probably arrows heads, but they do suggest that people were living here.
There was still a settlement in the area during the Bronze Age, though its exact location is unknown. A burnt mound has been investigated on Hurst Brook south of Wishaw Lane. One of over two dozen in the Birmingham area, their precise purpose can only be guessed. The mound is formed from a collection of heat-shattered stones which must have taken many years to accumulate, suggesting a long period of settlement. It is thought that they may represent some form of sauna, and possibly served a religious function, but solid evidence is not forthcoming.
There is fieldname evidence of a medieval moated site at Hurst Green Farm on Hurst Green Road. Simon atte Hurste is recorded here in 1327, a date compatible with a building on that site.
In a small public open space at the corner of Hurst Green Road and Cottage Lane there are indications of ridge and furrow, a feature of the medieval open field system of farming. The open field system developed before the Norman Conquest probably during the 10th century. Village land was pooled, probably at the instigation of the Anglo-Saxon manorial lord, and redistributed so that everyone had a number of strips in each large field. This ensured that everyone had a share of good and bad land. Such systems traditionally had three great fields divided into furlong strips. These were 220 yards long (c200m) and 2 yards (c2m) wide, although the width of strips varied in different places at different times. By c1300 units had largely been standardised. An acre, originally used to denote the size of a field that could be ploughed by a team of oxen in a day was defined as an area 1 furlong in length by one tenth of a furlong (22 yards) wide. A standard open field was 10 acres in area.
Near the junction of Walmley Ash Lane and Walmley Ash Road, in the right conditions, the cropmark of a medieval earthwork is visible in the fields. These are the remains of a medieval moated farmstead, probably the precursor of Walmley Ash Farm which stood here until the housing developments of the late 20th century. Making up the hamlet of Walmley Ash, a dozen cottages stood around this junction. Now only Ash Cottage remains and the giant supermarket built for Carrefour in 1974. On Walmley Ash Lane, just beyond the A38, the house at Forge Farm dates from the 18th-century and is Grade II Listed.