Express & Star

All aboard for Brum tour of Black Country

A court case in Halesowen, the coalfields of Wednesbury and Walsall and the Goth family from Wolverhampton all feature in a history tour... of Birmingham.

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The Floozy in the Jacuzzi in Victoria Square

A sight-seeing bus, which takes passengers on an historical journey around the Second City, highlights several important and little-known links with the Black Country.

Ian Jelf, a guide on the Big Brum Open-Top Buz, which has just launched for the 2017 season, reveals that Halesowen played a part in the discovery that Birmingham had a 'great fire' long before the Great Fire of London.

The evidence was unearthed about 20 years ago as the latest reincarnation of the Bullring was being built, when archaeologists found remnants of charred wood from medieval timber-framed houses.

Birmingham Bullring

But it was a chance rummage through archives, which yielded papers on a Halesowen court case from 1313, that revealed how large the blaze had been.

In the dock was Thomas de Turkebi who claimed that all his documents had been burned 'ad magnam combustionem ville de Birmingham', which translates as 'in the great fire of the town of Birmingham'.

Ian says: "The fact that this was accepted without question some 10 or so years after the fire, and that it was referred to as 'the great fire', shows it was a significant event that was well known locally.

"But it wasn't until 20 years ago that anyone was aware of the Great Fire of Birmingham, with these two sources of evidence emerging coincidentally at around the same time."

Edgbaston Cricket Ground

The bus tour visits Edgbaston where the Goth family, originally from Wolverhampton, were big landowners after making their fortunes in London and becoming,says Ian, the nouveau riche of the 17th century.

"They were known as the Turkey merchants, which is a little confusing because people think of the birds, but in fact they did very well for themselves trading with the eastern Mediterranean countries, particularly Turkey.

"They came back to the Midlands to live the life of country squires but instead of returning to Wolverhampton they settled in Edgbaston."

The Goths, who married into other wealthy families, now live in Hampshire but the Anstruther-Goth-Calthorpe family still owns the freehold of large pockets of Edgbaston.

Birmingham's famous network of canals features strongly in the tour and were a major link with the Black Country, says Ian.

"It was a very symbiotic relationship, with all the raw materials in the Black Country and the entrepreneurs in Birmingham. They were economically dependent on each other.

The canal at Broad Street

"When they were digging up the Bull Ring recently, they also found iron ore that would have been smelted in Wednesbury and Dudley 700-800 years ago.

"The very first canal was between Birmingham and Wednesbury which would have given access to the coalfields of the Black Country.

"In 1769 when the canal opened, the price of coal dropped by a half because it was suddenly so much quicker and easier to transport it in bulk.

"Wednesbury had one of oldest coalfields in Europe. Black Country coal was very close to the surface. The Delves in Walsall was so named because it was so easy to dig around there."

The bus tour kicks off outside Victoria Square dominated by Birmingham's splendid 19th century Council House and the River Goddess sculpture, dubbed the Floozy in the Jacuzzi, by locals.

But in the 11th century, it was Dudley that was the as the main administrative town of the region, a much bigger and more important town than Birmingham. William Fitz-Ansculf , the Lord of Birmingham, lived at Dudley Castle where he ran a large chunk of the Midlands.

Surprisingly the bus is not operated by Birmingham City Council or its tourist office. Proud Brummie Sue Behan bought the double-decker for £9,000 nine years ago because she thought visitors to her home town should have the opportunity to know about its history.

She has tried to get the council interested in taking over the not-for-profit venture but without success. "Basically I do it because they don't," she said.

"The ever-changing road system doesn't always make it easy but the city is evolving all the time which is what makes it so interesting."