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Kings Norton, Worcestershire

Historical Description

King's Norton, a small town, a parish, and the head of a poor-law union in Worcestershire, and partly in the county borough of Birmingham. The town stands adjacent to the Birmingham and Worcester Canal, 5½ miles SW of Birmingham, was a place of some importance with a weekly market in the time of James I., and has now a station on the M.K. and a post, money order, and telegraph office, under Birmingham. The parish extends to the boundaries with Warwickshire and Staffordshire, is divided into the yields of Headley, Moseley, Moundsley, and Rednal, and contains the ecclesiastical parishes of Balsall Heath and King's Heath, and parts of the ecclesiastical parishes of Moseley, Withall, Lickey, and Yardley Wood, and the hamlet of Tanners Green. Acreage, 12, 180; population, 48, 331. Hawkesley House belonged in the time of the Civil Wars to the Middlemore family, was then burnt down by the Royalists, and was succeeded first by a moated mansion, and then by a modern farmhouse. Moundsley Hall is another chief residence. Lifford estate had a monastic establishment prior to the Conquest, has a mansion of the time of James I., belonged to Viscount Lifford in the time of George III., and was purchased in 1770 by Thomas Dobbs, who acted a conspicuous part in the forming of the Birmingham and Worcester and the Birmingham and Stratford Canals. A tunnel of the former of these canals within the parish is 16 feet wide, 18 feet high, and nearly 2 miles long. There are extensive paper mills, india-rubber works, rolling mills, bayonet and gun-barrel manufactories, a screw factory, and the chocolate factory of Messrs Cadbury. Population of the ecclesiastical parish, 4084. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Worcester; net value, £214 with residence. Patrons, the Dean and Chapter of Worcester. The church is chiefly in the Decorated and Perpendicular styles, has a very fine tower and spire, and was repaired in 1857, and again in 1872. A school-church was bnilt at Strutley in 1863. There are Congregational and Baptist chapels.

Transcribed from The Comprehensive Gazetteer of England & Wales, 1894-5

Administration

The following is a list of the administrative units in which this place was either wholly or partly included.

Ancient CountyWorcestershire 
Ecclesiastical parishKing's Norton St. Nicholas 
HundredHalfshire 
Poor Law unionKings-Norton 

Any dates in this table should be used as a guide only.


Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Kings Norton from the following:


Land and Property

The full transcript of the Worcestershire section of the Return of Owners of Land, 1873.


Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Worcestershire papers online:


Villages, Hamlets, &c

Hollywood
Rednal
Silver Street

Visitations Heraldic

The Visitation of Worcestershire 1569 is available on the Heraldry page.