Harborne, Staffordshire

Historical Description

Harborne, formerly a village and a parish in Staffordshire, now included within the county borough of Birmingham. The village stands near the boundaries with Worcestershire and Warwickshire, 3 miles SW of Birmingham, of which it is a suburb, and it is the terminus of a branch of the L.&N.W.R. from Birmingham. It has a post, money order, and telegraph office under Birmingham. The Harborne and Edg-baston Institute, opened in 1879, consists of reading-room, library, lecture hall, and class-rooms. The Harborne Masonic Hall was erected in 1880. There are wrench and hammer works; spectacle making and the manufacture of steel and bricks are carried on. The parish includes also the hamlet of Smethwick. Acreage, 3420; population, 44, 105. The manor belongs to the Marquis of Anglesey. Much of* the land is occupied in market gardening. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; value. £430. Patron, the Bishop of Lichfield. The church of Sb Peter is ancient, and was rebuilt, with the exception of the tower, in 1867. Population, 2887. Harborne Heath was constituted a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1858; population, 5048. The living is a vicarage .in the diocese of Lichfield; net value, £260. The church of St John the Baptist was erected in 1858. The ecclesiastical parish of North Harborne was constituted in 1842; population, 11, 219. The living is a vicarage in the diocese of Lichfield; net value, £200. Patron, the Bishop of Lichfield. Holy Trinity Church was erected in 1838 and enlarged in 1889. There are three ecclesiastical parishes in Smethwick. There is a Roman Catholic chapel and monastery, Baptist and Wes-leyan chapels, and almshouses.

Administration

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

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

Civil Registration

For general information about Civil Registration (births, marriages and deaths) see the Civil Registration page.

Directories & Gazetteers

We have transcribed the entry for Harborne from the following:

• Samuel Lewis' A Topographical Dictionary of England, by Samuel Lewis, seventh edition, published 1858. (Harborne, or Harbourn (St. Peter))

Land and Property

A full transcript of the Return of Owners of Land in 1873 for Staffordshire is online.

Maps

Online maps of Harborne are available from a number of sites:

• Bing (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• Google Streetview.
• National Library of Scotland. (Old maps)
• OpenStreetMap.
• old-maps.co.uk (Old Ordnance Survey maps to buy).
• Streetmap.co.uk (Current Ordnance Survey maps).
• A Vision of Britain through Time. (Old maps)

Newspapers and Periodicals

The British Newspaper Archive have fully searchable digitised copies of the following Staffordshire newspapers online:

• Staffordshire Advertiser
• Tamworth Herald
• Lichfield Mercury
• Staffordshire Sentinel
• Wolverhampton Chronicle and Staffordshire Advertiser

Villages, Hamlets, &c