| Waterpower
The story of local watermills, so far as it is known, is told
in my Watermills of the Cole Valley. The first hereabout
was Greet Mill, referred to in 1254, which lay a half-mile above
Greet Hall whose property it was. There was a good natural fall
which could be increased by a weir. The normal shallows below
this was the crossing point of what became Stratford Road: it
is interesting if fruitless to speculate whether the ford predated
the mill or vice-versa. The power of Greet Mill was used to produce
sword blades at one time - during the Civil War? - and it was
perhaps then that a corn mill to replace it was built on Tyseley
Brook just above its confluence with the Cole (north of Roma Road).
The only evidence for this, which I call 'Lower Greet Mill', is
Beighton's map of 1725 and a later map which may be a copy: no
field or other name has survived, there are no traces on the ground
(though there is a modern weir on the spot, a flood-control installation),
and the first O.S. Map does not show the mill. It had gone, if
it ever existed, by 1820.
Of Broomhall Mill' s existence we can be certain, but not of
its foundation. The 1609 Boundary Report refers to the 'Rasse'
where a mention of Broomhall Brook could be expected, and that
brook was the tail-race of the mill. It ground corn all its days,
going out of use about ninety years ago. The brook had been dammed
to create a narrow pool, and flood-water was diverted into a parallel
channel. Bordering trees still define the now dry side-pond, and
the brook's steep fall has been utilised in a concrete cascade.
The dam and millsite were at its foot. The Round Pool, also in
Fox Hollies Park, is still a fishpond as were all bodies of water
in the manor: its high earthen banks bear witness to many dredgings
to maintain the depth.
The first reference to Hay Mill is that of 1495, when the 'pool
tail' is listed as the point at which Yardley's bound leaves the
Cole: this is what we would call the start of the head-race, where
water is taken from the river. It was just below the confluence
with the Spark, and the early millsite lay beside the present
weir, opposite the Tyseley Refuse Destructor works. Hay Mill was
turning out blades in 1820 and had perhaps been doing so for a
century: Beighton's map shows a windmill on Red Hill nearby, and
there are several local examples of such proximity where wind
has taken over corn-grinding from water which is employed in industry.
The miller's house outlasted the mill, being known as Hay Hall
Cottage into the 20th century: it stood alongside the mill on
a path which led, via a humped bridge over the canal, to the Hall.
About 1830 a new mill was built below a larger pool, of about
three acres, a hundred yards downstream. The slightly greater
fall and the much greater reserve of water were employed in the
service of William Deakin, swordsmith and gunmaker of Snow Hill,
who had several mills working for him on overseas arms contracts,
1836-40. Thereafter the power was used by James Horsfall for wire-drawing,
and he won a contract to suply iron sheathing wire for the first
Atlantic cable. This required enlargement of the works, and factory
buildings spread along the fordrough beside the tail-race, from
1865. Waterpower proved to be insufficient and was supplemented
by steam, later abandoned altogether. The mill had been demolished
by the turn of the century, and its site was overbuilt during
World War One. The pool bed is a reedy bog, but the upper pool
survives in an artificial gorge created by banks of clinker from
the destructor.
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