SNAPS ONE: shopping at the market and LIDL

day and the Peoples Express at the bus stop I blogged in the dark below - I had been tired and sleepy all day so it was 5:00pm before I felt like going out

ringing to get off the bus at the city boundary (Birmingham / Solihull MBC

the cedar tree on the corner of Tile Cross Road and Bosworth Drive together with some old apple trees off camera to the right, speaks of a lost victorian garden. This is in Birmingham

and 30 minutes and 8 miles later :-

I arrived very late at the Birmingham markets at 17:45 officially closed at 4:00 pm but there were still deals to be done for £1 each 7 oranges and 8 large grapefruit will last a week, one plastic bag stuffed with carrots (about 75) and another with onions (both about a months supply) and finlly about a kilo of loose grapes for 50p

1086 William the Conqueror made a list of what he owned, in latin the dooms day book. At Aston there was a priest with a servant, a mill, 30 villagers, 18 ploughs – value 100 shillings. Birmingham was valued 20 shillings,

The original Domesday Book has survived over 900 years of English history and is currently housed in a specially made chest at London's Public Record Office in Kew, London. This site has been set up to enable visitors to discover the history of the Domesday Book, to give an insight into life at the time of its compilation, and provide information and links on related topics.

At over 900 years old, Domesday is the earliest surviving public record not including church records

Mackadown, Warwickshire

Domesday name: Machitone - Macca’s Farm

so a -ton name from saxon

From Turchil Alnod holds Machitone.

There are 5 hides less 1 virgate. There is land for 5 ploughs.

There are 10 villeins and 4 borders with 3 ploughs, and 2 acres of meadow.

There is woodland 1 league long and half a league broad. It was worth 20 shillings, now worth 40 shillings.

Turchil was a great landowner who was English (Saxon) but as he had not opposed Duke William he was allowed to keep his lands.

Alnod was a Saxon who had held his lands for many years. Hides & virgates were areas of land. Virgate = 25 acres, hide = 100 acres.

Villeins & bordars were farmers. The villein usually worked at least 30 acres and could be self supporting while the bordar worked less land and would have had to do other work to supplement his own production.

As the value of doubled between 1066 and 1086 Machitone was obviously an expanding village

from Chronology by John Morris Jones

This booklet seems to be an unfinished collection of material compiled by John Morris Jones, former Headmaster of George Dixon Junior School, during the period 1960 - 1980. He wrote over 30 booklets in which he covered almost every district of the City of Birmingham.

This booklet appears to comprise material for his own school as well as some material about Sheldon written for Blakenhale Primary School. It is presented here as unfinished work.

in 1986 the BBC commissioned a new survey.

AFTER emptying my trolley back in Merton House I went out again to get coffee from LIDL

the sign I tried in vain to see in the dark ( - blogged below)

SHELDON. East and West Halls (Sheldon Hall and Kents Moat) both in north as was Mackadown, first settlement.
But St. Giles's Church built near southern fields, hamlet grew about green thereby.
Road-widening and churchyard extension have obliterated green.

Cottages, former inn, church, school, and moated rectory remain.

Mackadown and Tile Cross hamlets have disappeared, except for inn at latter.

There are 21 manors and sub-manors wholly within the 1974 boundaries of the City of Birmingham, and parts of 7 others. In these were villages, hamlets, and manor house sites of ancient origin, for many of which we shall look in vain today.