The physical centre of the district is the locality of Barnt Green, a point on the Midland Railway, about eight miles to the south of the town. From this point radiate the several low hill ranges which give to the neighbourhood of Birmingham its distinctive character. The first of these ranges (forming the main watershed, and constituting the natural backbone of the area) is composed of the Lower Lickey Hills and their northerly extensions—the rolling heights of Halesowen, the conspicuous mound of Rowley Regis (820 feet), and the beautifully wooded heights of Dudley Castle (730 feet), the Wren’s Nest, and Sedgley Hill. To the west of this axial ridge, a second range bearing points of a somewhat greater elevation, stretches from the same locality of Barnt Green through the Upper or Bromsgrove Lickey Hills (900 feet) to Hagley, where it is known as the Clent Hills (1,028 feet). These look out far and wide over the beautifully fertile valley of the Severn, and are continued to the north-westward in the heights of Stourbridge and Abbots Castle. To the east of the main Lickey and Dudley axis, the country is less conspicuously diversified. The hill-ranges are broader, and rise almost imperceptibly from the surrounding plains. The most important of these less elevated areas forms what may be termed the Birmingham plateau. This is an irregular strip of broken ground, about twenty miles in length by four or five miles in breadth, which takes origin from the north-eastern slopes of the Lickeys between Northfield and Halesowen, and sweeps northwards through Harborne, Birmingham, Barr and Sutton Park, into the wild district of Cannock Chase. On this irregular plateau stand the town of Birmingham and its suburban villages of Harborne, Edgbaston, Moseley, Aston, Handsworth, and Sutton Coldfield. The western side of the plateau overlooks the “Black Country.” It is marked out by the terrace of Smethwick, Sandwell, and Great Barr, and culminates in the conspicuous fir-topped hill of Barr Beacon (800 feet). The eastward margin of the plateau is much less pronounced, and subsides gently into the great Midland plain of Warwick and Tamworth, along a line drawn from Northfield, through King’s Heath, Moseley, Camp Hill, and Sutton Coldfield.
The ground forming the Birmingham plateau rises and falls into an endless succession of heights and hollows; here sinking down into broad tree-sheltered, stream-cut valleys, there rising into long low mounds and hills. The subsoil throughout is mainly gravel or sandy clay, and the underground drainage is, as a rule, excellent. The north-western half of the plateau still retains its original forest character, and the primeval aspect of the district is recalled by the wild area of Sutton Park—a picturesque admixture of long, dry, pebbly mounds, covered with thick woods of oak, ash and holly, and divided from each other by open glades of gorse patches, with long, flat, treeless expanses, shrouded in dark heather and picked out here and there with deep, clear water-pools. The central half of the plateau is now covered by the great town of Birmingham and its immediate dependencies. The town stands upon a series of broad rounded knolls, divided from each other by intervening open valleys. The more elevated points are marked by the church of St. Philip’s, Newhall Hill, Soho Hill, and the Monument; while the great maze of streets, manufactories and commercial buildings fill up all the space between. Strictly speaking, the town proper lies in the angle included between the river Tame and its little tributary the Rea. The Tame runs in a broad valley round the north-eastern side of the town to the low-lying district of Saltley, and thence takes its course north-eastward across the Midland plain towards the Trent at Burton. The little river Rea, which is the Birmingham river par excellence, runs from the Lickey Hills through the south-eastern corner of the town, across the low-lying district of Digbeth, and joins the Tame at Saltley.
The south-western portion of the Birmingham plateau is occupied by the fashionable district of Edgbaston and the neighbouring suburbs of Harborne and Moseley. While the original upland character of the plateau is still distinctly apparent, the dwellers in this southern area have in all other respects utterly changed its former aspect. The land has been reclaimed and enclosed. In place of the wild oak and ash, we have masses of the Elizabethan elm, the fir and the beech; and in place of the wild heather, cultivated lawns and grassy fields. Every advantage has been taken of the natural resources of site and soil; and the result is that Edgbaston and its surroundings form one broad expanse of mansions, woods and fields, well worthy of the town and neighbourhood.
To the westward of the Birmingham plateau lies the district of the “Black Country,” of which the town of Dudley is the natural centre. Compared with the Birmingham plateau, it is a lowland district of wild confusion—a maze of mines, chimneys, factories, and straggling villages and towns, shrouded in a canopy of smoke and steam. The natural soil is generally hidden from sight by heaps of mining spoil, and mounds of rubbish, cut through in all directions by lines of railway and broad canals. The beautiful wooded hill of Dudley, crowned with its grey keep, and the neighbouring oak-clad ridges of the Wren’s Nest and Sedgley, rise like islands of verdure out of the dark sea of mining ground around, and look strangely out of place amid their gloomy surroundings.
To the east of the Birmingham plateau lies the broad plain of Tamworth and Nuneaton, watered by the sluggish stream of the Tame. The plain is continued far to the southward through the richly wooded district of Warwick, Alcester, and the old Forest of Arden, and thence down the valley of Shakespeare’s Avon, to the terrace of the Edge Hills and the northern slopes of the Cotswolds.
GEOLOGY. (BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT).
Paleozoic Rocks.
BY PROF. C. LAPWORTH, LL.D., F.G.S.