A centre among scattered settlements
Solihull is absent by name from Domesday Book, which records the manors of Ulverlei and Longdon. The council connects the town's formation with St Alphege's around 1220 and a weekly market by 1242. Farming and the making of agricultural implements and hunting weapons supported a settlement serving a wooded district. [2]
The market charter also authorised an annual three-day fair. Church and market square gave the medieval town its religious and commercial focus. Fourteenth-century High Street was called La Smythestret, suggesting its blacksmiths. The conservation appraisal describes later textile and leather work alongside carpenters, coopers, millers and other trades; the local economy was broader than farming alone. [3]
Building from the ground up
Solihull's buildings express the resources available to its inhabitants. Local Mercia Mudstone was unsuitable as good building stone, but its clay soils supported oak woodland and supplied material for bricks and tiles. Timber, brick and tile therefore dominated ordinary construction. St Alphege's was an exception, using sandstones brought in from further afield. [4]
The railway expanded that material range. After the station opened in 1852, stone could arrive more cheaply from distant quarries, including granite, gritstone and Portland stone. Brick nevertheless remained central to the growing town, helped by increasingly standardised mass production. Transport altered the appearance of buildings as well as the journeys of their occupants. [4]
Commuting and outward growth
Railway growth was gradual. The conservation appraisal notes that the station's early impact was limited; by the later nineteenth century, commuting between Solihull and Birmingham had increased considerably. New residential roads accommodated business owners and industrialists. The countryside increasingly became a place from which people travelled to work elsewhere. [3]
The council records villas around the old villages and larger houses beside main roads during the 1880s and 1890s. From 1920, estates, schools, factories and playing fields filled land between the Coventry, Warwick and Stratford roads. Solihull's expansion involved everyday services and workplaces as well as commuter homes. [2]
Lode Lane and motor manufacture
Rover occupied a factory in Lode Lane at the beginning of the Second World War, adding manufacturing to residential Solihull. [2]
In 1948, the Land Rover Series I entered full production at Solihull. The manufacturer's history links its aluminium bodywork to post-war steel shortages and the availability of aluminium. Conceived chiefly for farming and agricultural work by Spencer and Maurice Wilks, it became a long-running product: production of the original Defender line finally ended here in January 2016. This factory story gives Solihull a different relationship with the countryside, as a maker of vehicles used to work it. [6]
Saving one house, replacing another
The High Street's timber-framed Manor House never housed the lord of the manor. In 1945 a trust bought it with money raised by public subscription, and it became a community and educational centre. Its survival reflects organised local use, rather than simply the endurance of old timber. [2]
Town-centre shopping brought a different outcome in the 1960s. Mell Square redevelopment removed historic properties in Mill Lane and Drury Lane, including Touchwood Hall. The 2001 Touchwood shopping centre occupied former car parking and land behind High Street properties, including old burgage plots. Modern retailing reshaped the town's inherited land pattern. [3]
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