History of Birmingham – From market town to post-industrial metropolis

Birmingham was a place of some consideration at the time of the conquest; and gave name to the ancient family of Birmingham, who then and long after possessed the lordship and obtained a market for Henry I (1068-1135), and two fairs from Henry III.

Birmingham is the second-largest city in England. It began as a Saxon village. The earliest authentic notice of Birmingham occurs in Domesday Book of 1086, where it was described as a small village in which it is called Bermengeham.

During the last four centuries it has been variously written Brumwycheham, Bromwycham, Brummagen and Burmyngham. In the early 12th century it was popular market town. Birmingham’s first market charter was granted in 1166.

In 1250 the people of Birmingham were given the right to hold a fair each Summer. In the Middle Ages, a fair was like a market but it was held only once a year.

Birmingham established itself in the field of industry, starting off with the wool trade in the thirteenth century, and becoming an important center for the metal and iron industries from the sixteenth century onwards.

By then it was also known for leatherworking. Leather was tanned then used to make gloves, saddles, bottles, shoes, and many other things. The development of Birmingham’s extensive canal network marked Birmingham as a key player in the global export market.

In the mid-seventeenth century, Birmingham was largest market town in Warwickshire that was the world’s first true industrial town, its population tripling by the end of the century.

In the reign of Charles I (1600-1649), Birmingham distinguished itself in the parliamentary cause and was the scene of some conflict’s, in the last of which in 1643, it suffered considerably, having been taken, partially burnt and a heavy fine inflicted on the inhabitants by Prince Rupert.

In the eighteenth century, Birmingham was the center of Britain’s Industrial revolution. Metalworking of all kinds flourished in the town. There were also many gunsmiths and some locksmiths. In the late 18th-century glass making boomed in Birmingham.

In the 19th century, George and Richard Cadbury opened their iconic chocolate factory in Bournville, securing Birmingham’s position as a beloved household name across the world.
History of Birmingham – From market town to post-industrial metropolis

Celtic peoples

The Celts were people in Iron Age in Europe who spoke Celtic languages and had cultural similarities.

The word “Celt” comes from the Greek word, Keltoi, which means barbarians and is properly pronounced as "Kelt".

The first people to adopt cultural characteristics regarded as Celtic were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture in central Europe (800–450 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria. Thus, this area is sometimes called the 'Celtic homeland'.

The ancient Celts flourished in the late Iron Age. These were the contemporaries of classical Greece, the Alexandrine kingdoms and the Roman Empire, which gradually drove them to the British Isles, where they retained their pagan beliefs until about the 5th century A.D.

Celtic tribes that originated in Germany and the Netherlands invaded Britain, claiming the island for themselves. In 387 B.C. the Celts easily conquered the simple people of Britain. Then the two peoples mingled into one.

In 54 B.C. Julius Caesar became the first Roman to attempt to conquer Britain. Eventually conquered by the Romans, the British were ruled by the Roman Empire for 400 years.

In the British Isles, Britannia was the name Romans gave to Celtic area, based on the name of the people: the Britanni.

Celt people traded across tribal borders & that was important for political and social contact between the tribes. They traded both inside & outside Britain by river and sea. For money they used “Iron bars” until they began to copy the Roman coins used in “Gaul”.
Celtic peoples

Early history of Wales

The Aryans who first came to Britain were the Celts. They came in two waves, starting about 700 B.C. The first wave – the Goidelic Celts or Gaels – settled in Ireland and the highlands of Scotland. The second – the Brythonic Celts or Britons – settled in England, Wales and the Scottish lowlands.

Between cca.700 and 100 B.C., they settled the whole of Britain. They formed tribal kingdoms that were frequently at war with each other. Between A.D. 43 and A.D. 47 the invading Romans subdued the lowlands of southern England. They then pursued into the Welsh highlands the British leader Caractacus (or Caradoc), who there organized the resistance of the Silures in the south and the Orodovices in the North. In A.D. 60 the Romans drove the Britons of north Wales into Anglesey, defeated them in a great battle.

By 80 A.D., the Romans had conquered today’s England, Wales and southern Scotland, but problems in other parts of their empire made them withdraw behind the so-called Hadrian’s Wall in the first half of the 2nd century.

After crushing the Britons’ resistance, the Romans Romanized the southern areas (i.e. they imposed their civilization and way of life on native people); northern Britain and Wales were placed under military control and the natives were allowed to carry on with their own way of life.

In the early medieval period, Wales was an agrarian land of dispersed settlements, inhabited by a people who spoke an ancient Celtic language. This language has been one of the most tenacious survivors of all the Celtic languages, and is still spoken as the everyday language in large parts of the country.

The people of Wales were regarded as a ‘hardy stock’, who reared sheep and cattle and cultivated cereal crops, especially oats. Wales, a congeries of Celtic kingdoms lying in Great Britain’s southwest, was formally united with England by the Acts of Union of 1536 and 1542. Most legislation dealt with ‘England and Wales’ as one unit.
Early history of Wales

Appleby-in-Westmorland

Situated near the River Eden, the sweet market town of Appleby was once the second most important in the Eden Valley and until the formation of the new district of Cumbria in 1974 served as Westmorland’s county town.

It developed as a market town soon after the Norman Conquest, its charter dating back to 1174.

The Norman, led by William Rufus (William II) conquered the area in 1092 and created the baronies of Kendal and Westmorland. These were originally distinct jurisdiction with separate sheriffs, but were form into single county of Westmorland in 1226.

It was said that Appleby sprung out of a Roman Station, however, to rest no evidence than analogy and conjecture.

Appleby like other towns in the kingdom unquestionably signifies the apple town. It is ‘farmstead by an apple tree’, the chief town of the former country of Westmorland, bears a Scandinavian name.
Appleby-in-Westmorland

Smithfield Market London

Smithfield is located northwest of St. Paul’s Cathedral, between Aldersgate Street, Holborn Viaduct and Farringdon Street.

Smithfield is central London’s last surviving meat market. The name ‘Smithfield’ appears to come from ‘Smoothfield’ (from Saxon ‘Smeeth Flede) where animals could be grazed, although its history is far from pastoral.

Built on the site of the notorious St Bartholomew’s fair, where witches were traditionally burned at the stake, this is where Scottish Independence leader William Wallace was executed in 1305 as well as the place where the leader of the Peasant’s Revolt, Wat Tyler met his end in 1381.

Over 200 Protestants were burned alive here during the six years of Queen Mary’s reign in the 1550s.

The history of the live cattle market, where Londoners purchased meat that arrived on the hoof, began earlier than other London markets. The area called Smithfield eventually contained four markets: the live cattle market, a hay market a horse market and a cloth market.

Smithfield was used for a regular Friday horse market as early as 1200. William Fitzstephen, in his account of London, written before the twelfth century describes it as a plain field, where every Friday a number of valuable horses were exposed for sale.

In 1638 a live cattle market was started. However, it used as a market started with Roman occupation. London had been a trading centre moving its produce, salt and fish throughout the Roman Empire.

By the late Saxon and into the Middle Ages, London markets grew to feed an every expanding population. The live cattle market existed within a constellation.

In 1849 almost one million animals were sold at Smithfield each year. In 1852 an Act of Parliament relocated the market to the countryside, and the cut meat was transported into London by railroad.
Smithfield Market London

The invasion of Roman

The United Kingdom was invaded many times in its early history. By about 300 BC people called Celts had arrived on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.

The Roman came in the 1st century BC. England and Wales were part of the Roman Empire until the AD 400s.

In 55 BC, as a sidebar campaigns to his Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar crossed the channel. Sailing with two legions, he landed at Dover on August 26 and moved on to Kent. Fierce battles ensued with the local inhabitants.

The victory was delayed because of further uprisings and a storm that wrecked many of the Roman transports. The following years in July the Romans began a second invasion. This time 600 transports five legions and around 2000 Gallic horseman arrived in Kent to discover no unified opposition from the local tribes. He managed to set up a client king from the Trinovantes.

The attempt, to which Caesar left unfinished, was renewed by Claudius and his success was greater. Agricola, the general of Domitian, finished what Claudius had begun. He extended his conquest to the northern part of the island; his fleet circumnavigated the whole.

The Romans again launched a full-scale invasion of Britain in AD 43, moving westward across the country. Twenty of the southwest hill forts fell quickly to the II Augusta Legion, came from Strasbourg under the general Titus Flavius Vespasianus. They subsequently conquering much of Britain, and the area was incorporated into the Roman Empire as Britannia province.

The Britain Empire expanded to the British Isles and maintained order through its legions. Despite its distance from the center, Britain had been a flourishing part of the Roman Empire until well into the fourth century.

With the collapse of the Roman Empire, Germanic tribes, known as Anglo-Saxons, invaded England.
The invasion of Roman

Ancient Bristol

The year before the birth of Christ 380, Dunwallo Molmutius reined the first King of Britain. He had two sons: Bellinus and Brennus. Bellinus having followed the example of his father in constructing roads and highway in Britain and contributed to the foundation of Bristol, but William of Worcester, English chronicler and antiquary asserts that it was founded by Brennus.

Brennus was known as a leader of the Gauls and conqueror of Rome.

A little before time of Nennuis, the name of the town seems to have been changed from Caer Odre to Caer Brito.

From Brito the name became Brystoe, and Brighstowe, or the illustrious dwelling; Brigston, the city with a bridge; more recently Bristow, and finally Bristol.

The last of the ancient names by which Bristol seems to have been known is the Venta Belgarum of Ptolemy. The testimony of Ptolemy to the antiquity of Bristol is important, for it shows that it was a capital city of the Belgae when he wrote, as early as the year of Christ 120.

About the year 50, the Romans captured this place under Ostorius Scapula in the reign of Claudius and made war upon and extirpated the Changi a brave British tribe inhabiting Somersetshire.

Under the Romans, it is probable that Bristol was either a rude fortress, or if the seat of any commerce, merely the emporium for such commodities as were in demand among the Romans, in their encampments on Clifton and Leigh Downs.

The original form of Bristol appears to have been circular; its principal streets, High streets with Broad-street, Wine-street with Corn-street, intersecting each other, appear to have constituted the diameters of the circle.
Ancient Bristol

Bourton–on-the-Water

Bourton–on-the-Water

This is the quintessential Cotswold village, with the history dating from the Celts. Bourton is referring to the nearby hill fort.  The ‘water’ in the village’s name is the River Windrush, which flows gently through the villages, heart its narrow channel lined with low, graceful stone bridges.

Evidence of human habitation dates back to the Stone Age and Bronze Age, Iron Age currency bars excavated in the 2oth century can be seen in the British Museum.

During Anglo-Saxon times, Bourton-on-the-Water developed into a strategic outpost along the ancient Roman Road that cut across England from the North Sea to St. George’s Channel.

The Roman settlement was first discovered in 1875 when gravel-digging took place in a field about 90 m from Bourton Bridge.

The origins of the Roman settlement belong in the large, bivallate Iron-Age fortification at nearby Salmonsbury.

During the Middles Ages, Bourton–on-the-Water prosperity came from wool, which was shipped all over Europe.

When the wool trade ended, Bourton became a forgotten backwater which helped preserve its wealth of medieval buildings.

Tourists began arriving in numbers in 1881, when the town became accessible by rail.
Bourton–on-the-Water

Bourton–on-the-Water