User:Peterkingiron/sandbox

I have removed the following text from Science and invention in Birmingham on the grounds that it is unrelated to the subject, being about the early history of the area covererd by the present city, not "science" or "invention". Some of the content might properly be merged inot History of Birmingham

Early Crafts & Settlements
Archaeological finds in the area which is now classed as Birmingham date back as far as the Stone Age, with the Saltley Handaxe (500,000 years old), similarly-aged axes have since also been found in Erdington and Edgbaston. The last Ice Age would have interrupted human activity after this time.

A 10,400 year old settlement – the oldest within the city – was excavated in the Digbeth area in 2009, with evidence that hunter-gatherers with basic flint tools had cleared an area of forest by burning.

The oldest man-made structures in the city date from the Neolithic era, including a possible cursus identified by aerial photography near Mere Green, and a surviving barrow at Kingstanding. Neolithic axes found across Birmingham include examples made of stone from Cumbria, Leicestershire, North Wales and Cornwall, suggesting the area had extensive trading links at the time.

Stone axes used by the area's first farmers over 5,000 years ago have been found within the city and the first bronze axes date from around 4,000 years ago. Pottery dating back to 2700BC has been found in Bournville.

Burnt mound sites such as that discovered in Bournville also show evidence of wider settlements, with clearances in the woodland and grazing animals. Possible bronze age settlements with later iron age farmsteads have been discovered at Langley Mill Farm in Sutton Coldfield.

The Roman Empire made use of the Birmingham area. The paved Roman road called Icknield Street passed through, and a large military fort and marching camp, Metchley Fort, existed on the site of the present Queen Elizabeth Hospital near what is now Edgbaston in southern Birmingham. The fort was constructed soon after the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43. In AD 70, the fort was abandoned only to be reoccupied a few years later before being abandoned again in AD 120. Remains have also been found of a civilian settlement, or vicus, alongside the Roman fort. Excavations at Parson's Hill in Kings Norton and at Mere Green have revealed a Roman kiln site.

Another Roman road in Birmingham is the Chester Road in north Birmingham. It was originally known as 'Ridgeway' and has since developed into a major road through Erdington and Sutton Coldfield. Remains dating to the Roman period have also been discovered at 25 different locations throughout the modern Birmingham area.

Archaeological evidence from the Anglo Saxon era in Birmingham is slight and documentary records of the era are limited to seven Anglo-Saxon charters detailing the outlying areas of King's Norton, Yardley, Duddeston and Rednal. Place name evidence, however, suggests that it was during this period that many of the settlements that were later to make up the city, including Birmingham itself, were established.

The name "Birmingham" comes from the Old English Beormingahām meaning the home or settlement of the Beormingas – a tribe or clan whose name literally means "Beorma's people" and which may have formed an early unit of Anglo-Saxon administration. Beorma, after whom the tribe was named, could have been its leader at the time of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, a shared ancestor, or a mythical tribal figurehead. Place names ending in -ingahām are characteristic of primary settlements established during the early phases of Anglo-Saxon colonisation of an area, suggesting that Birmingham was probably in existence by the early 7th century at the latest.

The site of Anglo-Saxon and Domesday Birmingham is not known. Alternatively early Birmingham may have been an area of scattered farmsteads with no central nucleated village, or the name may originally have referred to the wider area of the Beormingas' tribal homeland, much larger than the later manor and parish and including many surrounding settlements. Analysis of the pre-Norman linkages between parishes suggests that such an area could have extended from West Bromwich to Castle Bromwich, and from the northern boundaries of Northfield and King's Norton to the southern boundaries of Sutton Coldfield.

During the early Anglo-Saxon period the area of the modern city lay across a frontier separating two peoples. Birmingham itself and the parishes in the centre and north of the area were probably colonised by the Tomsaete or "Tame-dwellers", who were Anglian tribes who migrated along the valleys of the Trent and the Tame from the Humber Estuary and later formed the kingdom of Mercia. Parishes in the south of the current city such as Northfield and King's Norton were colonised during a later period by the Hwicce, a Saxon tribe whose migration north through the valleys of the Severn and Avon followed the West Saxons' victory over the Britons at the Battle of Dyrham in 577. During the 7th century Mercia converted to Christianity.

The late 7th century saw the kingdom of Mercia expand, absorbing the Hwicce by the late 8th century and eventually coming to dominate most of England, but the growth of Viking power in the later 9th century saw eastern Mercia fall to the Danelaw, while the western part, including the Birmingham area, came to be dominated by Wessex. During the 10th century Edward the Elder of Wessex reorganised western Mercia for defensive purposes into shires based around the fortified burhs established by his sister Æthelflæd.

The Birmingham area again found itself a border region, with the parish of Birmingham forming part of the Coleshill Hundred of newly-created Warwickshire, but other areas of the modern city falling within Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

The first surviving documentary record of Birmingham is in the Domesday Book of 1086, where it is recorded as a small manor worth only 20 shillings.

"From William, Richard holds four hides in Birmingham. There is land for six ploughs, in the demesne, one. There are five villagers and four smallholders with two ploughs. The woodland is half a league long and two furlongs wide. The value was and is twenty shillings."

At the time of the Domesday survey, Birmingham was far smaller than other villages in the area, most notably Aston. Other manors recorded in the Domesday survey were Sutton, Erdington, Edgbaston, Selly, Northfield, Tessall And Rednal. A settlement called "Machitone" was also mentioned in the survey. This was to later become Sheldon.

The Manor of Birmingham was located at the foot of the eastern side of the Keuper Sandstone ridge. It would have been, at the time of the Domesday survey, a small house. However, it later developed into a timber-framed house surrounded by a moat fed by the River Rea.