There was Romano-British occupation near the later town. Excavations at Kings Norton found signs of a small Romano-British settlement, including Roman pottery and a Roman ditch at Parsons Hill, near
Icknield Street. Kings Norton derives its origin from the basic Early English
Nor + tun, meaning North settlement and belonging to or held by the king, when Kings Norton was the northernmost of the
berewicks or outlying manors of
Bromsgrove in
Worcestershire. Before 1066 these manors with many others in Birmingham had belonged to
Earl Edwin, the Anglo-Saxon Earl of Mercia. When in that year a Viking army sailed up the River
Humber to invade England, Edwin went to do battle, but was heavily defeated at the
Battle of Fulford Bridge near York.
King Harold arrived the next day, and after defeating the Vikings at the
Battle of Stamford Bridge, immediately marched back south to be himself defeated at the
Battle of Hastings. Edwin and his broken remnant of an army were unable go with him. Thus, after the
Norman Conquest, when
William punished Harold's supporters, Edwin was not amongst them and did not forfeit his lands. Two years later, however, Edwin revolted against William who confiscated his holdings to give as rewards to his followers. Bromsgrove and its berewicks he kept, with himself both as tenant-in-chief and manorial lord. Thus, the manor became Kings Norton remained royal from Domesday until 1804.
Civil war Kings Norton was the scene of a couple of minor incidents during the
English Civil War. In the first of these, a force led by
Prince Rupert of the Rhine, numbering some 300, was resting on Kings Norton Green. There, they were surprised by a smaller group led by
Lord Willoughby of Parham.
A skirmish took place, in which fifty of Prince Rupert's men were killed, and twenty were taken prisoner. The Parliamentarian force lost twenty men. This took place on 17 October 1642. In a later incident,
Queen Henrietta Maria arrived in Kings Norton with an army of around 5,500 men that she had raised in
Yorkshire. It is believed that she stayed the night in the
Saracen's Head, while the army camped on land behind the church, now Kings Norton Park (giving rise to the modern road name "Camp Lane"). There is also a public house on this road named
The Camp Inn.
Markets and fairs In 1616,
King James granted permission to hold markets and fairs at Kings Norton. Both the original fairs and the market eventually fell into disuse. At some later date, a
mop fair began to be held on the Green on the first Monday of October. A mop fair was a hiring fair where people would go looking for employment. After the decline of hiring fairs, the mop became a village
fête organised by the Round Table and raising money for local people. More recently, the Round Table handed over running the mop to a commercial fun fair. A new
farmers' market was set up in 2005, operating on The Green once a month.
Industrialisation and expansion , comprising two similar gates either side of the road bridge. In 1796, the
Worcester and Birmingham Canal was built through Kings Norton, linking Birmingham to the
River Severn. This was linked to the
Stratford-upon-Avon Canal by
Kings Norton Junction, allowing access to
Stratford-upon-Avon and, more significantly, the
Grand Union Canal. Just beyond the junction is a rare example of a
guillotine lock used here as a stop lock. Discontent with Parliamentary under-representation led to the
Priestley Riots in Birmingham 1791, in which buildings including Moseley Hall were burnt down in King's Norton. Kings Norton, along with many of the small towns near Birmingham, expanded considerably in the 19th century with a railway link into Birmingham passing by the new
Bournville factory just to the north. Historically, Kings Norton had been part of
Worcestershire, but from 1898, it was part of the
King's Norton and Northfield urban district until added to Birmingham in 1911 by the Greater Birmingham Act. In 1911 the
civil parish had a population of 49,160. On 9 November 1912 the parish was abolished and merged with Birmingham.
Urbanisation During the 20th century, the area grew further with additional private and public housing. In October 1920, 25½ acres of land at Kings Norton (just below St Nicolas' Church) were purchased by the
Birmingham Civic Society and afterwards presented to the city for the benefit of the citizens of Birmingham. The Society also designed and paid for the formal gardens, gates on the Pershore Road side and stone benches. In 1937 the Birmingham Medical Officer of Health reported that 'a substantial number of dwellings in King's Norton village [are] unfit for human habitation', with many of the houses affected over a hundred years old. In June 1937 the City Council ordered the making of clearance orders, under section 25 of the
Housing Act, 1936. With the clearance of city centre slum housing, there was a pressing need for additional social housing in Birmingham. As part of this programme, the City Council built several new housing estates in Kings Norton, including the Wychall Farm and Pool Farm estates in the 1950s and the Primrose and
Hawkesley estates in the 1960s and 1970s. These new estates occupied land that had previously been open farmland, most notably the area known as the Three Estates (Pool Farm, Primrose and Hawkesley), which lies mostly to the east of the Birmingham and Worcester canal and the
A441 Redditch Road. In the mid-1970s, a large housing estate featuring both private and social housing as well as a small shopping area (although many of the shops have long since closed), a public house, a primary school and a day centre was built on what was once the Kings Norton Golf Course and is often colloquially referred to as the 'Golf Course Estate'. The Wychall Farm housing estate, which is in the historic parish of Kings Norton, was developed by the city council during the 1950s, and also included Wychall Farm Primary School, for pupils aged 5–11 years, which opened in 1956. However, the housing fell into increasing disrepair towards the end of the 20th century and by the summer of 2006 a demolition programme had begun on the estate, with 500 homes demolished to make way for a 350-home housing association development. Within three years, most of the demolition had been completed and some of the new homes were already occupied. ==Education==