Turves Green is an area of Birmingham partly in West Heath and partly in Northfield (the boundary between these two wards runs through Turves Green). In addition the area of Longbridge borders Turves Green. A road with the simple name Turves Green runs through the area. This is a sexist school.
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Turves Green Girls' School is a secondary school located on Turves Green in the Northfield area of Birmingham, in the West Midlands of England. It is a non-selective foundation school for girls administered by Birmingham City Council and The Endeavour Co-operative Learning Trust. Pupils attending the school mainly come from the Kings Norton, Longbridge and Northfield areas of Birmingham. Turves Green Girls' School offers GCSEs, BTECs and ASDAN awards as programmes of study for pupils.
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A total of 23 had worked on the system by the time it was closed down. The extraction process was mechanised in the 1960s, with the introduction of machines that could cut and stack the peat turves. In 1981 mechanical loading of the turves into the trains was introduced. Surface milling of the peat was introduced in 1985, which completely stripped the surface of large areas of the moors.
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In the Mediaeval era Turves Green was considered good grazing, the name originally meant, "turf green" which meant Common land and the land was probably enclosed during the late 1850s. The land remained agricultural till Austin Village was built there during World War I for workers producing munitions in a Longbridge factory. Between the world wars council houses with gardens were built bordering Turves Green mostly on the West Heath side.
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Whittlesey is an English town east of Peterborough in the Fenland district of Cambridgeshire. Its population of 16,058 at the 2011 Census included the neighbouring villages of Coates, Eastrea, Pondersbridge and Turves.
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9 By 2009 the only farm remaining was Leather's Farm on Ladybridge Road. Cheadle Hulme is served by a fire station on Turves Road which opened in October 1960. Before this the area made use of a service in Cheadle.Squire, p.
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Council estates were constructed after 1945, both at West Heath and Turves Green. Both areas feature a large number of terraces and semi-detached houses with some Tower blocks at Fairfax Road which latterly have become known as 'The Poets' Blocks', each being named after a famous British poet (Shakespeare, Wordsworth and Tennyson). The first flats to be built in West Heath were 3 six storey blocks in Turves Green constructed in 1952 by Deeley for the then Birmingham County Borough Council in an Art Deco style. The three blocks, Oxford House, Aylesbury House and Buckingham House, were demolished in 1999.
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Brewin Books 1990 Turves Green was known as Turvosland in 1490 and was the site for peat-cutting for fuel. There is a layer of peat a few feet below the surface and deeper still are successive layers of clay and a coal seam and a bloomerie has been discovered – this is the first form of forge for smelting iron from ore leaving less bulk to transport for further smelting to refine the metal.Poulton-Smith E. "Worcestershire Place Names", page 116. Sutton Publishing, 2003. In 1442 Turves Green had been named Le Grene Slave, Greenway Lane in 1780 and Green Lane in 1877.
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The lido site is now covered by a housing estate. There is also the art deco Man On The Moon pub on Redditch Road, which was built in 1937 (originally as The Man In The Moon but the name was changed in 1969 to commemorate the first moon landing). Prior to 1938, when a school was opened in Turves Green, children had attended St. Anne's Church School in West Heath. The headmistress of that school, Miss Mary Davies, was appointed to be headmistress at Turves Green where a junior school was first opened and then, in 1939, a school for seniors.
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It left the Ely to Peterborough line at Three Horseshoes Junction in Turves, Cambridgeshire, just east of the level crossing on Burnthouse Road.British Railways Pre- Grouping Atlas and Gazetteer Passenger services were never provided, and the line closed to goods in 1966.
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Tin bounds were an ancient legal arrangement used in the counties of Devon and Cornwall in South West England to encourage the exploitation of land for the extraction of tin. Tin bounds were created by the miner (or 'bounder') pitching stones or turves at the four corners of the land he intended to work. The bounder was required to declare his bounds to the stannary court and to renew them annually by re-pitching the stones or turves. During the early history of mining, the bounder was also required to actually work the land for tin in order for the bounds to remain valid, although this requirement was diluted over time.
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Turves Green Boys' Technology and Humanities College is a secondary school in the West Heath area of Birmingham, England. It is approximately 80 years old. The school is an all-boys school with Technology College and Humanities College status. It received Technology College status in 1995.
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The relief road involved widening a part of an existing road Bell Lane, a new by pass was also built and named, "Sir Herbert Austin Way" in recognition of Herbert Austin, 1st Baron Austin who started producing cars at the Longbridge plant and built Austin Village in the Northfield part of Turves Green.
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The Board of Governors resigned in February 2020 and an Interim Executive Board was installed with view to preparing the school for academisation probably later in 2020. The Chair of the Interim Executive Board is Chris Atkins. The 1960s chart topping band The Rockin' Berries first formed while several members were pupils at Turves Green Boys School.
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At Eileach an Naoimh in the Inner Hebrides there are huts, a chapel, refectory, guest house, barns and other buildings. Most of these were made of timber and wattle construction and probably thatched with heather and turves. They were later rebuilt in stone, with underground cells and circular "beehive" huts like those used in Ireland. Similar sites have been excavated on Bute, Orkney and Shetland.
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Other industries in the area included a corn mill, which collapsed some time during the First World War, located next to the Micker Brook; cotton weaving; and brickworks, one located where the fire station is and one near the railway station.Squire, p.6 A coal wharf was situated opposite the railway station and supplied the area with coal.Squire, p.16 Cheadle Hulme Fire Station on Turves Road, built in 1960.
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Local moorland sheep - the Heidschnucken - are grazed on the heath in order to maintain it. This method is supplemented by mechanical measures such as mowing, or the cutting of turves, a method known as Plaggen, and the controlled use of burning during the winter months. These measures ensure the necessary rejuvenation of the heather. The incursion of pine trees has to be held at bay by regular cutting back (Entkusselung).
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Two were delivered to Swinefleet in 1964, and one went to Hatfield. A second machine for the Hatfield operation was ordered in 1967. Wooden peat trucks were gradually phased out following the purchase of 100 steel wagons in 1963 and 1964. They were manufactured in Leeds by Robert Hudson (Raletrux) Ltd, and were subsequently fitted with a fine inner mesh, to enable them to carry fragmented peat rather than turves.
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In spite of the surrounding land being cultivated in past centuries the almost perfectly circular rampart, 70 to 85 metres in diameter whose interior covers about , is well preserved. It still retains its original height of 3 metres. The rampart was made of plaggen, turves cut from peat bogs. In front of it to the south, facing the direction of attack, is a dry V-shaped ditch (Spitzgraben), 2 m deep and 6 m wide.
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In 1910, the Impeys moved to "The Island", a large house in West Heath situated between Turves Green and West Heath Road, but moved away when Frederick Impey died in 1920. Like the Cadbury family who lived in neighbouring Northfield, the Impeys were Quakers and as well as being important developers of local industry, showed considerable interest in improving the lot of their factory workers.Richards Peter "The History Of Northfield", page 19. Northfield library 1986.
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Trackbed south of the Junction After leaving the main line at Three Horseshoes Junction, the line headed east just south of the Turves to March road. The curve of the line can be seen from the property boundaries of the houses just east of Poplars level crossing. The line then curved south towards Bottom Hake's farm. Quaker's Drove station was at the eastern end of Quaker's drove just west of the point where the metalled road ends.
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Those parts of the former Urban District of King's Norton and Northfield taken into Birmingham are now represented by the City's modern residential suburban districts of Bartley Green, Bournbrook, Bournville, Brandwood End, California, Cotteridge, Druid's Heath, Hawkesley, Highter's Heath, King's Heath, King's Norton, Kitwell, Lifford, Longbridge, Moor Green, Moseley, Northfield, Rednal (part of), Rubery (part of), Selly Oak, Selly Park, Shenley, Stirchley, Ten Acres, Turves Green, Wake Green (part of), Warstock, Weoley Castle, Weoley Hill, West Heath, and Woodgate.
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This practice long pre-dates the Norse and the real reason for the nickname is unknown. The Orkneyinga saga has him organising peat cutting at Tarbat Ness far to the south of the Orkney heartland.Smyth (1984) p. 154 While depletion of woodland could have caused a cultural shift from burning timber to peat, potentially the name arose because the sequestration of the common or allodial rights of the islanders by Einarr forced them away from coppicing towards cutting turves.
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The dams themselves are between 4 and 15 m high and the impounded volumes varied between 10,000 and 600,000 m³. One notable exception is the Oderteich northeast of Sankt Andreasberg, which is the only pond not grouted with grass turves, but with granite sand known as granitgrus and with a dam height of 21 m and reservoir volume of 1.7 million m³ of water stands head and shoulders above the other ponds in terms of size.
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In response the Local Government Boundary Commission for England recommended on 10 May 2016 that the new wards be named "West Heath North" and "West Heath South" respectively but a final submission combined the two with part of Longbridge in a large ward with 2 councillors to be called "Longbridge and West Heath". The new ward stretches from Cofton Park in the south to West Heath Park in the north and includes West Heath village, Longbridge town centre, the Austin village, Cofton Primary School, Albert Bradbeer School, the Turves Green Schools, West Heath Primary School and St. John Fisher Roman Catholic School along with Bournville College (in Longbridge), St. Anne's Church, St. John Fisher Church and St. John The Baptist Church in Longbridge. The ward also includes Longbridge railway station, West Heath Community Centre, West Heath Hospital and notable buildings including the old railway workers cottages along Station Road, the old nailers cottage in Turves Green and The Man On The Moon public house. The ward is the most southerly in Birmingham.
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Allerthorpe was mentioned in the Domesday Book AD 1086 as "Aluuarstorp", a name meaning a "thorpe" or small village belonging to a man called Alfard. Pollen counts have shown that the common has provided habitat for heather and birch, and some pine for at least 2000 years. During Anglo-Saxon times some of the trees were cleared for conversion of the land to pasture. Commoners had a right to graze cattle, cut turves, and use timber and gorse for repairs.
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By the mid-eighteenth century, there was a small but established peat industry on the moors. George Stovin recorded that labourers dug peat turves in the summer, which were dressed by their wives and children, before being exported by boat through Thorne sluice and the River Don. The product was transported to Gainsborough, Leeds, Lincoln and York. The boats used were double-ended, about long, and travelled by canals dug into the peat, the chief of which was called Boating Dyke.
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C. Evans, "The Celtic Church in Anglo-Saxon times", in J. D. Woods, D. A. E. Pelteret, The Anglo-Saxons, synthesis and achievement (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), , pp. 77–89. At Eileach an Naoimh in the Inner Hebrides there are huts, a chapel, refectory, guest house, barns and other buildings. Most of these were of timber and wattle construction and probably thatched with heather and turves. They were later rebuilt in stone, with underground cells and circular "beehive" huts like those used in Ireland.
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Powell was born in Selly Oak, Birmingham, and attended Turves Green School in the city. He began singing in his teens with a local skiffle group, and then a beat group, the Jumping Jacks, before forming his own band, the Detours, around 1959. In 1961, he became a professional singer when he joined the Rockin' Berries. The group toured and performed in clubs in Germany, including a residency at the Star-Club in Hamburg, before returning to London where they were auditioned by producer Jack Good.
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The ramparts, constructed of turves on a stone footing, surrounded an area 356 feet (111 metres) square. They were surrounded by a ditch, in some parts a double ditch when the fort was built in about 79\. Inside are the outlines of several wooden buildings including the military headquarters and barrack blocks. Another phase of development about 20 years later added two granaries roofed with tiles stamped COHIIIIBRE, the mark of the 4th cohort of Breuci who operated a tilery in the nearby Grimescar Valley.
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In 1945 Barburgh Mill Roman fortlet (NX 9021 8844) was discovered close to the mill and in 1971 it was fully excavated prior to gravel-quarrying at the location Quarry operations that destroyed all of the north side of the fortlet and a great deal of its southern side. All surface indications of the fortlet in the surviving area have now gone. The Roman road ran beneath the fortlet's hillock site. Although turves were found nothing of the ramparts and an internal surface area of c.
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The site has probably been used as a hay meadow for over 800 years, and has not been ploughed for at least 200 years. It was originally at risk of development from the construction of a new local supermarket and garden centre in 1986. A little over half of the site was saved from development by a campaign led by Members of Warwickshire Nature Conservation Trust when proposals for the new supermarket were outlined. The remaining of meadow was relocated in deep turves to a new site at Temple Balsall.
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The engines could then push a line of forty or fifty wagons onto the temporary track. Cutting of the peat was mechanised from 1963, with the introduction of German peat-cutting machines, and by 1970, all hand cutting had ceased. Loading of the turves into wagons was also initially by hand, but gradually 'sod collectors' were introduced, which at Swinefleet had a conveyor and at Hatfield a one. These enabled a single side track to serve a much wider section of moor, without having to move the track.
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The formal beginnings of Dalbeattie originate in 1781 when George Maxwell of Munches and Alexander Copeland of Kingsgrange (or Colliston) decided to encourage the development of the town by feuing their property. The Maxwells owned the land on the north side of the burn and the Copelands owned the land on the south side. Every feu consisted of a piece of land, fronting a street, large enough to build a house and grow vegetables and keep chickens and pigs. Each feu also had the right to cut turves (peat) from Aucheninnes Moss.
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The Midland Moss Litter Company established a new works a little further along the railway line, although for a while both works were in operation. They introduced new working practices to the Moss, based on Dutch methods, and rebuilt the Fenn's Old Works in 1938 when the previous one was destroyed by fire. They introduced locomotives to the tramways in 1919, although the peat turves were always cut by hand, and of all the companies operating on the mosses, survived the longest. They continued working on the Moss until August 1962, but almost no documentary evidence for them is known to exist.
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Pikestones is the remains of a Neolithic Burial Cairn, located on Anglezarke moor in Lancashire, England. The site is approximately 150 feet (45 metres) long and 60 feet (18 metres) across at its widest point. It consisted of one burial chamber constructed of large upright slabs, capped by two lintel slabs, forming a chamber of 15 feet (4.5 metres) long, 3 feet (0.9 metres) wide and 3 feet (0.9 metres) high, covered by a huge mound of stones and turves. The cairn was aligned almost exactly North-South, with the burial chamber under the wider northern end.
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Because building materials, especially wood, were scarce and expensive, it was formerly common everywhere, to take the houses apart and move them if the warft was no longer safe or was otherwise abandoned. The walls of the houses were originally made of turves, clay or wood, most of the houses that survive today, however, have brick walls. Different types of brick were used. On the outer wall, hard and expensive, very weather-resistant bricks were used, whilst softer and cheaper bricks, the so-called Bleekers, were preferred for the insides of outer walls and for the interior walls.
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Up to forty boats were operating in the 1790s, but competition from coal, which was a more efficient fuel, resulted in a decline, and only eight or nine boats were still operating in the 1820s. Internal canals on the moors had ceased to be used by the 1830s, with turves being transported by cart to Thorne or to the Stainforth and Keadby Canal. Peat Canals circa 1907, which supplied peat to Moorends Works. The access land boundary is recent. Blackwater Dike, Mill Drain and Cottage Dike still exist and are named on the 2006 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey map.
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Northfield Manor House – former home of George Cadbury and now owned by Birmingham University Throughout the early part of the 19th century Northfield was known for its nail making industry based in cottages and small workshops next to the Church. Within the ward in 1831 there were 122 men recorded as being employed in the industry. However the industry was already in decline – in 1841 there were 74 nailers and in 1884 there were only 23 with seven of those in West Heath. Nailer's workshops had been present in Northfield, Groveley, West Heath and Turves Green.
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The Austin car works at Longbridge was later to become one of the greatest car manufacturers in the world (also see Longbridge plant). Austin was producing seventeen different models by 1908. During the First World War Austin produced munitions and built Austin Village in Turves Green for his workers. The car business was difficult after World War I; the Austin company was threatened with bankruptcy in 1921 and a receiver was appointed. The "Baby Austin" was launched in 1922 and offered for sale at £225 (£12,417.65 in 2018); putting it within the budget of customers who had never owned a car before.
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This section is considered to have some credibility as a single structure constructed and planned through the control of a single controlling authority. elricks often started at such points so that the animals could be driven from that area along the route that would lead to their point of capture. In 1981 a section was excavated and was shown to consist of an earth bank only, likely to have been constructed on one single occasion. The turves used in its construction were taken from either side giving a width of 4.5 feet (1.4m) at the base with a maximum original height estimated at around 6.5 feet (2m).
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Cheadle Hulme Recreation Centre, which is attached to Cheadle Hulme High School, contains a large sports hall, squash courts, tennis courts, an astro-turf pitch and a large playing field. Cheadle Pools and Target Fitness Centre, located off Cheadle Road, contains two swimming pools, and a gym. Manchester Rugby Club is located on Grove Lane in Cheadle Hulme, as is Cheadle Hulme Cricket Club, which was established in 1881, and a squash club. There is also a lacrosse club "Cheadle Hulme Lacrosse Club" which was established in 1893, a badminton club, and a sports club off Turves Road called the Ryecroft Sports Club, which has tennis courts and a bowling green.
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In the 1950s the population of West Heath continued to increase and change considerably. Working-class families who had lived in central Birmingham in old unsuitable properties which were to be demolished and a considerable number of Irish immigrant families settled in the new homes on the newly built council estates around Cofton Common and the land between it and Turves Green. Local work was plentiful, especially at the Austin Motor Works at Longbridge and, for the women, at Cadbury's chocolate factory in Bournville or the Kalamazoo paper factory in Longbridge, which had been moved to the area by Oliver Morland and F. Paul Impey in 1913 from central Birmingham.Caswell Pauline.
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This family of moss is either comose or hoary and forms loose, yellow- or brown-green turves or cushions. It has a creeping, subterranean primary stem with pale rhizoids and scale-like leaves while its glossy secondary stem is erect, laterally branched and usually amentaceous. Its ecostate leaves are broadly elliptic to nearly cochleariform, strongly concave, appressed or erect-spreading, occasionally slightly decurrent; margins erect or narrowly recurved, entire or toothed, and are densely packed at stem apices. Pleurophascaceae is a dioecious moss with its perichaetia and gemmiform perigonia borne on short, lateral branches arising from the secondary stems, or in the case of P. occidentale, terminal on secondary stems.
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In 1798, Madocks bought the Tan-yr-Allt estate, on the western bank of Traeth Mawr, a large expanse of sand and tidal marsh which formed the estuary of the Afon Glaslyn. He set about extending his property by reclaiming Penmorfa Marsh from the estuary, and assisted by the surveyor and civil engineer James Creassy, who had experience of land drainage schemes in the Lincolnshire Fens around Boston, built a semicircular embankment, running parallel to the course of the river, to reclaim some of land. The embankment was between high, and was made of sand, covered in turves. The project cost £3,000, and took 200 men with 150 barrows about six months to complete.
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Some of the two hundred cedar wood prefabricated bungalows, erected during the First World War in Austin Village Austin Village between the wars — Ordnance Survey 1:2500 map, 1936, showing fields around the village Austin Village is a First World War housing estate of prefabs between Longbridge and Northfield, Birmingham. Herbert Austin, who created the Austin Motor Company at Longbridge in 1905, had to take on more workers during the First World War when his factory became involved in making tanks and aircraft. In 1917, he built a new estate for his employees in Turves Green on land bought for £7,750.Birmingham - The Building of a City, Joseph McKenna, Tempus Publishing Ltd.
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On the moors, when dried turves were ready to be collected, temporary track sections were laid at right angles to the main line, and a portable turntable was installed. A rake of twelve wagons could then be moved onto the temporary track, one at a time, to be filled by a 'filling gang'. Each wagon held about a ton, and once all twelve had been manoeuvred over the turntable back onto the main line, they would be pulled to the works by horses. With the advent of the small Lister engines, a new system was used, where three curved sections of track were used, the end one being clipped onto the top of the main line track.
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A second canal on the western side of the moors, also called Boating Dike, ran past Thorne to join the River Don, and included a pound lock part way along it. Some 30 or 40 boats were using the canal in the 1790s, although the turves were transferred to larger vessels for onward passage along the Don. The canals were shown of a map of Yorkshire, produced by the cartographer Thomas Jefferys between 1767 and 1770. The hydrology of the region was altered in 1802 with the opening of the Stainforth and Keadby Canal, which cut across Hatfield Chase in an east-west direction, with Thorne Moors to the north and Hatfield Moors to the south.
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Apart from agriculture, nail making was the most notable industry in 19th century West Heath. Numbers of nailers in West Heath are included in figures for Northfield and in the whole district there were 122 employed in the industry in 1831. However the industry was already in decline – in 1841 there were 74 nailers and in 1884 there were only twenty three with only seven in West Heath. Nailers' workshops were present at Groveley, West Heath and Turves Green; the latter was still the site of hand-made nail production by Mr. Withers in Oak Tree Cottages as late as 1910 although the factory of The Patent Hob Nail & Rivet Company had been opened in Station Road in 1900.
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The barriers were built as earth-fill dams, the fill being usually excavated on site. Usually small quarries were established in the terrain earmarked as the future reservoir; this had the added advantage that it increased its eventual capacity. Neither clay nor silt could be used as grouting material because they did not occur in sufficient quantities in the Upper Harz. The Upper Harz miners had, however, learned from experience that grass sods or turves made excellent grouting; by placing them one on top of another, in a similar fashion to building a wall, a layer of sods up to a metre thick would be built into the dam which ensured that it remained watertight.
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Loading turves onto the start of the conveyor was still done manually, but it became difficult to find people who wanted to do the work, and so Hymac loaders were used to load peat directly into the wagons. The success of this process at Hatfield in 1981 lead to it being used at Swinefleet as well. Schoma 5130, now carrying "The Thomas Buck" nameplate, on static display at Hatfield Peat Works in 2012 The next development was the introduction of surface milling, which began at Hatfield in 1986 and at Swinefleet in the following year. Once an area had been drained, all vegetation was removed from the surface, and a thin layer of peat was removed by a mechanical harvester.
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A high-density private estate was built on the former grounds of West Heath Hospital. Turves Green at one time had nine residential towers, several blocks of low-rise flats, and an estate of pre-fabricated bungalows and brick semi-detached houses, known as the Austin Village, which was built in 1916 to house First World War munitions workers. The Austin Village has been a Conservation area from the early 1990s but in 2019 Birmingham City Council decided to withdraw its special status though it has extended the time allowed for an appeal against this decision in the face of a campaign led by the Austin Village Preservation Society. West Heath Park is located at the north-east boundary of West Heath with Kings Norton.
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Northfield is a small town and also a small residential area on the southern outskirts of metropolitan Birmingham, England, and near the boundary with Worcestershire. It is also a council constituency, managed by its own district committee. The constituency includes the wards of Kings Norton, Longbridge, Weoley Castle and the smaller ward of Northfield that includes West Heath and Turves Green. Mentioned in the Domesday Book and formerly a small village, then included in north Worcestershire, Northfield only became part of Birmingham in 1919 after it had been rapidly expanded and developed in the period prior to World War I. The northern reaches of Northfield fall within the Bournville model village and the southern housing estates were originally built by Austin Motors for their workforce.
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Peat was more absorbent than straw, and as there were huge numbers of working horses at the time, it was promoted as a replacement for straw. It could also be used for packing of fruit, as a replacement for sandbags, for fertiliser and as potting compost, as well as the manufacture of paraffin, creosote and tar. The owners of Thorne and Hatfield Moors leased their lands to peat companies, whose workers would dig drains, cut the turves, and stack them up to allow them to dry, so that they were ready for sale. The product was in competition with imports from the Netherlands, and the Dutch Griendtsveen Company set up the Griendtsveen Moss Litter Company in 1893, a holding company which would buy up companies operating in the Netherlands and in the United Kingdom.
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During the English Civil War West Heath was on the border between royalist Worcestershire and parliamentary Warwickshire and there were regular minor skirmishes and conflicts between the forces of the two opposing sides. Situated off Turves Green, Hawkesley House, which belonged to the royalist George Middlemore and his family, was besieged and seized by parliamentary forces under Colonel Tinker Fox in April 1644. The Parliamentarians fortified the building but on 13 May 1645 Royalist forces under the king’s nephews Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice laid siege to Hawkesley House and were joined the following day by King Charles I who had been staying at nearby Cofton Hall. The Royalists took the house on 16 May and expelled the Parliamentary forces and razed the house to the ground.Mason Henry "The Austin Village", page 65.
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The effects of the enclosures can still be seen, in the pattern of the fields that surround the northern and southern edges of the mosses, in the network of drains that carry water away from the mosses, and in the alignment of roads, tracks and footpaths that still provide access to them. The enclosures resulted in most of Fenn's Moss being under the control of the Hanmer Estate and paved the way for the later commercial exploitation of the peat. On Whixall Moss, the result was that much of the southern part of the Moss was organised into a patchwork of small enclosures, and a much smaller proportion was under the direct control of the Lord of the Manor. Many of these small enclosures have since become pasture or woodland, although some remain as a source of peat turves for their owners.
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Whittlesey Museum is a social history museum located on the ground floor of the early 19th century Town Hall in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire, UK.Whittlesey Museum, Culture 24, UK Whittlesey Town Hall, seen here decorated for the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II, houses the Museum on its ground floorThe mission and purpose of Whittlesey Museum is to collect, care and interpret the natural and cultural heritage of Whittlesey and the surrounding area (Coates, Eastrea, Pondersbridge and Turves) for the benefit and enjoyment of students, local people and visitors. The museum was founded in 1976 and is an independent charitable trust. The museum collections include local archaeology and archives, costume and textiles, natural sciences, coins, medals and local social and industrial history including the Whittlesey Straw Bear. Gallery displays are mounted in the former Caretaker's Cottage and the area previously used to house the town's horse-drawn fire engine.
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There is no documentary evidence for the cutting of peat on the mosses prior to 1572, but it is unclear whether this indicates that it was not general practice, or if there was just no need to burn peat when there was plenty of wood available. Subsequently, a right of turbary, to cut peat for burning was granted to individuals by the Lord of the Manor, and those who were found to be cutting peat but were unlicenced were fined, but the fines were quite modest, suggesting that it was a way of generating income for the Lord of the Manor rather than an attempt to stop the activity. From 1630 it is clear that higher fines were levied on those who sold the peat to people living outside of the manor, while by 1702, peat cutting was more closely regulated, and the levels of fine for unlicenced cutting, or for cutting turves in a neighbour's turf pit, were punitive.
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South Walsham is recorded in the Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici as Súðwalshám in a document produced during the reign of Edward the Confessor. Early documents suggest that land in the present parish was owned by a freeman named under Guert, the brother of Harold Godwinson at the time of the Norman conquest of England, before passing under the stewardship of Godric the Steward. Its entry in the Domesday Book shows land ownership divided between William the Conqueror, William, Bishop of Thetford, Godric the Steward and St Benet's Abbey \- in total, there were around 124 villagers excluding women and children. During the middle ages, much of the land in the parish was used to produce peat for fuel, and records of turbary show that around two hundred thousand turves were sold per annum, yielding an average income of around seven pounds per annum. These revenues dropped rapidly, from over eight pounds (and 250 000 units) in 1268-69 to around two pounds (and 56 700 units) in 1290-91, as the former peat cuttings began to flood and The Broads were formed.
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Elsewhere in West Heath, Lieutenant Meynell Hunt lived at Groveley House and the only houses on Cofton Common which are mentioned in the Directory were both owned by women – Mrs. Higgins at Fern Bank and Mrs. Avery. The surname Hobbis had been particularly common in the area in the 19th century and people with that name included farmers, agricultural workers and (in Kings Norton village) the publican of the inn, The Plumber's Arms, but no-one named Hobbis is listed in the 1907 Directory as owning property in West Heath although a small piece of land in what is now Alvechurch Road was known as Hobbis' Piece and was then owned by Adam Webb, chief clerk in an assurance company, another solid middle class inhabitant of that time in West Heath. The only farmer recorded to be living in Turves Green in the late nineteenth century censuses was Thomas Morris, born in 1865, but in 1907 he was mentioned in Kelly's Directory as either living at Longbridge or Staple Old Road.
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