Ashted Row, Birmingham, and the Beaumonts

This should be read after the piece on Richard Beaumont of Birmingham 1761-1828, who is known to have moved out of the town into the new suburb of Ashted before about 1810. He lived at No. 15 Ashted Row, one of the earliest of the houses.

Box-1-086

The reverse (address side) of an undated letter to Richard from his son George, from school at Castle Bromwich. Assuming George to be about ten to twelve years old, the date is between 1806 x 1809.

After 1828 Richard's widow Ann was living at Meriden, but she returned to Ashted Row by 1841 and lived at No. 89 until her death in 1864.

I have been digging around, so to speak, about this place, which is now largely lost near the "Ashted Circus" roundabout. Much has been written about Ashted, and what I say here is by no means definitive.

The spelling is very variable, with the old form of s sometimes used, so we need to look for Ashted, Afhted, Afhsted, Afhstead, and so on.

A lease of the estate had belonged from 1788 to a man named John Brooke about much has also been written. Brooke is said to have bought the lease from an eminent doctor called John Ash and to have converted the doctor's own house into a chapel. Brooke also leased off a large plot to H.M. Government for building barracks, and embarked on a programme of development of the area, supposedly - initially - as an upmarket suburb.

But John Brooke was made bankrupt in summer 1793, after which his assets were in the hands of "Assignees." These people (whose names I do not know) tried to sell what they could, including even the chapel! It was cynically described as generating £250 a year from the "kneelings," and with the expectation of larger income to come, as the population of the area was growing! (see eg Oxford Journal 19 October 1793). The chapel was being offered for an 80 year term, which would thus have run until about 1873. I don't know who (if anyone) bought it.

The earliest reference to Ashted Row I have found is in 1798. I suspect it marked the northern boundary of the Ash / Brooke estate. The street numbering in this road started from the Birmingham end. The numbers ran up the right hand side, reaching 101. Crossing the road there the numbers then ran back on the other side, reaching just over 200 back at the Birmingham end.

Thus, the oldest houses were on the south side, and the oldest of all were those at the Birmingham end. Perhaps the original Ashted Row was just a "row" of houses. Richard Beaumont lived at no.15 Ashted Row. It is hard to figure out exactly where that was. But very near the canal and the junction with Great Brook[e] Street.

The red circle is a guess. The road going to the NE is Ashted Row, and the one going ENE is Great Brooke Street. The problem is not knowing whether Ashted Row started at that junction, or (as I suspect) a few houses nearer Birmingham. It depends where Prospect Row ended.

The houses were sold by the "Assignees" on leases, sometimes it seems in "blocks" of several houses which were then presumably sub-leased one by one.

A sale in January 1800 was advertised in the local papers and the London Gazette, describing John Brooke as dealer and chapman. This sale was to comprise ground rents of £345-8-10 per annum payable by several people and two Building Societies, in respect of leases of plots at Ashted let on building leases which at that time had 75 years unexpired, and on which several valuable buildings had already been erected (London Gazette 5 Oct. 1799).

Notices of that 1800 sale show that houses numbered up to 47 in Ashted Row had been built by that time. That means, some way along the southern side of the road but not I think as far as Windsor Street.

1839 Map of Ashted (SDUK)

The Ashted Row area from Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge map of Birmingham, 1839. I would not have known about this but for Bill Dargue's Birmingham history website. The map shows that by 1839 houses had been built all along the southern side of the road.

The estate does not seem to have remained very upmarket, as the spread of Birmingham meant that within a few years, many of the houses were being used for business purposes, and/or were in multiple occupation. The canal passing underneath the west end entailed industrial activity nearby. And the available leases may have seemed rather too short. Also the prevailing winds meant that smoke and pollution were carried more this way than the other side of town.

Ashted in the early c20

Richard Beaumont died in 1828. Until very recently I thought that his widow Ann continued to live in the same house for a few years. However, she moved to Meriden (see the other piece). A directory dated 1835 shows Mrs Beaumont at no.15;  but I think it must have been out of date when it was printed.

By 1841 however Ann returned to Ashted Row, to a newer house, no. 89, where she lived until her death in 1864. Being further out of town, this was still fairly genteel, with houses used by school-teachers or doctors as well as shops, craftsmen, boarding-houses, private residences etc. I have seen it suggested that no. 89 was a big house on the corner of Willis Street, but actually I think that one was no. 90, known as Ashted House, which was a school in the mid nineteenth century, and later occupied by doctors.

A good drawing of the house in the above photo is on the Birmingham & Five Counties Architectural Association Trust website, saying there that it is no. 89; but I think it is no. 90, which means that we can see the front of no. 89 behind (we are looking from NE to SW across the junction with Willis Street).

(The notices of the 1800 sale expressly mention the house on the corner of Willis St & Ashted [Afhsted] Row which is occupied by Mrs Jarvis  - the one I think became No.90. At that date this house may have been all on its own - out in the country! During the c19 the housebuilding caught up with it. A comparison of the maps shows that by 1839 Willis Street between Great Brook Street and Ashted Row had been shifted a few yards to the east, giving no. 90 its front driveway)

Plan dated 1819. North is to the right. I got this from the
excellent mapping birmingham blog.

It seems a fair bet that when Ann Beaumont died in 1864 the lease of no. 89 had so few years to run that it was worth very little. George Beaumont being a Land Surveyor, albeit with a rural practice, will have understood the situation far better than I have been able to work out. By 1871 no. 89 was occupied by a doctor called Clement Hadley, and within a few more years he was in No.90 - Ashted House - as well.

A Postscript on the term of the leases:
Two properties on the south side of Ashted Row which were advertised for sale in 1865 - the Ashted Tavern, which I think was no 71, and No. 101 at the end of the street, were described as leasehold with eight and a half years to run (Birm. Daily Post 17 Aug. 1865). Presumably none of the leases could outlast the original lease that Dr Ash had had, which I suspect (I do not know) may have been 99 years, from the 1770s.

Date: February 2019
Revisions: