Qualla: Selly Oak

Selly Oak: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lepidus Magnus, CC BY-SA 4.0. In Selly Oak Park, set into the grass, sits the stump of a felled oak with a brass plaque attached. The plaque reads: Butt of Old Oak Tree from which the name of Selly Oak was derived. Removed from Oak Tree Lane, Selly Oak 1909. Dendrochronology dates the tree's first growth ring to between 1710 and 1720, meaning the great oak that named the place was less than two centuries old when it was cut down for safety reasons in May 1909. The earliest written reference to Selly Oak dates from 1746, in the manorial court rolls. The tree, in other words, named the place. The place outlived the tree. And the place, layered over Bronze Age burnt mounds, Roman roads, a Norman Domesday entry, a chemical works, and a workhouse-hospital, is still here.

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Image: Lepidus Magnus | CC BY-SA 4.0

Selly Oak: The Oldest Pottery in Birmingham

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Paul. at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 1.0. In 2001, a service trench dug near Bournville Lane in Selly Oak turned up something extraordinary. Twenty-eight pottery sherds, fragments of around five different vessels, made in decorated Grooved Ware style and dated to the Late Neolithic period. The oldest pottery ever recover...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Paul. at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 1.0

Selly Oak: Metchley Fort and the Crossing of Two Roads

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rept0n1x, CC BY-SA 3.0. Around AD 48, Roman engineers established Metchley Fort on the flat ground that is now the University of Birmingham campus. The fort was occupied until about AD 200. Two Roman roads appear to have met there. Ryknield Street, running from Bourton-on-the-Water to Derby, passed thro...

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Image: Rept0n1x | CC BY-SA 3.0

Selly Oak: Wulfwin's Inheritance

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The original uploader was JimmyGuano at English Wikipedia., CC BY 2.0. The Domesday Book of 1086 records Selly Oak as Escelie, held in two manors. The previous Saxon owner was Wulfwin, sometimes called Alwyne or Ulwin, a great thegn whose mother was the sister of Leofric III, Earl of Mercia, and whose grandfather was the Danish Earl of Warwick. He w...

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Image: The original uploader was JimmyGuano at English Wikipedia. | CC BY 2.0

Selly Oak: The Workhouse That Became a Trauma Hospital

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andrewrabbott (talk), Public domain. In 1872, the King's Norton Poor Law Union opened a workhouse and infirmary on what is now the Selly Oak hospital site. The architect was Edward Holmes, who had also designed nearby St Mary's Church. By 1879 the institution housed 400 patients, the poor and the sick and the infirm...

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Image: Andrewrabbott (talk) | Public domain

Selly Oak: What Remains, and Who Lived There

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. Selly Oak Pumping Station, opened in 1879 by Joseph Chamberlain, still stands near the library. Built in French Gothic style with brick and terracotta, it housed a James Watt and Company beam engine that drew water from a 300-foot well at one and a quarter million gallons a day. ...

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Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0