Difficulty of the terrain: medium

Distance: 1.76 miles

Get the route via: Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Walk from Birmingham city centre, along the Digbeth section of the Grand Union Canal, to the Camp Hill traffic island. The site of the earthwork where Birmingham townspeople defended their town from a Royalist Army during the Civil Wars in April 1643.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

When Birmingham Defied a King

During the 17th Century Civil Wars Birmingham was rather out on a limb. The town, a warren of small scale foundries, forges and smitheries, was home the several thousand people, large by the standards of the English Midlands in the 1640s, and already sprawling east into suburbs like Digbeth, Deritend and Bordesley from the historic core around the markets.

Like the vast majority of Warwickshire, including the Midlands’ then largest city Coventry, Birmingham was staunchly supportive of the Parliamentary cause during the civil wars. Going hand in hand with this support for Parliament the town’s priest was a strong Puritan in his religious views and so were the majority of his congregation. 

By contrast only a few miles to the south and west Worcestershire was if anything more firmly pro-Royalist than Warwickshire was in favour of Parliament. This included the mining and metalworking hamlets, villages and little towns, which were not unlike Birmingham and its north Warwickshire peers in many regards, but which had picked the other side of growing civil conflict.

This meant that Birmingham and the area which is now the Black Country and outlying connected parts of Worcestershire like Bewdley and Kidderminster emerged as a key frontline in the Civil War after Charles I declared war on Parliament in August 1642.

As well as being a territorial flashpoint the metalworking skills of Birmingham and the Black Country were vital to both side’s war efforts. Whereas Dudley and Stourbridge in the Worcestershire part of the Black Country happily supplied the king’s army with musket balls and cannon, Birmingham, widely considered home to the country’s best blade makers, refused to supply swords to the king, selling only to Parliament. One of Birmingham’s largest manufacturers, Robert Porter, who owned the mighty Town Mill in Digbeth, its machinery turned by the falling water of the River Rea, delivered fifteen thousand swords to Parliament in the months after war broke out. Porter quite openly refused to even countenance fulfilling orders for the Royalist army openly stating that he agreed with Parliament’s most radical factions that the war was entirely that king’s fault and Charles I “was a man of blood”.

As soon as was was declared skirmishing between raiding parties between the divided counties of Warwickshire and Worcestershire began. Initially, not least because while the country had been involved in some land battles overseas, it had been one hundred and fifty years since there was significant fighting in the Midlands, Wales and south of the country, it was actually quite hard for the two conflicting sides to figure out how to construct armies, then come together and fight, so as to press forward and try and control parts of the other’s territory.

Due to the region’s deep fault lines, and being between the King’s main powerbase in the western parts of the country, and Parliament’s strongholds to the east, it is unsurprising that many of the key battles and a lot of the skirmishing of the Civil War took place in the Midlands. It is often thought that the first and last shots of the conflict were fired at Powick Bridge just south of Worcester, while Coleshill also has a claim to be where the first action of the war took place. King’s Norton, then a substantial village quite far from Birmingham in the north Worcestershire countryside, was frequently visited by armies who camped in the area which is now the suburb’s substantial cluster of parks. A fact still reflected in local road names. There was even a small-scale Battle of King’s Norton early in the war in September 1642 shortly before the first full scale battle of the war at Edgehill in Warwickshire, which saw around eight hundred Parliamentary soldiers defeat a similar number of Royalists.

It was in this environment that Birmingham located in a position jutting out into friendlier territory, emerged as a thorn in the Royalist’s side. Not just because they refused to sell them weapons. The townspeople were very openly hostile to any royalists who came their way, including the infamously thin skinned monarch. On the 17th October 1642, marching south from Shrewsbury in the hope of provoking the confrontation with Parliament which became the Battle of Edgehill, Charles I passed through Birmingham with his army. While passing through the town some of Birmingham’s most fervent Parliamentary supporters stole items of baggage from the king’s wagons. They succeeded in concealing the stolen items and later they were received by the castle authorities at Warwick, the administrative centre for the county and another firmly pro-Parliament settlement.       

Charles I seethed about this insult and humiliation for the entire winter into 1643. Then in the spring when the weather began to improve, the king instructed Prince Rupert of the Rhine, amongst his most notable commanders, to march north from Oxford – the Royalists emergency capital – and attempt to secure the south Staffordshire cathedral city of Lichfield. While the objective of the march north into the Midlands was ostensibly to secure Lichfield for the crown, a key secondary goal was to teach Birmingham a lesson for its obstinance and impertinence towards the Royal cause.

Prince Rupert left Oxford on the 29th March 1643 with a fairly small but powerful force of 1,200 cavalry and around 700 foot soldiers. This small army, nearly 2,000 strong, moved quickly northwards crossing the Cotswolds and entering Warwickshire at Shipston-on-Stour. From there they marched north via Stratford-upon-Avon and Henley-in-Arden. Entering Worcestershire briefly after passing through Shirley, they approached Birmingham along what both then and now is known as Stratford Road.

Possibly due to Rupert’s army having primarily marched through hostile territory Birmingham’s civic authorities had some advance warning of the Royalist forces approaching them. Despite the town which had grown up in a haphazard fashion with weak local government having no defences either created by human hand or natural, it was resolved that they would resist the oncoming Royalist force.

To do this they hastily threw up earthworks blocking the Stratford Road at Camp Hill looking down a slight incline into what today is Sparkbrook. To support Birmingham the Parliamentary garrison at Lichfield, which had been occupied by the Parliamentarians the year before, sent around 200 mounted soldiers. Their reasoning was likely that even if ultimately futile, anything Birmimgham’s resistance could do to slow, harry and weaken Prince Rupert’s army was to their advantage.  

Upon reaching Birmingham Prince Rupert, whether as a tactic or because he genuinely did not think that a disorganised historically undefended town like Birmingham would resist his advance, sent forth his quartering sergeant. This was an officer tasked with securing billets and supplies for the soldiers, and he went ahead to try and secure accommodation, food and drink from Birmingham.

While ostensibly seeking peaceful billet and passage from the town, the quartering sergeant upon approaching discovered the defences hastily thrown-up at Camp Hill on Birmingham’s southwestern edge. Needless to say he was unsuccessful in securing passage and support from the townspeople who remained resolute despite the heavily armed Royalist army bearing down upon them.

So, it now being late in the afternoon on 3rd April 1643, Easter Monday that year, Prince Rupert’s army mounted an attack upon Birmingham’s defences.

The townspeople and the reinforcements from Lichfield resisted the Royalist advance so stiffly that they were forced to retreat. A second attack was initated and once again despite numbering around 2,000 and comprising the Royalist cause’s best soldiers the assault had to be called off under heavy musket fire. 

Realising that a frontal attack was fruitless Rupert instead ordered his soldiers to attack from the side. While still resisting this angle of attack forced the defenders of Birmingham to pull back to the town, to the suburbs of Bordesley, Digbeth and Deritend. Here they continued to fire upon the Royalist attackers from the windows of outlying houses. The Royalists responded by setting fire to the properties the musket shot was coming from. These blazes stopped them coming under fire, but spread amongst the tightly packed houses and other buildings on the south eastern edge of the town, setting the suburbs of Birmingham ablaze. It is thought that the fire set by the Royalists consumed eighty houses, and would have destroyed more if the winds had not fortuitously changed direction.

As they approached the blazing south eastern end of Birmingham, the Parliamentary mounted soldiers charged the first lines of Royalist troops approaching the town, succeeding in scattering them. Lord Denbigh who had been leading the ground assault was severely wounded dying of his injuries five days later, costing the Royalists a commander.

Their efforts at harrying the advance of Rupert’s army having succeeded the detachment of 200 Parliamentary soldiers climbed onto their horses and rode swifty north back to Lichfield. They had only suffered five casualties, but now left the civilian resisters of Birmingham to Prince Rupert’s wrath.      

At least two civilians were killed during the battle for control of Birmingham. An innkeeper cut down by a blow from Royalist cavalry in the streets, and a man dressed in preachers garb who was purportedly believed to be the turbulent local vicar. This was in fact a case of mistaken identity, one which proved highly controversial, as the man dressed as a priest was actually a well known local figure widely considered insane who merely claimed to be a priest, and was widely considered an odd by harmless local character.

The murder of his man by soldiers was later held up as an example of the Royalists committing atrocities as was the fire damage to Birmingham. Parliament claimed – with some justification – that the damage to Birmingham was an example of the savagery of the 30 Years Wars which had then been raging in central Europe, especially Germany and the modern Czech Republic, for a generation, being imported into the UK. In this way Rupert’s actions as Birmingham became a propaganda coup for Parliament, widely discussed and disseminated through pamphlets.

Prince Rupert’s march to Lichfield was ultimately successful in removing the Parliamentary garrison from the city. After a two week siege which began on 8th April 1643 the defenders of the city agreed to depart for the Parliamentary stronghold of Coventry, returning control to the crown. It was not a total defeat however, as the defenders managed to broker a retreat with all their equipment and safe passage into Warwickshire.

The damage to Birmingham was swifty repaired, and the afternoon and evening of fighting in April 1643 almost certainly did very little damage to the town in any meaningful sense. Birmingham continued growing, surpassing Coventry in size during the hundred years after the battle. There are essentially no remains from the battle left today, apart from a few items including a damaged weathercock in the city’s museum, which was reportedly shot at during the battle. Local legend has it that works on Floodgate Street in 1815 uncovered a skeleton wearing a civil war era helmet, presumably the remains of a soldier who died while the battle was raging or shortly afterwards. A rare physical trace of the conflicts impact upon one individual, a scrappy independent minded town, which grew in time to become the UK’s second largest city.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

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This walk to the Camp Hill traffic island on Stratford Road, the site of the hastily built defences where on 3rd April 1643 during the 17th Century Civil Wars Birmingham’s townspeople faced off against nearly 2,000 Royalist soldiers led by Prince Rupert intent on marching through the town, begins from the plaza outside New Street Station.

This is the area where most of the buses into Birmingham from the south and the west put down. Those from the north and the south do so from the other side of the Bullring shopping centre beside Moor Street Railway Centre.

Walk straight across the road approaching the Bullring shopping centre.

On the far side of the road turn left and walk around the shopping centre’s outer wall, past the bus stops, approaching the road tunnel beneath the western part of the Bullring.

Walk through the tunnel.

On the far side of the tunnel head right, and cross the road to the Moor Street Station side.

Continue to the right downhill past a set of bus stops towards the Selfridge’s car park.

Here there is a road tunnel beneath Moor Street Station to the left which you walk through.

Once through the tunnel immediately turn right down Shaw’s Passage past Kilder Bar and the Original Patty Men restaurant.

At the bottom of Shaw’s Passage turn left, walking past the Friends of the Earth Warehouse, home to Voce Books, VIVID Projects and the BRIG Cafe and many more brilliant organisations.

Soon you reach a t-junction where you turn right heading downhill into the centre of Digbeth, one of Birmingham’s oldest districts.

After a short distance at the bottom of the slope you reach a crossroads, here turn left approaching the railway bridge bringing trains into Birmingham from the north and the south east.

Almost at the railway line turn right.

Continue along this road till you reach the Grand Union Canal’s Digbeth basin on your right.

Here to the right there is a ramp off the road onto the towpath.

Once on the towpath, walk straight ahead.

Soon you reach a bridge over the waterway which you cross.

On the far side of the canal turn left, and walk around beneath the bridge you have just crossed over.

Then walk straight ahead along the towpath along the back of Digbeth and into Bordesley.

You pass the back of Minerva Works and the place where the Digbeth Loc TV studios are being created.

Carry on across the River Rea and then further along the towpath beneath the infamously never used Duddeston Viaduct.

Past the viaduct you reach a heavily graffitied, seemingly still industrial area. Here you cross over a little branch canal to the left which is heading north.

Just after a wide road bridge you pass a set of locks.

Having passed this point lookout on your left for a flight of steps up to a roadway.

Head left up these steps onto the pavement above.

Once on the pavement turn right, walking beneath the Chiltern Mainline, past the entrance to the Bordesley near-ghost-station only served by parliamentary trains.

Beneath the railway bridge you soon come out at the extreme southern end of Digbeth High Street.

Here turn left and begin walking uphill towards the top of Camp Hill where the people of Birmingham resisted the advance of Prince Rupert and the Royalist Army during the Civil War on 3rd April 1643.

Approaching the disused grandly baroque, like an Oxbridge chapel Camp Hill Church, the Church of the Holy Trinity, the road forks.

Here take the small quiet road to the left.

Nearing the end of the road you see the Middleway and the Camp Hill traffic island ahead of you.

On reaching the island, which is slightly to the right, roughly level with the former Camp Hill Grammar School built in the late 19th Century which is now a centre for the Yemeni community, members of which first settled in the area in the 1920s, you are where the rampart was hastily thrown up in the spring of 1643 to defend Birmingham and the road north to Lichfield.

There are no traces today, but the topography of the Stratford Road’s clear dip down to Sparkbrook and the ridge which stands on the edge of the city centre, clearly shows why this spot was chosen as the place to try and avert the Royalist advance nearly four hundred years ago.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Being quite near the city centre it is easy to retrace your steps back into the heart of Birmingham with its major railway stations. There are also plenty of buses including the 50 which links central Birmingham with outlying suburbs like Moseley, King’s Heath, Brandwood and Druids Heath, which runs from just south west of the Camp Hill Island. There are also the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 buses which run at high frequency throughout the day from Sparkbrook west into the city centre, as well in the other direction out into Birmingham’s eastern suburbs.