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Extracts from, Carl Chinn’s chapter ‘The Peoples of Birmingham’ in Birmingham, The workshop of the World.
“Around the time of the Staffordshire Hoard, the first name appears: Beorma, whose folk founded the settlement called after him. His name is all that we know of him and it suggests that he and his group were immigrants: Angles, a Germanic people, moving westwards from their original conquests in eastern England. The Norman Conquest of 1066 and its aftermath brought the first significant influx of new peoples since the coming of the Anglo-Saxons. They were knights and men-at-arms, and perhaps their families, who had supported Duke William, and who came from Normandy, Brittany, Flanders and elsewhere in northern France. Amongst them may have been a number of lords mentioned in the Domesday Book: Richard of Birmingham, Peter of Erdington, Robert of Weoley, Drew of Edgbaston, and Drogo of Handsworth and Perry. Birmingham’s population rose dramatically as it developed into a major manufacturing town.”
From the Middle Ages to the late nineteenth century, most immigration into Birmingham was from surrounding counties. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, significant numbers of people also moved to Birmingham from London, Wales, Scotland and especially Ireland. Carl Chinn records how Birmingham’s population has also subsequently grown with Jewish and Romany communities and from places including Yemen, Poland, Ukraine, China, Jamaica, Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, Ghana, Punjab, Gujarat, Pakistan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Bengal, Kashmir, Burundi, Albania, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iran.
Despite being taken around 40 years ago, the photograph of Soho Road is still recognisable.