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There is evidence of people living in the area around Moseley Bog since the Bronze Age (about 3000 years ago). Archaeologists found piles of burnt stones, ash and charcoal which could with speculation that they were either used for cooking or the remains of sweat lodges. These were tents made of wood and animal skins in which water was poured over heated stones to create a sauna, and are still used some cultures around the world in ceremonies as a kind of spiritual purification. The mounds at Moseley and their surrounding area are recorded as Scheduled Monument number 1020542 with Historic England.
J.R.R. Tolkein spent a large part of his childhood living close to Sarehole Mill, playing in the overgrown, ancient-looking and entrancing woodland and streams near Wake Green Road. Sarehole was a wonderful spot for the childhood of an imaginative boy. Indeed there can be no doubt that Tolkien was deeply affected by the locality and its people, later bringing them into his captivating novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Although born in South Africa, Ronald Tolkien was only three when his dad died and his mom decided to raise her two sons in her native Birmingham.
Sarehole used to be a tiny village which stood on either side of a wide country road along which cattle were herded to market in central Birmingham four miles away. Part of the old Forest of Arden, its name was Anglo Saxon in origin, meaning ‘the place where Service Trees grow’. In an article for The Guardian (Tolkien’s Shire by John Ezard, The Guardian Sat 28 Dec 1991), Tolkein describes his time in Sarehole, ‘I was brought up in considerable poverty but I was happy running about in that country. I took the idea of the hobbits from the village people and children. The hobbits are just what I should like to have been but never was – an entirely unmilitary people who always came up to scratch in a clinch.’
Blurred photograph of Moseley Bog, date and photographer not known.