Doctors in the houses

HOUGH born in Coventry, the eminent physician Dr John Ash became a prominent figure in Birmingham and was the driving force in the opening of the General Hospital in 1779.

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Dr Tighe's house at 101 Ashted Row, with Dr de Vall's house next door on the right

Originally in Summer Lane before moving to Steelhouse Lane in 1897, it's recalled in Hospital Street.

Publicly spirited as he was, Ash waxed wealthy through his medical practice for the well-off.

He was also possessed of a keen eye and mind. Alert to the rapid growth of Industrial Revolution Birmingham and the value of building land on its outskirts, he purchased part of Sir Lister Holte's estate in Duddeston intending to lay it out as a new district.

Notices to this effect appeared in 1788. Four years later, an advertisement for the estate stressed the 'goodness and regulations that are made in the streets, the plentiful springs of soft water, the moderate rate of purchase of bricks on the spot, the convenience of the canal, and the lower parish rates'.

Called Ashstead, Ash's homestead, and later Ashted and also Vauxhall, the development was leased by a lawyer called Brookes, remembered in Great Brook Street.

He tried to turn it into an elegant suburb with Ash's former house becoming St James's Chapel.

Described by William Hutton, Birmingham's first historian, as a 'hungry attorney', Brookes gained notoriety for fomenting trouble in the Church and King Riots of 1791, when mobs attacked the homes of rich men believed to be supporters of the French Revolution.

Following the disorder, the government erected army barracks in Birmingham so troops would be at hand for any future disturbances. Given the role played by Brookes in the outbreak of violence, it's ironic that Ashted was chosen as the site. Five acres of land was leased from Heneage Legge, who then owned much of Duddeston and Nechells.

Housing 162 cavalrymen and with stabling for their horses, the barracks were completed in 1793. They disappeared in the 1930s, replaced by the council with the Ashcroft Estate.