William Dargue A History of BIRMINGHAM Places & Placenames from A to Y

Henburies/ Henbury/s

First record 1798

Henburys/ Henburies was an earlier hall near the site of Highbury (Hall), Moor Green. Henbury is shown on James Sherriff's map of 1798. The name appears to be Anglo-Saxon, heyne burh meaning 'high burgh'; the implication is of a 'fortified settlement on a hill', though what the origin of this is unknown. There is no local evidence of such a feature and the name may have been imported from elsewhere.

Uffculme. Image from Helen Cadbury Alexander 1906 'Richard Cadbury of Birmingham', a work in the public domain.

Richard Cadbury leased Moseley Hall in 1884, buying it in 1890. The following year he decided to convert it into a children's convalescent home. In the meantime Cadbury had bought the nearby Henburies estate north of Queensbridge Road for the construction of a new house to be known as Uffculme. Fours years later the original Henburies House was demolished. On Cadbury's death in 1916 Uffculme was left to the City as a psychiatric hospital. With the parkland of Joseph Chamberlain's Highbury, the grounds later became a public park.

The house has always been a hospital and is now the Uffculme Centre belonging to Birmingham & Solihull Mental Health NHS Trust and used as an administrative base and training and conference centre.