Snails Green/ Snailes Green

There are two Snails Greens in Birmingham, the one in Edgbaston, the other in Great Barr.

Edgbaston
Snails Green at Edgbaston was a small settlement dating from before the 18th century at the junction of Westfield Road and Richmond Hill Road just above the valley of Chad Brook. The term 'green' was often applied to common pasture in the Middle Ages. This name, which probably derives from a surname than an invertebrate, is no longer in use.

Great Barr

The name Snails Green is no longer in use at Great Barr and refers to a location at the junction of Pages Lane and the Walsall Road. It is first recorded in a deed of 1638 of the Gough family of Perry Hall and is found variously spelt - Sneals/ Sneales/ Snell/ Snells/ Snails Green.

Snails Green House stood here in the 18th century.  

Snails Green was the location of a dame school where Bishop Francis Asbury 1745-1816, one of the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, spent some unhappy years under a brutal teacher until his apprenticeship to a local blacksmith at the age of 13.

William Dargue 08.03.2009/ 18.08.2012

For 19th-century Ordnance Survey maps of Birmingham go to British History Online.

For Snails Green, Edgbaston see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/mapsheet.aspx?compid=55193&sheetid=10091&ox=1163&oy=1318&zm=2&czm=2&x=392&y=280. 

For Snails Green, Great Barr see http://www.british-history.ac.uk/mapsheet.aspx?compid=55137&sheetid=8337&ox=3195&oy=1334&zm=1&czm=1&x=62&y=278.