are evidently Saxon, and mean the same thing, a home.

The word, in later ages reduced to a certainty, hath undergone various
mutations; but the original seems to have been _Bromwych_; _Brom_
perhaps, from broom a shrub, for the growth of which the soil is
extremely favourable; _Wych_, a descent, this exactly corresponds with
the declivity from the High Street to Digbeth. Two other places also in
the neigbourhood bear the same name, which serves to strengthen
the opinion.

This infant colony, for many centuries after the first buddings of
existence, perhaps, had no other appellation than that of Bromwych. Its
center, for many reasons that might be urged, was the Old Cross, and its
increase, in those early ages of time must have been very small.

A series of prosperity attending it, its lord might assume its name,
reside in it, and the particle _ham_ would naturally follow. This very
probably happened under the Saxon Heptarchy, and the name was no other
than _Bromwycham_.



SITUATION.

It lies near the centre of the kingdom, in the north-west extremity of
the county of Warwick, in a kind of peninsula, the northern part of
which is bounded by Handsworth, in the county of Stafford, and the
southern by King's-norton, in the county of Worcester; it is also in the
diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, and in the deanery of Arden.