page_title: River Cole, West Midlands
section_title: Shire Country Park
hierarchical_section_title: River Cole, West Midlands / Description of the course / Shire Country Park
caption_attribution_description: Sarehole Mill in Birmingham, England.
context_page_description: The River Cole is a 25 miles river in the English Midlands. It rises on the lower slopes of Forhill, one of the south-western ramparts of the Birmingham Plateau, at Red Hill and flows south before flowing largely north-east across the plateau to enter the River Blythe below Coleshill, near Ladywalk, shortly before the Blythe meets the Tame. This then joins the Trent, whose waters reach the North Sea via the Humber Estuary. Its source is very near the main watershed of Midland England: tributaries are few and very short except in the lower reaches, so the Cole is only a small stream.
context_section_description: Crossing Slade Lane at a ford, the 'slade' is the Cole's black silted boggy valley, it begins a journey through the seven kilometres, between Yardley Wood and Small Heath of the Shire Country Park. Firstly passing through Scribers Lane SINC (Site of Nature Conservation Interest), a diverse site with mixed broadleaf woodland containing wet flushes and ditches, a disused millrace and a wetland scrape. Over the past few years there have been reports of otter, water vole and water rail in this area. It runs along the River to the Scribers Lane Ford. A leat also carries water to the mill race and former mill pond of Tritterford Mill. It is bridged at Highfield Road by what was formally Titterford wain bridge built in the early 19th century but now replaced by a new bridge by which Highfield Road sweeps across the river and up the hill to Christ Church. Due to the construction of the mill pool, Chinn Brook had to be diverted far into the Dingles, flowing at a lesser gradient than the river, until it could join the Cole at the same level. The river then flows through the Dingles where towards Brook Lane is Four Arches Bridge. First recorded in 1822, it formerly linked Webb and Old Brook Lanes. The wain ford alongside and the side approached have disappeared. When the North Warwickshire Line was being built between 1906/7, its embankment cut off both Webb Lane and Robin Hood Lane and to avoid the cost of two bridges so close together, a single span was placed centrally and the lanes diverted to it. Both fords then went out of use. For two decades the Four Arches Bridge continued to be used, but then Cole Valley Road was built up and thenceforward the bridge led nowhere, and it was allowed to fall into ruin until only the arch courses and piers remained. A local campaign succeeded in achieving its handsome restoration. The race to Sarehole Mill formerly went under Brook Lane in a culvert, but this has been blocked and the line of the race is lost to northward. The spillway from race to river is seen to be still there, and the slots for the removable plank weir can be seen. The riverside walk continues as the John Morris Jones Walkway past the site of Robin Hood Lane ford, across Cotterills Meadow which has been Colebank Playing Field for the last ninety years until it reaches the Grade II Listed water mill, Sarehole Mill at Hall Green. The Coldbath Brook, a tributary of the Cole, drives the mill which is now a museum and one of the inspirations for J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. The Shire Country Park ranger office is located at Sarehole Mill.
  Tolkien and his brother spent their childhood in Birmingham with their widowed mother. They first lived in the hamlet of Sarehole, which Tolkien said were the happiest years of his youth. Sarehole is said to have been the model for The Shire, home to the hobbits. Every year the Tolkien Weekend is held at Sarehole Recreation Ground and Moseley Bog Local Nature Reserve part of the Shire Country Park. 2005 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the release of The Lord of the Rings. Ronald and his brother spent many hours playing around Sarehole Mill and being chased away by the miller's son. The Mill features in The Hobbit when Bilbo Baggins runs "as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across The Water and then on for a mile or more." In the 1960s Tolkien contributed to a public appeal to restore the mill which had become dilapidated. It is now a museum and is the only surviving water mill in the City's ownership.
  Continuing to Green Lane ford which, like those at Slade and Scribbers Lane, has been concreted and the wooden footbridge is the latest of many, earlier ones have been swept away by sudden torrents. When the meadow below Green Road was opened as part of the riverside walk in the 1960s, the Cole was re-coursed and two weirs topped by step-stones were installed.  Next, the river crosses the A3400, Stratford Road, the site of the former 13th-century Greet Mill, whose pool was the ponded river. In 1914 two brick bridges, over the river chan
caption: Sarehole Mill
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