Over 900 years of history

Saint Nicolas Place with its Tudor Merchant’s House, Old Grammar School and Church have survived virtually intact since the 15th Century and are among the Midlands historic gems.

Now a growing tourist attraction, venue for private and corporate events, Saint Nicolas Place also runs educational visits for schools. Our heritage buildings are complemented by modern facilities including a welcoming café, toilets and gift shop.

‘A praty uplandish towne and there be some fair howseys in it of staplears, (merchants) that use to by wolle’John Leland circa 1540.

Anglo Saxon in origin Kings Norton, named Nortune in the Doomsday Book, grew into a prosperous medieval village and in the 19th century became part of the UK’s growing, dynamic second city-Birmingham.
Saint Nicolas Place, the city’s largest collection of Tudor buildings includes Saint Nicolas Church, Tudor Merchant’s House and the Old Grammar School.

The Tudor Merchant’s House

Humphrey Rotsey’s house, a large, high status merchant’s house with five hundred year old original timbers. Exposed wattle and daub has survived and can still be clearly seen together with evidence of the building’s former history as a Georgian and Victorian public house, fondly remembered locally as the Saracen’s Head.

The Queen’s room where Queen Henrietta Maria is reputed to have slept in 1643. It is a beautiful example of a Tudor interior where an original fireplace, faint remains of Tudor interior décor and window frame grooves can be examined. In 1643 the room witnessed the encampment of 3000 Royalist Horse troops and 30 companies of foot soldiers in the English Civil War.

In the Gable Room you can see the original, newly exposed, Tudor gable, hidden for decades behind a later extension. The gable end, once the front of the house, looked out onto The Green.

For academic study and by prior arrangement, it will be possible to view the extensive hidden roof timber work of the east range and our large archive.

Old Grammar School

‘…..a word concerning the vanities and exorbitances of many women in painting, patching, spotting and blotting themselves…to enamour and ensnare others and to kindle a fire and flame of lust in the hearts of those that cast their eyes upon them’. Thomas Hall, School Master and Puritan taught at the Old Grammar School 1629-1662
‘Two Suffragettes have entered here, but, charmed with this old-world room, have refrained from their design of destruction.’Notice written on the school’s blackboard and reported in the Morning Post 7th April 1913

• One of the oldest school buildings in the country.

• Massive oak roof timbers felled between 1434 and 1460.

• Faint but visible, remnants of Tudor decoration thought to have been scratched into the woodwork to ward off evil spirits.

• Fletcher marks where yeomen of the village sharpened their arrow heads and marks on the window mullions where generations of students sharpened their ‘pen knives’ to cut nib shapes on quill pens.

Saint Nicolas Church

• The much loved and heavily used parish church of Kings Norton
• Norman in origin-largely 13th century and first documented in 1231
• 15th century tower and spire 60 metres high.
• Two 12th century chancel windows.
• 16th century tombs of the Lyttleton and Grevis families
• Memorial to a murdered 17th Century tax collector.
• Extensive 19th century Kempe and Hardman stained glass windows.

A fascinating journey through Medieval and Tudor history