The estate on Birmingham's doorstep with a European name and no one knows why

Yahoo

20-07-2025

Take a trip three miles west of Birmingham and you'll find a little estate with a peculiar name.
Residents may consider the estate to fall within the margins of the city, but it is actually based just outside the border in Sandwell.
French Walls is located just off the A457 Grove Lane, a key gateway between Smethwick, the town where it is located in, and Birmingham.
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The estate is a bustling residential area, made up of high-rise blocks, low-rise apartments and houses.
Nearby is the huge, orange-and-grey, new super hospital called the Midland Met which opened in October last year at a cost of £988m.
At the bottom of the road is a small industrial estate, where a £900k cannabis farm was busted in June 2023.
And just beyond that, there's the Birmingham Canal and the train tracks for the West Coast Main Line, running parallel to each other, with the nearest station, Smethwick Rolfe Street, situated just under a mile away.
It's fair to say the origins of the names of many villages, towns and cities in our region can be traced back through the ages - but for French Walls, that's not the case.
For example, Smethwick was recorded in the 1086AD Domesday Book as being 'Smedeuuich' and it's thought the name either meant 'smith's place of work' or 'settlement on smooth land'.
While Birmingham's name is thought to have originally meant the home (ham) of the tribe (ing) of a leader who was either called Birm or Beorma.
In the case of French Walls, you'd be forgiven for thinking there was a French connection - for example, a wall was built using French stone or by a Frenchman.
But just how and why the estate earned its name remains unclear.
According to historians, the earliest reference to a place being called French Walls was made in around the year 1660, which referred to an estate in Smethwick called The French Walls.
An old black and white drawing, from a bygone era, depicted the settlement featuring three houses near a pool.
Renowned historian Carl Chinn MBE says the earliest reference he's found to French Walls is of a corn mill in 1810.
According to www.blackcountryhistory.org, the estate went up for auction in 1815 as 'French Walls Flour Mill'.
It was listed as being on the banks of the Birmingham Canal, comprising of 20 dwellings in total.
Part of the auction was made up of three houses, which were referred to as outbuildings belonging to French Walls Farm.
Today, the area looks much different, and you'll struggle to find any reference to French Walls on a street sign.
Its name appears on Google Maps as a relic of the forgotten past.
But you can still find it remembered in French Walls Way, a small residential road veering off the A457 Grove Lane into the estate.