22 August 2025
All Wychall Willow Nook.
Despite the similarity between the Old English for a willow-nook (withig = willow, halh = nook), Wychall probably has a different derivation. More likely it derives from wic-heall (wic = dairy farm, heall = hall/building/estate). Archaeological and documentary evidence supports this: a dairy farm and, by the twelfth century, a timber-framed hall within a moated site.
However the place-name developed, the old farmland of Wychall Farm is, today, a willow nook. On the west side of Popes Lane (once the old Northfield/Kings Norton border), a boggy field has been rewilded as willow-y wetland by the Friends of Kings Norton Nature Reserve. The land remembers that this was once a meander of the River Rea, before it was redirected into straighter lines.
