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The third is what we simply denominate the Moat, and was the residence of the ancient lords of Birmingham, situated about sixty yards south of the church, and twenty west of Digbeth; this is also circular, and supplied by a small stream that crosses the road to Bromsgrove, near the first mile stone; it originally ran into the river Rea, near Vaughton's hole, dividing the parishes of Birmingham and Edgbaston all the way, but at the formation of the Moat, was diverted from its course, into which it never returned.

To speak a little more in detail, I am not the only person living who remembers "Pudding Brook" and "Vaughton's Hole." The name of "Padding Brook" was, in my boyish days, given to a swampy area of fields now covered by Gooch Street and surrounding thoroughfares.

Let us perambulate the parish from the bottom of Digbeth, thirty yards north of the bridge. We will proceed south-west up the bed of the river, with Deritend, in the parish of Aston, on our left. Before we come to the Floodgates, near Vaughton's Hole, we pass by the Longmores, a small part of King's-norton.

Pudding Brook proper was, however, a little muddy stream that flowed or oozed along the district named and finally emptied itself into the old moat not far from St. Martin's Church. Vaughton's Hole, to my juvenile mind, was represented by a deep pool in the River Rea, where something direful took place, in which a Mr. Vaughton was tragically concerned.