ve number of
the larger mansions whose owners were liable to the tax. The return for
Birmingham gives a total of 414 hearths and stoves, the account
including as well those which are liable to pay as of those which are
not liable. Of this number 360 were charged with duty, the house of the
celebrated Humphrey Jennens being credited with 25. From Aston the
return was but 47, but of these 40 were counted in the Hall and 7 in the
Parsonage, Edgbaston showed 37, of which 22 were in the Hall. Erdington
was booked for 27, and Sutton Coldfield for 67, of which 23 were in two
houses belonging to the Willoughby family. Coleshill would appear to
have been a rather warmer place of abode, as there are 125 hearths
charged for duty, 30 being in the house of Dame Mary Digby.

~Heathfield.~--Prior to 1790 the whole of this neighbourhood was open
common-land, the celebrated engineer and inventor, James Watt, after the
passing of the Enclosure Act being the first to erect a residence
thereon, in 1791. By 1794 he had acquired rather more than 40 acres,
which, he then planted and laid out as a park. Heathfield House may be
called the cradle of many scores of inventions, which, though novel when
first introduced, are now but as household words in our everyday life.
Watt's workshop was in the garret of the south-east corner of the
building, and may be said to be even now in exactly the same state as
when his master-hand last touched the tools, but as the estate was
lotted out for building purposes in May, 1874, and houses and streets
have been built and formed all round it, it is most likely that the
"House" itself will soon lose all its historic interest, and the
contents of the workshop be distributed among the curiosity mongers, or
hidden away on the shelves of some museum. To a local chronicler such a
room is as sacred as that in which Shakespeare was born, and in the
words of Mr. Sam Timmins, "to open the door and look upon the strange
relics there is to stand in the very presence of the mighty dead.
Everything in the room remains just as it was left by the fast failing
hands of the octogenarian engineer. His well-worn, humble apron hangs
dusty on the wall, the last work before him is fixed unfinished in the
lathe, the elaborate machines over which his latest thoughts were spent
are still and silent, as if waiting only for their master's hand again
to waken them into life and work. Upon the shelves are crowds of books,
whose pages open