The Old Crown, Birmingham
pub in Digbeth, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK
The Old Crown, a pub in Deritend, claims to be one of the oldest extant secular buildings in Birmingham, England. It is Grade II* listed, and claims to date back to c. 1368, retaining its "black and white" timber frame, although almost all of the present building dates from the early 16th century.
History
It is believed the building was constructed between 1450 and 1500 with some evidence dating to 1492 (the same year the Saracen's Head in nearby Kings Norton was completed). John Leland noted the building, upon entering Birmingham, in 1538 as a "mansion house of tymber". It is thought to have been originally built as the Guildhall and School of St John, Deritend. This Guild owned a number of other buildings throughout Warwickshire, including the Guildhall in Henley in Arden. The building was purchased in 1589, by "John Dyckson, alias Bayleys", who, in the 1580s, had been buying a number of properties and lands in "the street called Deritend" and in Bordesley. Described as a tenement and garden, running alongside Heath Mill Lane, the building remained in the Dixon alias Baylis (later Dixon) family for the next hundred years.
In the original deed, John Dyckson is described as a "Caryer", which in the West Midlands at this time, when roads were nothing more than hollow-ways and bridle paths, implied that he owned several trains of packhorses.
The public source identifies “The Old Crown, Birmingham” as pub in Digbeth, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Crown, Birmingham and Digbeth.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Old Crown, Birmingham”, the useful work is to connect “pub in Digbeth, Birmingham, West Midlands, England, UK” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7754826. Authority coordinates are 52.475, -1.884. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1368, 1450, 1500 and 1492.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Old Crown, Birmingham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.