Manor House.—­How few of the thousands who pass Smithfield every day know that they are treading upon ground where once the Barons of Birmingham kept house in feudal grandeur.  Whether the ancient Castle, destroyed in the time of Stephen, pre-occupied the site of the Manor House (or, as it was of late years called—­the Moat House), is more than antiquarians have yet found out, any more than they can tell us when the latter building was erected, or when it was demolished.  Hutton says:  “The first certain account we meet of the moat (which surrounded the island on which the erections were built) is in the reign of Henry the Second, 1154, when Peter de Bermingham, then lord of the fee, had a castle here, and lived in splendour.  All the succeeding lords resided upon the same island till their cruel expulsion by John, Duke of Northumberland, in 1537.  The old castle followed its lords, and is buried in the ruins of time.  Upon the spot, about fifty years ago [1730], rose a house in the modern style, occupied by a manufacturer (Thomas Francis); in one of the outbuildings is shown the apartment where the ancient lords kept their court leet.  The trench being filled with water has nearly the same appearance now as perhaps a thousand years ago; but not altogether the same use.  It then served to protect its master, but now to turn a thread mill.”  Moat Lane and Mill Lane are the only names by which the memory of the old house is now retained.  The thread mill spoken of by Hutton gave place to a brass or iron foundry, and the property being purchased by the Commissioners, the whole was cleared off the ground in 1815 or 1816, the sale of the building materials, &c., taking place July 5, 1815.  Among the “lots” sold, the Moat House and offices adjoining realised L290; the large gates at the entrance with the brick pillars, L16; the bridge, L11; the timber trees, L25; a fire engine with carriage, &c., L6 15s. (possibly some sort of steam engine, then called fire engines); the total produce, including counting-house, warehouse, casting, tinning, burnishing, blacking, and blacksmiths’ shops, a horse mill, scouring mill, and a quantity of wood sheds and palisading, amounted to nearly L1,150.  The prosaic minds of the Commissioners evidently did not lead them to value “the apartments where the ancient lords kept their court,” or it had been turned into a scouring or tinning shop, for no mention was made of it in the catalogue of sale, and as the old Castle disappeared, so did the Manor House, leaving not a stone behind.  Mr. William Hamper took a sketch of the old house, in May, 1814, and he then wrote of the oldest part of the building, that it was “half-timbered,” and seemingly of about Henry VIII.’s time, or perhaps a little later, but some of the timbers had evidently been used in a former building (probably the old Manorial residence) as the old mortices were to be seen in several of the beams and uprights.  The house itself was cleared away in May, 1816, and the last of the outbuildings