Rednal was known by the Anglo-Saxon name, Wreodan Healh, meaning 'thicket nook'. Together with Kings Norton and other sub-manors, Rednal is listed as Weredeshale in the Domesday Book, a berewick of Bromsgrove belonging to the king. A 20th-century housing estate has reinstated the name of Wreodanhale into modern usage. The name was recorded as early as 849 and is mentioned in the Cofton Lease, one of the few surviving Anglo-Saxon charter documents in the West Midlands. The charter designated land around Cofton Hackett and Rednal to be leased by Bishop Ealhun of Worcester to King Berhtwulf in AD 849. Running along the west side of Lickey Road, between Leach Green Lane and past Edgewood Road, is a medieval hedge estimated to be over 700 years old. The manor was sold by crown charter in 1682 to the Earl of Plymouth, who lived at nearby Tardebigge, and his descendants would own the lands at Rednal, Longbridge, Cofton Hackett and the Lickey Hills for the next 250 years. In 1888, I the Birmingham Society for the Preservation of Open Spaces purchased Rednal Hill and handed it to the city in trust. It also arranged for Pinfield Wood and Bilberry Hill to be leased on a peppercorn (nominal) rent. Birmingham City Council finally purchased Cofton Hill, Lickey Warren and Pinfield Wood outright in 1920. With the eventual purchase of the Rose Hill Estate from the Cadbury family in 1923, free public access was finally restored to the entire hills. An early provision for the small rural community was the Rednal Public Library built in 1909 by King's Norton & Northfield Urban District Council on Leach Green Lane. The site was donated by Edward Cadbury and George Cadbury Jnr, and the building costs met by philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie. In 1917, the Austin Aero Company built an airfield right next to Rednal, just on the other side the Lickey Road and north east of Cofton Hackett Park. The airfield was used for flying aeroplanes out of the Cofton Hackett aircraft factory. Between 1939 and 1945, the factory produced mainly Hawker Hurricane fighters, Short Stirling four-engined bombers that were flown out over Rednal. In 1924, the Birmingham tram system was extended along the central reservation of the Bristol Road South to the new Rednal Terminus, with a branch to Rubery. The new line drew thousands of visitors from the city and all over the Black Country