The first evidence of people settling in the area dates back to the Stone Age, when a Neolithic hunter lost a flint arrow head on Rednal Hill.

Additionally a 3000-year-old flint javelin point was found lying on the surface by an observant Mr W. H. Laurie when the Lickey's road was being widened in 1925.

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.

In 1888, I the Birmingham Society for the Preservation of Open Spaces purchased Rednal Hill and handed it to the city in trust.

Birmingham City Council finally purchased Cofton Hill, Lickey Warren and Pinfield Wood outright in 1920.

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.

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.

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 main tunnels were under the South Works and were also driven under the Flying Ground through the sandstone towards the Cofton Hackett aircraft factory, a task undertaken by an army of mining engineers.

Used in later years for moving partially-completed cars around the site, the tunnels still exist under the demolished factories, and many photographs taken by 'Subterranean Britain' explorers have surfaced on the Internet.

Firstly the opening of the Austin motor works at Longbridge in 1905, secondly the extension of the area of the City of Birmingham to the northern boundary of Cofton Hackett in 1911.

Thirdly the break-up of the Earl of Plymouth's estate by auction in 1919, and lastly the extension of the Birmingham tramlines to the Rednal terminus in 1924.

The 200-acre (80-hectare) site just off junction 4 on the M5 Motorway has been developed into a community with offices, houses, industrial units, Empire Cinemas, Hollywood Bowl, Premier Inn, Brewers Fayre, Morrisons, Gala Bingo, Greens Fitness and an area of public open space.