Doomsday Book in its account of the great royal manor of Bromsgrove, of which Nortune, now King's Norton, was a berewick, states that the manor contained a wood seven miles long and four broad, as well as four eyries of hawks. It may be that it was one of these eyries which gave origin to Hawkeslow, now Hawkesley, the name of a farm in King's Norton parish, which occupies some rising ground on the north side of the Lickey Hills, from which it is distant about a mile, being half a mile east of Longbridge on the Birmingham and Bristol road.
The present house is a building of no interest and comparatively modern, but it is surrounded by a large moat still filled with water, and flanked by vestiges of earthworks extending over a considerable area. From this place the family of Hawkeslowe evidently took their name. They, although holding but a small sub-manor within the great royal manor of Bromsgrove, were a family of considerable importance, and furnished a knight of the shire in several of the parliaments of Edward II and Edward III, and supplied at least three deputy sheriffs in the fourteenth century, when the Shrievalty was hereditary in the family of Beauchamp. The earliest particulars we have of the Hawkeslow family date back to the latter part of the thirteenth century.