The physical centre of the district is the locality of Barnt Green, a point on the Midland Railway, about eight miles to the south of the town. From this point radiate the several low hill ranges which give to the neighbourhood of Birmingham its distinctive character. The first of these ranges (forming the main watershed, and constituting the natural backbone of the area) is composed of the Lower Lickey Hills and their northerly extensions--the rolling heights of Halesowen, the conspicuous mound of Rowley Regis (820 feet), and the beautifully wooded heights of Dudley Castle (730 feet), the Wren’s Nest, and Sedgley Hill. To the west of this axial ridge, a second range bearing points of a somewhat greater elevation, stretches from the same locality of Barnt Green through the Upper or Bromsgrove Lickey Hills (900 feet) to Hagley, where it is known as the Clent Hills (1,028 feet). These look out far and wide over the beautifully fertile valley of the Severn, and are continued to the north-westward in the heights of Stourbridge and Abbots Castle. To the east of the main Lickey and Dudley axis, the country is less conspicuously diversified. The hill-ranges are broader, and rise almost imperceptibly from the surrounding plains. The most important of these less elevated areas forms what may be termed the Birmingham plateau. This is an irregular strip of broken ground, about twenty miles in length by four or five miles in breadth, which takes origin from the north-eastern slopes of the Lickeys between Northfield and Halesowen, and sweeps northwards through Harborne, Birmingham, Barr and Sutton Park, into the wild district of Cannock Chase. On this irregular plateau stand the town of Birmingham and its suburban villages of Harborne, Edgbaston, Moseley, Aston, Handsworth, and Sutton Coldfield. The western side of the plateau overlooks the “Black Country.” It is marked out by the terrace of Smethwick, Sandwell, and Great Barr, and culminates in the conspicuous fir-topped hill of Barr Beacon (800 feet). The eastward margin of the plateau is much less pronounced, and subsides gently into the great Midland plain of Warwick and Tamworth, along a line drawn from Northfield, through King’s Heath, Moseley, Camp Hill, and Sutton Coldfield.