PHLOGISTON. There’s a word you don’t hear often enough these days. But in the late 18th century you could barely go for a pint without overhearing someone gassing about phlogiston. It is, as if you needed telling, a hypothetical substance that was thought to make materials combust. The theory was proved bunk after a British scientist named Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen and we’ve all been able to breathe easy ever since.

Priestley died 200 years ago this year, an anniversary that got barely a ripple of attention, which is a shame because as well as oxygen he discovered erasers and laughing gas. He also invented fizzy soda water, without which Coca-Cola would just taste like, well, flat Coke. Priestley was a Yorkshireman, but some of his most productive years as a scientist were spent in what became the Edgbaston area of Birmingham, which has been described as Europe’s leafiest suburb. This was helpful because, thanks to photosynthesis (another Priestley wheeze), the more trees you get the more oxygen is produced.

It’s not just the wide tree-lined streets that make Edgbaston so green, there are also parks, bowling greens and tennis courts galore. The first recorded game of lawn tennis took place in Edgbaston in 1865 and it still stages one of the most important ladies’ grass-court tournaments outside of Wimbledon.

The area is also famous for its cricket ground, which hosted its first Test match in 1902, when a seven-wicket burst from the left-arm Yorkshire spinner Wilfred Rhodes saw the Australians bowled out for just 36. Perhaps England will find a similar destroyer for the Ashes next summer.

Edgbaston was deliberately created as a green area in the 1790s by the Calthorpe family, who wanted to build a residential estate from which industry and commerce were explicity banned. Although it is very close to the city centre, it has the peace and classiness of a monied suburb. It’s Birmingham’s answer to St John’s Wood in North London.

James Powell, of Robert Powell & Co estate agents, says: “Edgbaston is probably the most expensive area in Birmingham, but certainly far more accessible than its nearest rival, Sutton Coldfield. Prices have shot up in the past five years — four-bedroom family houses are going for upwards of £500,000 and there is an increasing number of million-pound houses.”

On one street this year — Farquhar Road — there were four houses on the market for more than £1 million. No 7 Farquhar Road is still available for £1.7 million, which gets you nine bedrooms, four reception rooms and an acre of land. Other posh Edgbaston streets are Westfield Road, Somerset Road and Chad Road, where a seven-bedroom house with gym is selling for £1.2 million. As a rule, anything with a B15 postcode will command big figures.

A lot of Warwickshire cricketers and Birmingham footballers live in the area, as well as the conductor Sir Simon Rattle. Famous former residents of Edgbaston include Sir Austen and Neville Chamberlain, J. R. R. Tolkien and Cardinal Newman.

The latter, the Catholic theologian, reformer and top tip for future sainthood, founded the Birmingham Oratory in the mid-19th century and the current Renaissance-style church that bears the name in Edgbaston was built in his honour a hundred years ago.

Edgbaston is also known for its influence on the arts. The Midland Arts Centre, by Cannon Hill Park, is the most-visited arts centre in the Midlands and offers theatre, music, comedy and courses. Meanwhile, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, on the southern side of Edgbaston, has been open for 65 years and features an ecelectic collection of European art, taking in Rubens, Bellini, Monet, Gauguin and Turner.

The Barber Institute is part of the Birmingham University campus, which is just off Church Road, where the first Birmingham house to sell for £2 million (pictured below) went on the market last year. Students could hardly live in a place like that, but the halls of residence near by “look quite respectable”, says James Powell, and the students are not a blight on the area. “Except that they keep on nicking our signs,” the estate agent says.

Apart from these small acts of petty theft, or trophy-hunting as the students would see it, crime is fairly low in Edgbaston. Certainly it is lower than in 1791 when the area was the scene of mass riots. Poor old Joseph Priestley, who had got the natives restless with his praising of the French Revolution, was the main victim. His Birmingham house was burnt to the ground. Still, at least it confirmed his theory that you need plenty of oxygen to get a good fire burning.

• Robert Powell & Co, 0121-454 6930; www.robertpowell.co.uk

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