Just a guess, Jaffrey road playing fields.I believe this image was taken in Erdington, in what appears to be a playing field. Can anyone recognise the location, please?
Thanks.
(Group of Erdington Home Guard blokes practising with a spigot mortar, 1942-44).
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Thanks, Smudger and Pedrocut. I think the answer will be based on the appearance of the adjacent houses. This, below, is the best shot of those I can extract from the original image. Do they look right for either location?
Frothie - I have other images of Erdington blokes (possibly some of the same ones) training at Hockley Heath on this and another fearsome artillery weapon, the two-pounder gun: here.
Chris
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ThanksBob, Foden Buildings were on the Chester Road somewhere between Antrobus and the Beggars' Bush.
Pedrocut, your map - post #675 sorts out a few things for me. I remember going to a sports day / fete on the cricket ground in the early 1950's and we went in the entrance shown. Was that Aston Unity cricket ground before they moved to Tamworth I think it was. Where the gravel pit is shown is now part of Travis Perkins and the football field on the right is now a modern estate. Next door to that was the garage where we bought our Pink Parafin. Was it Aladdin? It wasn't an Esso Blee Dooler I know that although I can see the little man who advertised it.
Lady PenelopePedrocut, your map - post #675 sorts out a few things for me. I remember going to a sports day / fete on the cricket ground in the early 1950's and we went in the entrance shown. Was that Aston Unity cricket ground before they moved to Tamworth I think it was. Where the gravel pit is shown is now part of Travis Perkins and the football field on the right is now a modern estate. Next door to that was the garage where we bought our Pink Parafin. Was it Aladdin? It wasn't an Esso Blee Dooler I know that although I can see the little man who advertised it.
Hi Chris, I think the photo was taken in one of the fields shown in the photo below which are on Grange Rd Erdington coming in from centre right of the photo. What do you think ?I believe this image was taken in Erdington, in what appears to be a playing field. Can anyone recognise the location, please?
Thanks.
(Group of Erdington Home Guard blokes practising with a spigot mortar, 1942-44).
View attachment 114830
Hi Chris, I think the photo was taken in one of the fields shown in the photo below which are on Grange Rd Erdington coming in from centre right of the photo. What do you think ?
oldmohawk
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[EPW053143] The Holly Lane Brick Works and the surrounding residential area, Erdington, 1937
https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW053143
Bob, the timber yard was about where the gravel pit is shown in Pedrocut's post #675.
Pedrocut, your post #686 - very interesting map. Lots of new housing but I wonder what those two squares are in Shortheath Park, the pitches were further over. I can see the park keepers hut in the bottom left hand corner, Parkie Mitchell we called him.
Do we know what regiment of they were in? Would it be Erdington or part of a larger unit, for example Handsworth?
Then and now in Erdington ...
In the early part of the 1900s someone produced a post card showing the Rookery House lodge on the corner of Kingsbury Road and Spring Lane.
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In 2016 the lodge was still there in the changed scenery and a postcard today would look like below.
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Back to Grange Road, for a moment.
There's a further little twist to all this. A 1945 aerial view of the area, shown below, indicates a row of mysterious structures on the grass where the Home Guard had been deploying their mortar two or three years earlier. The first thoughts are perhaps army huts, or even tents. But the likelihood seems to be a row of prefabs which must have appeared very quickly after the war. How long did they last? A decade or so? Does anyone remember them? But then, after their removal, the area of grass was apparently reinstated and reincorporated into the sports field.
Unusual for an area of ground in Birmingham to have reverted to its wartime state and original use, and to have stayed that way up until the present day - rather than having been permanently built-upon like many other sites.
Chris
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