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Castle Vale

  • Thread starter Thread starter harley
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harley

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is there anyone who lives ,or has lived on castle vale .i dont see a mention of the place on here ,where are you all folks harley
 
I have two connections. When I was a student one of my holiday jobs was working on Castle Vale when it was being built. Me and my two friends where employed by one of the firms of finishers to clean the tile on the sides of some of the buildings. We found it a difficult job as the tiles were perfectly clean and so we were just going through the motions. The foreman did no work at all; he spent all day reading his paper, listening to the wireless, smoking and drinking tea in his base which was in a garage of one of the new blocks.
At the end of the week we collected our wages. We had all done exactly the same work for the same amount of time and were all three, students. However, we were all paid something slightly different. When we queried this with the foreman, he phoned up his office who told him to sack us on the spot for complaining. The next week we got a job at Wimbushes Bakery.
The second connection. A couple of years later one of my best friend lived in one of the high rises and so I visited regularly. I remember there was a sewage farm near bye with tomatoes growing on the side. I am told it is common for tomatoes to grow near sewage. My friends were Kevin Donaldson and his wife Eileen. Kevin had been a psychiatric nurse then went to universtity to study psychology and became and educational psychologist working for the prison service.
 
a friend of my farther-in-law lived in one of the blocks of flats i remember going with him to there a couple of times, and i used to work over the road at Pressed Steel Fisher. but befor all that i have been on the runway roller skating getting some practice in there would also be racing cars on there, and a long time befor that my dad took me to an R.A.F open day that the R.A.F had.
 
I lived on the vale in the early 70's, Meteor House, Filton Croft. I worked at the Trees Pub just down from our block. it was also my schools playing field before they built the estate.
 
I lived in Stornoway Rd. for 6 years, people used to call it millionaires row because it was one of the few private rows of houses, I used to drink in the Trees, Albatross, Tradewinds, Skylark, Tyburn House.
 
John what years did you live on Vale, I used the trade winds sometimes and drank in the albatross a couple of times but my local was the trees. I lived there from 71/75
 
i went to castle vale comp then left in 1972. lived in chigwell close ,then cosford tower top floor oooodizzy, then turnhouse road , then longclose walk ,loved the place then, and i think they done a fantastic job of it now bringing it all up to date.so very clean and tidy.harley
 
Does anyone remember which brewery owned and ran The Trees when it first opened? A clue..... the same brewery owned The Norton Arms in Coleshill at that time.

Ian
 
I worked at the Trees in the 70's it was Ansells then, could it have been Inde coope not sure on the spellingbut Ansells took them over.
 
chrisange said:
I worked at the Trees in the 70's it was Ansells then, could it have been Inde coope not sure on the spellingbut Ansells took them over.
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It was TK Ales, aka Thomas Keresley Brewery. I didn't much care for their range of beers and most people were happy to see the Ansells takeover.

I have a feeling that TK were based in Mansfield or that vicinity bur I'll be happy to be corrected.

Ian
 
never heard of them Ian but I was a little young when they owned the trees I did'nt move there until the early 70's I asked my husband last night and he was a pub manager for bass and he could'nt answer your question. clever one that.
 
chrisange said:
never heard of them Ian but I was a little young when they owned the trees I did'nt move there until the early 70's I asked my husband last night and he was a pub manager for bass and he could'nt answer your question. clever one that.
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Not clever, a little obscure, maybe. I've no idea why they were granted the licence. Perhaps it was the Monopoly's Commision thingy....
There are so many knowledgeable people on this forum that I feel sure at least one will have the answer....more than one, probably.

Ian
 
I have no personal connection with Castle Vale but a colleague of mine lived on the 14th floor of one of the high-rise blocks with his family. He had a toddler son, about 18 months old and the father and son bond was forming with the games of football being regularly reported on.
The guy was a bit of a scrounger really, liked his booze and his car was like an ashtray. One day he arrived home in mid-afternoon; someone told him that a bag of clothes had fallen out of a widow onto the canopy over the entrance. He climbed up to discover that the bundle was in fact his young son who had climbed through a window; Bob's son died in his arms.
This was one of the saddest experiences of my life.
It did lead to the modifdication of the window catches but at what cost!
 
Toddler tragedies are heart-rending. A deceased uncle of mine -not in Castle Vale-had a toddler son..this happened in the early 1940s..who put his head into a tub next to the mangle where there was a very small amount of water in the bottom of the tub-he drowned within minutes/moments.The boy's name was Malcolm.:angel:
 
this one is of castle vale being built in the 60s..castle bromwich airdrome would have been here...

lyn

pic courtesy of carl chinn
 
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Astoness said:
this one is of castle vale being built in the 60s..bromford racecourse would have been here...

lyn

pic courtesy of carl chinn
Click to expand...

You mean Castle bromwich airdrome.
Bromford estate was Bromford racecouse.
Get it right woman !!
 
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morning chris...caption says..this is where bromford bridge racecourse was....thanks for correcting it i will edit it....

lyn
 
I can't see myself, I worked on that place.
Me and me Dad done the underpasses, which have all been filled in now.
 
Well Frothblower, you weren't the only one. For a holliday job as students, me and my two friend worked on the site. We were employed by one of the finishing teams on some of the smaller flats, cleaning the tiles on the exterior walls. To get from one flat to the other we had to walk with our equipment from roof to roof across planks, (Health and safety issues were kept in proportion then); well, actually we edged our way across on hands and knees. While we worked cleaning the already clean and sparkling tiles, our foreman sat in his shed reading the paper, smoking and doing other similar important jobs. The three of us worked identical hours and did identical tasks. At the end of the week we all received a different wage. We did not complain, we simply asked why and we were simply given the sack.
We then borrowed my brother-in-laws ladder and tried to clean windows by going door to door in Smallheath. We gave that up after the first day of failure.
Happily we found work at Wimbushes but there wasn't much dough in that job.
 
great memories mike....hope you are well and its good to see you posting again...

lyn
 
Mike your post did make me laugh especially when you said 'you simply asked and were simply given the sack' then it was onto the next job!!
 
Castle Vale Estate. Len.





Chivenor House.


Castle Vale was a major housing estate in Birmingham, England, consisting of 34 tower blocks. Approved in stages between 1964 and 1968, Castle Vale has become one of Europe's largest urban regeneration programmes, witnessing the demolition of 32 tower blocks in the late 1990s for low rise housing and the refurbishment of two tower blocks; Topcliffe House and Chivenor House.
Castle Vale had 27 maisonette blocks, one 20 storey tower, Concorde Tower, and nine 16 storey towers:

Eight of the 16 storey towers were known as the Centre 8 and were two rows of tower blocks.
List of tower blocks
 
I was keeping an eye on you all in the the flats doing the wiring. before that we played football on there the dressing rooms were on the Chester Rd if you drew a pitch up by Minworh it took half an hour to get there you were worn out before you started. Dek
 
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