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Handsworth

crikey bernie thats a cracking pic of the carnegie i know so well...the houses to the left of it are no longer there as its where samuels was built...the carnegie is still there and still be used as a resources place i think and i know carol wont mind me correcting the location but its in hunters road not hunters vale (easy to mistake the two) and it runs accross nursery road...thanks ever so much for posting it as its a new one for me

lyn
 
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Astoness said:
crikey bernie thats a cracking pic of the carnegie i know so well...the houses to the left of it are no longer there as its where samuels was built...the carnegie is still there and i know carol wont mind me correcting the location but its in hunters road not hunters vale (easy to mistake the two) and it runs accross nursery road...thanks ever so much for posting it as its a new one for me

lyn
Click to expand...
...and still very much in use.
 
yes bernie the old pic you posted on post 298 shows the shops to the left of the carnegie...the pic on post 303 shows part of the H Samuels building which replaced the old shops and the pic on post 304 shows again H Samuels the photographer would have been standing in nursery road..and yes bernie the factory is still there and the bridge
lyn
 
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Could anyone tell me if pic#298, every did tonsil removal....when l was about 11yrs old l remember my mother and me getting on a tram at sixways going up lozells and somewhere getting off to a clinic to have my tonsils removed.....mom left me there and l was picked up the next morning, the building looks familiar and even after all these years l close my eyes and see the ward l was in with a lot of other kids,it was such a horrible experience its never left my mind.....Brenda
 
Hi Carol it's easy to enlarge the pics when your posting them , after you have pressed manage attachments and selected your pic from your computer and you end up with a thumbnail image , before you click submit reply double left click the thumbnail and a box will appear with a choice of different sizes click full size and then you will have a full size image before you submit reply , if you have any trouble it's my instructions not the process Bernie
 
A view of Heathfield Road in 1915, compared with the modern view. Still many similarities, although I doubt you'd walk leisurely on the road as did the pedestrians of 1915. Viv.

du8uvepa.jpg
 
Great pic. Good to see some of the new trees survived the century. Remember those wooden gate post balls.
And the lack of cars must of made a huge difference to the general feel of a place.
 
That's a great pic of Wellington Road (well, they're all great) but this one reminded me that our dearly missed mum went to Wellington Road School. She lived in Crompton Road but no pictures of that (any available?). As for the Carnegie Infant Welfare Institute, I didn't know it was called that but remember it well and can still almost taste the VILE cod liver oil mum got for us from there and the orange juice wasn't much better.
 
It came from Handsworth Historical Society - this was part of the text which came with it: This is the popular name for the building at the corner of College Road
(formerly Grove Lane) and Slack Lane, which was erected about 1460 and is of
moderate size and a fine example of CRUCK construction, the beams still
being in good order,
 
old cottages slack lane...jpgyou are quite right oisin its the cruck construction cottage on slack lane as harborne pointed out...i was down that way about 3 years back taking photos of it...can be entered either by college road or oxhill road...lovely old building

lyn
 
The last I heard was when a sculptor was moving into the habitable part while the rest was still the HQ of the Handsworth History Society. (Although it's accessible from Slack Lane and College Road I can see how you'd get intoit from Oxhill Road, which is the other end of Slack Lane.)
 
[QUOTE=the greengrocers (was that Tibbetts?)


No, it wasn't "Tibbetts" - they were much further down, on the opposite side, on the opposite corner of Louisa Road to "The Barrell" pub. My parents were great friends of Gertie (who ran the fruit stall) and Ted (who did the fish) Tibbetts. Another Tibbetts brother ran the veg.stall, and another, the meat, in the butchers shop next door.

Moving towards the city centre, I remember "The Barrell" (many evenings spent waiting in the front or back porch - I can still remember being bored and cold - waiting for my Dad to bring me out a lemonade and bag of crisps!).


Next to "The Barrell" was a cheap ("seconds") shoe shop, then a little market, then the "West Bromich Building Society", and then the newsagents/tobbaconist's shop on the corner of Ninevah Road.
 
Interesting question .. not sure if this is covered elsewhere ...

When were upstairs bathrooms built-in on new houses ? ... (eg. Baths and wash basins in a bathroom).
I'm assuming most Handsworth houses built before the 2nd world war were built without upper bathrooms ?

And that bathrooms would have been added as a (luxury ?) item at some time after the second world war.
And maybe standard to new buildings after 1955-60

I know the outside toilet was the standard and it was from 60s onwards that upstairs toilets were added then.
 
Stephen this is an awkward one really, but I can give you some idea from my own experience. We rented a house for a few months at 33 Philip Victor Road, which is off the top end of Grove Lane. It was built by Percy Cox the builder who was also Lord Mayor so I believe, and it was constructed in 1916. That had an inside bathroom, but of course it was larger than an ordinary house and built for someone with a very good income. Percy Cox's brother lived two doors away from us and most of the other people in the road had incomes we could only dream about.

My mother was born in a back to back in Ladywood, but moved to a new house in Yardley Wood in 1928. That had an inside bathroom (it was a council house). I think from the 1920's you will most certainly find houses having bathrooms, but before that they were probably quite rare. The Yardley Wood houses were all different, some had a toilet actually inside the building but you had to go out of the back door and through another door, back into the house, to get to it. Effectlvely an inside toilet which was outside. My aunt lived in one in Grendon Road, off Warstock Road, and her bathroom was off the kitchen as was ours, but hers had a toilet in there too. I think bathrooms were standard from the 1920's, all the 1930's bay-fronted houses had bathrooms complete with toilets, but apart from the Yardley Wood houses I can't think of any 1920's houses I have been into. I feel quite lucky that I have never lived in a house without a bathroom, but perhaps I have missed out on something too. Interestingly, the houses in Bournville which were built in the 1890's had baths built in, but sunk into the kitchen floor. I presume the toilets were outside though.
 
Shorty thats a very interesting reply thank you. And good to hear about the "inside" bathroom.

But I am really interested also in the "upstairs" bathroom.
When I lived in Babington Road (1955's onwards). I always remembered a bathroom "upstairs" - but it could be that the houses were actually built without bathrooms and they were added at a later date. It seems difficult to imagine an upstairs bathroom being viable - without hot water - and I cant really see people wanting to tramp upstairs with kettles of water - hence my query... to start the ball rolling. Like you I too feel lucky to always have had an inside bathroom and also one upstairs
 
Stephen, the house in Philip Victor Road, built 1916 had an indoor, upstairs bathroom and toilet, perhaps I did not made it too clear. I would think that as council houses were built with bathrooms from the 1920's that private houses would have been the same, but upstairs rather than downstairs. Terraced houses built early 1900's did not have them, but like yours in Babbington Road, were installed later, as these house were built either in Victorian or Edwardian times. All the 1930's houses had indoor upstairs bathrooms (and I lived in one of those, too). The house in Philip Victor Road would probably have been a kind of blue-print for private housing from thereon in I would say. I don't know if I gave you the wrong impression about the inside bathroom - it was a fully functional proper bathroom, the houses were built with them, it was not an add-on, it was just the toilet bit that in some houses had to be reached from an outside door. Once we left Handsworth we lived in a house built 1960 and it even had central heating.
 
I know that the houses built for Cadburys in "Bournville" , circa 1910, had upstairs baths and toilets, my house here built 1946, has a downstairs toilet built into the outhouse, and a in around 1956 they converted the box room 6'x8', into a bath and toilet, so we have two working toilets, I suggest that this was the same nationally. paul
 
Several types of bath were tried out at Bournville . Below are two types from Michael Harrisons book, "Bournville, model Village to garden suburb". One is the sunken bath already described, the other is stored vertically in a cupboard till use.
Baths_in_Bournville_housesA.jpg
 
Excellent replies thank you (& my apologies shortie for my miss-understanding).

Our house had a boiler half way up the chimney (I think) so the open fire warmed the water. The hot water then could be fed to the hot taps downstairs - but I dont know how it would have got to the upper floors ? ... I'm assuming then that the original house was built with the bathroom and the emersion heater too then. I think it was circa 1930's.

I also remember the clothes rack (for drying) in the kitchen with a winch that took damp clothes up to the ceiling.
 
Going back to the house I was born in, I think hot water to the bathroom was via a gas heater, but not altogether sure. There was a range in the living room which went by the time I was about 5, that could have initially heated the hot water if, as in your house, there was a tank half way up the chimney. I once lived in a house built in the 1970's which had a back boiler behind the gas fire which heated the water for both central heating and the water. Perhaps that was why the early bathrooms in council houses had their bathroom on the ground floor? The house in Philip Victor Road had an immersion heater, but I don't know if that would have been installed when the house was built. When we lived there the house had gas fires, however, what it was like earlier I cannot say, but certainly the 1930's houses all had that, but also using the open fire in the winter heated the water for the colder months as there was a boiler behind the fire or just above it. I have to say I have never given this much thought before.
 
Oh Mike, those photos are brilliant. I can't imagine, however, what it would have been like having a bath in the kitchen, seems dreadful to me, but then I have been spoilt!!
 
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