Recent content by ChrisM

Oh dear! Strange how storms can appear out of a clear blue sky. Those who enjoy membership of this Forum and therefore get most benefit from it, seem to me to be those who take it for what it is: a happy place to share knowledge and experience about the history of our City – sometimes...

I'm very grateful to you, MWS, for maintaining an interest in this. It's just that I should like to give this little thing a home where it belongs after it has survived for 88 years. I personally shall never throw it away but it becomes increasingly meaningless as the generations pass and I see...

This little autograph album has resurfaced again (it always does whenever I have a tidy-up) and so, following the very helpful comments from MWS at the time, I'll revive this thread by asking a couple of further questions and adding a bit of information. Would anyone have any idea of the...

(See Posts #479/480) Taking advantage of the relaxed travel restrictions, a couple of Boris's mates who've just popped in to see him. Could they even be Cabinet members? Chris

It would be wrong to let today pass without remembering that it is the 80th anniversary of the evening when Anthony Eden, Secretary of State for War in Churchill's new government, addressed the nation on the BBC and announced the establishment of the Home Guard (or of the Local Defence...

Unfortunately I didn't start to become aware of my surroundings until about 20 years after James Foden left Streetly. By that time there was certainly no garage type premises in Burnett Road but I suspect that parts of the road had been redeveloped in the1920s/1930s. There WAS a large garage...

Extract from a 1945 history of the Home Guard in Streetly and Little Aston 1940-1944: For various reasons outside anybody's control, the Spigot Mortar teams became dispersed to some extent, and to look after the training of fresh teams and to carry on the training of existing ones the C.O. gave...

Why shouldn't it be right, Glennys? Or as much as any family legend is? I assume it ties in with the period of the Scribbans's ownership of Little Aston Hall. And they were well off and living in a grand house and so would in all probability have had staff with the sort of responsibility which...

Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have had an picture taken from the same bedroom window yesterday. VE Day 1945 - two fellows having a bottle of beer outside their digs. Probably not the first of the day. An unknown Birmingham road, probably in Handsworth or nearby. My future brother-in-law on...

THE STREETLY HOME GUARD BONFIRE (Endings and Beginnings) The fire rapidly caught, the flames licking upwards as they fed on the liberal splashing of paraffin. Dead branches and old timber planks began to spit and then crackled and flared against the darkening sky. I was beside myself with...

Well, a couple of days have passed and now it's Wednesday May 9th. I promised to tell you something about last night's bonfire. Perhaps you'd like to know where it was. I'm going to show you Dad's prewar map which tells you. (It also tells you a bit about the northern part of Birmingham at the...

This is the paper which my Mum and our neighbour were looking at. (Grateful acknowledgement to Matt Felkin) Chris

It's Monday May 7th 1945. And it's nearly evening. I'm sitting at the table in our dining room (which is really our living room). Quite a lot happens at this table. I do my homework here (I've done tonight's although I'm not sure I needed to). Mum, Dad and my sister Sheila write letters...

Welcome to the Forum, Amanda. RyanK doesn't seem to have visited the Forum for the last two or three years but let's hope he still picks up your post. Or that other members can help. Chris

Had a not dissimilar experience when I was in southern Germany in the 1980s. My colleague and I drew up at our hotel in quite a pleasant little town not far from Munich and I was astonished to find that its name was Dachau. I never realised it was an actual town as well as that dreadful place...