Memories : Tribute to old Birmingham

[I Am Nico]

I liked to visit the city centre as a youngster, it was lively and all the hustle and bustle you expected was there to be experienced. Maybe it was only very old people who found irritations but generally speaking most people seemed to enjoy their trips into town.
Shopping interests were dependant on your age and if you were married with family. I am sure adults always had their favourite shops and other places they usually visited.
When with adults most of the shopping was not of great interest to me but sometimes some places did have an area of interest. The Bull Ring and Markets always had an aura of excitement as they varied in what they did and often previously unseen things came along. Of course no visit to the city was complete without a meal at Woolworth in the Bull Ring, Pattisons or Kunzle. For me the buses were the principal interest and would be the reason to happily agree to a town visit. Over the years - during WW2 and up to 1954 a bus journey into town was usually interesting in itself. Identity Card checks, road detours due to bombing or demolition, newer buses or a rare one that I had never ridden before. Then there was the occasional visit to friends or relatives that lived very close to the city centre. I never found it a time that I did not enjoy.

At a later time, aged ten onwards, I was able to make journeys on my own to town so my spheres of interest started to expand. The Cherry Street Model shop, Snow Hill railway station and the Broad Street area which was less well known as were the main shopping streets of Corporation Street, High Street and New Street: these places were a discovery in themselves.
But by 1954 I had moved to the Deep South

Remember the TV jingle Brum had to "I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside? I do like to shop around the Bullring. Stuck in my mind.

 

[I Am Nico]

Tho old city is dead and buried, as far as I'm concerned, nothing now but new offices and re-vamped shops.
I remember as I think many others will do also,the old bull ring with the policeman directing the traffic standing in the middle of the cobbled road, how he never got run over in the ice or snow amazes me, corner of Moor st. Oswald Bailey, and over the way , Woolworths with the old lady in black on the steps selling handy carrier (4p).
T he market hall without the roof, Times Furnishing,(now Waterstones), the Odeon with Wimpey bar next door, the Midland Educational shop in Corporation st.,old Lewis's with the zoo? on the roof, the old OLD Square with Kings Hall market opposite, the Mecca ballroom, opposite Murdochs piano and music shop where I bought all my records, the music shop in Cherry St., for sheet music.
Yates wine bar and Barrows stores, Henry's, Jamaica Row with all the fruit and veg barrows,the Gaumont cinema, Chetwynds
where all the teds bought their zoot suits which was beneath the West End ballroom corner of Navigation st., and the opposite corner the hot potato man the Queens Hotel fronting New st. station, and the Woodman pub.
Galloways corner of New st.,main post office opposite,as well as the Kardoma in Colmore Row you had the National milk bar over the road next door to the Grand hotel.
I could go on forever, but I'll leave room for someone else's memories.

Mum bought her wedding dress in Brum. in 1952. She got the train to New Street and should have turned right and she turned left by mistake and got a bit lost then found a tiny little shop that sold baby clothes. The owner was a seamstress and had one home made wedding dress in the window. Which she altered for mum. I don't know where it was and she couldn't remember when telling the story. But she liked to tell it. Her and dad had their honeymoon night in Brum too as Brum was special. It still is.

 

[I Am Nico]

Only being a Brummie by marriage I don't have a lot of childhood memories of Birmingham but do recall in 1950s:

• those annual trips to see Fr Christmas and Uncle Holly at Lewis's
• meeting my Dad (who worked in Brmingham) and having lunch with him - Greys, Lewis's or the Co-op
• was the roof garden on Lewis's? - vaguely recall a pets corner.
• Pimms Pets in the Market Hall (although I don't remember it with a roof).
• those fascinating money shutes in Greys - remember when they took your money and then sent it via that tube thing.

My main memories of the big shopping areas are in the 1970s when as a student I travelled into and then out of Birmingham every day in term time. At different times of the day depending on when lectures were. Getting on and off the bus in Corporation Street (the number 12). The Christmas windows at Rackhams - waiting to see what the theme was. I didn't like the subway steps especially when it had been raining as I was worried about slipping. If it was early evening then you could hear the noise of the starlings coming in to roost. Also watch their swooping around.
Those were the days when bags were searched when you went into the main shops (just after the pub bombings). Nobdy minded that things took a little longer. I am sure that the last time I went into the centre people were moving more quickly - or have I just slowed down? People actually looking round and not just at a phone screen.
I also remember being fascinated by the news which moved across - but I can't remember where - was it somewhere opposite Bull Street?

I do remember those starlings I found them quite comforting in a stressfull time. They matched the hubub that was going on beneath them. I used to race from work in Coventry, I was not let off five minutes early even though I offered to come in early, and they knew my circumstances "you are paid till 5.30pm and that is the time you will finish work, bla bla bla" I was a rebel then, I raced through the town across Greyfriars Green to the station but I always missed the first train to Brum, but I still ran, was bursting so I went in the platform loo then got the train to New St. Straight in to the MacDdonalds full of posers, How can you pose in MacDonalds?, but they did, to me at any rate, cheese burger and a coffee in a paper beaker, bluuurgh! Then high tailed it to the the hospital in Aston to visit mum every night. I got lost the first time. I remember a big traffic island and a white tiles or painted round subway with little windows and shops underneath.
When I visited her on Saturdays my mate came with me, he was on day release at Mathew Bolton College and he knew the pubs. I remember the Sack of Potaotes and The Corn Exchange. Brum was all dug up even then and with hoardings. That was late 70s. I found it friendlier too.
My Brum colleagues had a joke about a shop called Finlays. I don't know where it was/is. A newsagent?
I went to a few training days in the Post and Mail and I remember a lovely arcade with a fanlight, bow shop windows with black and white tiles on the floor and a friendly postman walked me all the way there.

 

[mw0njm.]

my nan who was like mrs bucket. took us to the Lyons tea room ..hoo posh. no greasy spoons for her.

 

[Robert Ensor (bob)]

Going to town as a kid ride the bus with Mom and my sister walk round the Bull Ring go in all those big department stores the excitement, Lewis"s all those floors and furniture displays, I remember a cabinet that had four TV's 1 large one one above 3 small ones in a line underneath
Did not see that stuff next to the shoe shop in Rednal.
Never liked C & A all I can think of about that store ladies underwear
The hustle and bustle of all the people then standing in line to catch the bus home with the shopping bags as it got dark
Going to town chapter 2 now my friends and I go on our own and do just for fun, walk round the Bullring go to the Museum, those shows at Bingley Hall were you could but x-ray specs, go play in the carriage's at Moor St Station, walk through the markets and the Midland Red Garage dark a smelly, a trip to the Silver Blades Sunday afternoon listening to My Ding a Ling by Chuck Berry
The guy who sold American style hot dogs with onions from a cart by the 62 terminus.
Going to town ( Down Town ) now things have changed for chapter 3 the Top Rank and all the other clubs dancing, Rum and Blacks Ha Ha trying to pull a bird, looking for that last dance the slow one finally getting the courage to ask.
Starting to dine out Winpey's, Gino's at the top of the ramp getting the He-Man Grill, at the bottom of the ramp a man sold baked spuds.

 

[Edifi]

Bob,they're sad memories now of what a nice youth we had.

 

[Robert Ensor (bob)]

Bob,they're sad memories now of what a nice youth we had.

I would not change a thing and yes l would do it all again
Well maybe get a forwarding address or two or a Email address and a cell number .
Make Facebook list girls maiden names.
Get my mom's bread pudding recipe
O and buy stock in Microsoft .

 

[john knight]

Was there ever a British Restaurant in the City, I used to go to one in West Bromwich where you could get a dinner for 1/6

 

[Lady Penelope]

During the 60's I recall dodging the buses as they turned off New St and up Corporation St. Yes the pavements always seemed to be teeming with people, sometimes shoulder to shoulder. We had to move quite slowly up or down the underpass steps past the Rotunda to the markets, always incredibly busy. And coming out of the Odeon cinema on New Street at dusk, the sky seemed black with starlings, the noise of them was wonderful!

My cousin worked at the Council House in the 60's and told me about the starlings. Apparently they were culled as they were making such a mess of the church. Very sad. She said that the formations at evening time were amazing. When you think about it you can understand why they were called 'murmerations'.

 

[sospiri]

John,

I don't remember one in the centre of the city, but there was one on Stratford Road a few yards past of the junction with Foremans Road. This might help:- https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/british-restaurants.10634/

Maurice

 

[Lady Penelope]

I have a memory from 1964 of the old Eye Hospital, now a hotel in Church Street. The out-patients department must have been exactly the same as it was when the hospital was built in 1883. The room was large and very noisy - no private or even curtained off rooms then. The doctors were dotted about the room with huge wooden benches allotted to them for their patients to sit and wait. All examinations were done in public! Good job it was only eyes....

There was one doctor that fascinated me - he was a very tall Asian and must have had something wrong with his ears as they were painted with Gentian Violet. He was an arresting sight anyway as there weren't so many Asians then but to have purple ears as well - unforgettable. The in-patients area upstairs was also original with large rooms with very high ceilings and dull cream and green paintwork.

The best room was the rest-room on the corner of the hospital. This is the one with the beautiful window. The building is one of the few in Birmingham to have been saved.

 

[Lady Penelope]

Janice, I remember all the things in your post #19 except for the lunches. We only ever had meals out when we were on holiday. I loved those overhead tubes and the whoosh they made. They were very hygenic in food shops weren't they as the assistants didn't have to handle money and food.

 

[Bob Davis]

Talking of the starlings (didn't one play for Villa...Ronnie), in the mists of my memory did not the council do something to window ledges in the centre to stop them roosting? And there was always the pigeons, hundreds of them strutting all over the place, my Hyacinth Bucket grandmother used to hate them. In the 1950s, up to the Town Hall for the big band concerts ad of course Humphrey Lyttleton. Was the continental cinema called the Cinephone or something similar, Wild Strawberries, God created Woman(I saw the uncut version of that in Germany as well) and other exotica and occasionally censored erotica. Now one for the jazz buffs, where was the record shop that sold Blue Note and other exotic American and French record releases, always into there for a free listen to a record not available in the standard stores, and occasionally we would buy one, always remember the first LP I bought there was Lionel Hampton , some of the tracks were titled in French, can't remember the album title, used to drive Mum and Dad wild as I played it on our new radiogram with the BSR 10 disc auto deck.

Bob

 

[Pedrocut]

The Cinephone, well there must be a few stories about that place. Of course I never went in there. My ill-spent youth was spent in the Witton Billiard Hall.

 

[Radiorails]

Was there ever a British Restaurant in the City, I used to go to one in West Bromwich where you could get a dinner for 1/6

A few details and photos here John.

British Restaurants

Thank you for posting this I had never heard of them called that name. I suspect Cov had them there were lots of good cheap places to eat up to the 80's maybe 90's. My trendy friends used to go to Priestlys Bridge Restaurant in Coventry. I can't find it on a map now. Fashionable to eat with the...

birminghamhistory.co.uk

 

[Edifi]

Down here in Margate just before dusk the starlings were fantastic.then for some unknown reason they just disappeared.This was about 5 years ago.The noise in the trees at night was unbelievable.

 

[mbenne]

My recollections of Birmingham City Centre are from the 50's and 60's and are quite vague as it was around the time when major changes were taking place so I didn't really have time to comprehend the old and the new. Mom and Dad would take the 58 or 60 bus and get off at the Bull Ring near Woolworths. As a small child everything was overwhelming and seemed to tower above me. The noise and bustle of the market traders selling their goods from barrows was so different to visiting the local shops in Sheldon. My Grandad was one of the few people in the early 50s to own a car and he would drive us into town in his Standard Flying 8, with its Union Jack emblem proudly displayed on the bonnet! Turning right at the cross roads from Sheaf lane onto the Coventry Road by the Wheatsheaf Pub he would call at a petrol garage (opposite the Three Horse Shoes, TSB Bank and a coal Yard) to fill up at 1s 6d a gallon (garage is still there but now a Kwik Fit Centre). The Coventry Road was nothing like it is today no congestion, hardly any cars and never any trouble parking for free lol. Going past Small Heath Park we always seemed to have to stop near the Malt Shovel on the corner of Muntz Street - maybe there were traffic lights here in those days too? Never seemed to be many people around here in those days either! Then up to near the Blues ground, seeing a disused horse trough outside the Greenway Pub, the remains of the tram tracks through the open doors of the bus Garage, the Kingston Cinema, Deritend and the Hoskins and Sewell works, where my Grandad worked as a welder, long before the flyover was built.

Our first port of call would be the rag market - hate to say it but this is where my Grandad would buy clothes for my Nan - he had the purse strings. No idea if they were new or second hand but it was cheap. Even though I had no interest in crockery the auctioneers were fascinating, the way they would manipulate arms full of plates like a circus act. They were never short of punters queuing to buy their never to be repeated bargains before it was all sold off and neatly wrapped in newspaper. I don't know if the market had any particular format as it all seemed a jumble of tables selling everything and anything - have a recollection of my Nan buying me rainbow chocolate buttons from here and a torch shaped like a sausage dog which had a short stubby tale that acted as a on off switch.

We'd also visit the old Market hall, going up some steps at the entrance, where there was a WW11 bomb used as a collection box???? The building had blackened walls and no roof as I recall the floor being wet when it rained. Last memory was seeing a fish stall there with a counter full of live eels. I guess my memories would be clearer but by now everything was changing and all would soon be gone. What a shame these modernist 60's planners had great visions for the future at the expense of our heritage!!!!!!

 

[Astoness]

Could I suggest that some posts here get dates/time periods inserted into the posts, some fortunately do. There will be a wide range of reminiscences from the 1940's up to (possibly) the end of the last century. Some places mentioned will have gone - Martineau Street for instance and many shops, restaurants etc. will also have gone. This thread should become a valuable resource for those wanting to study Birmingham of yesteryear: so dates are important.

yes alan a good idea for members to try and put the decades in with their memories although i think most will range from the 40s up until say the 90s.....

please keep these wonderful memories coming folks because reading them it occurs to me that they could be turned into a paperback (same title as this thread) written by the members of the birmingham history forum...i wouldnt have a clue how to even begin that process but i know a man who does so who knows....maybe something for the future

lyn

 

[mw0njm.]

yes alan a good idea for members to try and put the decades in with their memories although i think most will range from the 40s up until say the 90s.....

please keep these wonderful memories coming folks because reading them it occurs to me that they could be turned into a paperback (same title as this thread) written by the members of the birmingham history forum...i wouldnt have a clue how to even begin that process but i know a man who does so who knows....maybe something for the future

lyn

what a great idear. lyn perhaps mr chinn will give you advice.

 

[Andy1]

Talking about old Birmingham. I used to have a Saturday job in a fruit & veg shop in what was the "Old Square". I used to work there in 1985. Happy memories of working with teenagers the same age as me. Probably not that long ago in terms of Birmingham's history - but interesting to me as it has now been filled in. The shop was called "Stanways". Walking through the Minories, past Lewis's and down the subway, was quite eerie at 7.30am on a Saturday morning. Especially cold, dark winter ones!

 

[Big Gee]

Lady P's post about the old Birmingham Eye Hospital jogged a few memories of my own. I remember the big hall where the specialists sat on high chairs at wooden desks, and my Mom used to say it looked like a Victorian counting-house. Like many medical men back in the 1950's, most of them were very abrupt and also very old. I hated the place. Then in the 80's I developed a cataract, and ended up back in the EH for it to be fixed, a 'knife-and-fork' job under general anaesthetic, and a 3 day stay in hospital. The ward I was in was large and over-heated, and there was a room for tea, coffee, sandwiches, etc. My best memory of that stay was the gorgeous female specialist, totally unlike the old moth-eaten fogeys of 35 years before!

Maybe this should be in another thread, but sometimes during the night footsteps could be heard along the corridor outside, approaching the ward...no-one ever came in, and when I asked a nurse what that was all about she told me it was the 'EH spook'! Apparently, no-one had ever seen anything, but the sounds of the footsteps were heard frequently, and had been for years and years. I wonder if they're still heard in the new hotel....

I've also had experience of the new EH, another story.

G

 

[Astoness]

i remember the old square shops ...there should be one or two photos of them somewhere on the forum...think i read that the shops are still complete but obviously just infilled underground...

lyn

 

[I Am Nico]

Janice, I remember all the things in your post #19 except for the lunches. We only ever had meals out when we were on holiday. I loved those overhead tubes and the whoosh they made. They were very hygenic in food shops weren't they as the assistants didn't have to handle money and food.

Me too. We only ever ate out on holiday.

 

[I Am Nico]

Going to town as a kid ride the bus with Mom and my sister walk round the Bull Ring go in all those big department stores the excitement, Lewis"s all those floors and furniture displays, I remember a cabinet that had four TV's 1 large one one above 3 small ones in a line underneath
Did not see that stuff next to the shoe shop in Rednal.
Never liked C & A all I can think of about that store ladies underwear
The hustle and bustle of all the people then standing in line to catch the bus home with the shopping bags as it got dark
Going to town chapter 2 now my friends and I go on our own and do just for fun, walk round the Bullring go to the Museum, those shows at Bingley Hall were you could but x-ray specs, go play in the carriage's at Moor St Station, walk through the markets and the Midland Red Garage dark a smelly, a trip to the Silver Blades Sunday afternoon listening to My Ding a Ling by Chuck Berry
The guy who sold American style hot dogs with onions from a cart by the 62 terminus.
Going to town ( Down Town ) now things have changed for chapter 3 the Top Rank and all the other clubs dancing, Rum and Blacks Ha Ha trying to pull a bird, looking for that last dance the slow one finally getting the courage to ask.
Starting to dine out Winpey's, Gino's at the top of the ramp getting the He-Man Grill, at the bottom of the ramp a man sold baked spuds.

Our C and A had big wire baskets of sale items. I bought a shirt 5 times too big to wear for work. For 50p and a silk mauve tie in 1973. Mum knitted me a tank top so you couldn't see the shirt was too big. I bought a diamond pattern black grey and white polo neck also and wore it back to front so it looked plain black to be trendy!. I sweated in the pubs because I couldn't take my jacket off. I also got a Mr Sears (whoever he was) bold criss cross patterned cardigan there I wore unbuttoned under my jacket, roasting away then buttoned it up to walk home.

 

[mw0njm.]

View attachment 140710

I have a memory from 1964 of the old Eye Hospital, now a hotel in Church Street. The out-patients department must have been exactly the same as it was when the hospital was built in 1883. The room was large and very noisy - no private or even curtained off rooms then. The doctors were dotted about the room with huge wooden benches allotted to them for their patients to sit and wait. All examinations were done in public! Good job it was only eyes....

There was one doctor that fascinated me - he was a very tall Asian and must have had something wrong with his ears as they were painted with Gentian Violet. He was an arresting sight anyway as there weren't so many Asians then but to have purple ears as well - unforgettable. The in-patients area upstairs was also original with large rooms with very high ceilings and dull cream and green paintwork.

The best room was the rest-room on the corner of the hospital. This is the one with the beautiful window. The building is one of the few in Birmingham to have been saved.

they had a cellar. one day, while mom was being seen to I, went mooching.down there wow what strange looking machines and gimmicks down there..... in the rubbish bin in the big hall was a load of old slides. i asked for a few.and when i got home tried them in dads projector. they were pic of manky eye balls

 

[sospiri]

Serves you right, Pete!

Maurice

 

[jmadone]

My earliest recollection of "going up town" was in the mid 1950s when one Bank Holiday Dad took my sister and I to Dudley Zoo for a day out. We travelled to town on the 60 bus from it's terminus in Cranes Park Road and then by train to Dudley and thence to the zoo. The return journey was highlighted by a visit to the News Theatre, which I think was somewhere in High Street near Dale End, to watch the cartoons.
As I grew older there were lots of visits to shop in the department stores and Bull Ring market but I'll get my remembrances together and post my thoughts later.

 

[mbenne]

Thinking back to the days of the big department stores, what about the lady lift attendants sitting on those little folding pressing buttons and announcing the various floors all day. Must have driven them nuts! Another job lost to technology.

 

[I Am Nico]

Mum used to go on about the brazier woman in M&S who helped you choose a bra. She never liked being told what to wear or be scruitinised..but another job lost.
When I was best man I bought an off the peg suit (pale blue with a white fleck, padded shoulders!) from Burtons Cov and the sales assistant was really attentive, he knew his stuff, what would suit me, pun not intended, me not being Mr Average, and he got me a shirt and tie (he was on commission I suppose) then he took his own slip on shoes off, for me to look at it with some shoes on. ...do they still have proper sales assistants? I haven't seen any.
My Nan's cousin's son used to be a manager at Burtons Brum. I have not seen him in 50 odd years but we did play together. I should try and make contact as I am the younger of us.

 

[farmerdave]

I used to get either the 32 or 37 bus into town from Hall Green Parade. Certainly remember the starlings near the Midland Hotel together with the shouts of "spatch 'un Mail" from the newspaper sellers. Tea or lunch was often in Lyons in New Street. Seem to remember that most cafes/restaurants in the late 1950s, early 60s, had waitress service rather than self-service. Favourite shop was probably Hudson's Bookshop in New Street. Visited the Midland Institute in Paradise Street quite often. Chap called Ernie was the doorman. Lewis's and Greys were two of the most frequented shops when I was with my Mum. Was there someone who played the piano in the restaurant on the top floor of Lewis's? Hardly ever visited St. Philips but regularly went to St. Martins, in the Bull Ring, including attending Christmas carol concerts. Dave.