• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

Air raid shelters

OMG, Paul, that's another sad story. So sorry for you both. We all have to take what life chucks at us and some are luckier than others. I count myself as one of the lucky ones so far, though my late wife died in 2005 and my daughter at the age of 43 leaving four young kids. Fortunately members of the family pulled together and the end result in this case hasn't been too bad. But this is not the thread to air personal problems. So apologies to the mods and my thoughts are with you Paul.

Maurice :)
 
Where was Ropers Hill Ray? not a name I've heard before, we did the same with the curved shelter piece at where we called 'up the gulley' the hill behind Sidcup Road.
 
Eric Gibson said:
Where was Ropers Hill Ray? not a name I've heard before, we did the same with the curved shelter piece at where we called 'up the gulley' the hill behind Sidcup Road.
Click to expand...
Ropers Hill was at the back of Courtnay Rd which ran from Goodway Rd and Birdbrook Rd it's a housing estate these days.
Wasn't that hill back Sidcup Rd called the Spit or some think like that, I used to go to aunt's in Mitchem Grove and go up to play on that hill.
 
sospiri said:
Just going through a few old pics and came across this one of our air raid shelter at 215 Knowle Road, Sparkhill. We moved into the house in 1941 from Aston and the shelter was already there. Centre top you can just make out the back wall of the Springfield Cinema, by then with all its seats stripped out and used by the Ministry of Food for storing sugar.

Due to the high water table, the inside of the shelter was deep with stagnant water with duck boards over the top. I think we only used it two or three times. My younger brother Roy is sitting on the swing erected by my father. The strings on the right were put up by my father for growing sweet peas.

Maurice :cool:
View attachment 142976
Click to expand...
We used to have one like that in Birdbrook Rd Great Barr but you needed wellies it used to flood, the developers covered a brook over.
 
From 1956 until 1965 I lived at 212 Birdbrook Road. :)

The Sidcup Road hill was just the gully to us, maybe it had different names depending on where you lived.
 
Eric Gibson said:
From 1956 until 1965 I lived at 212 Birdbrook Road. :)

The Sidcup Road hill was just the gully to us, maybe it had different names depending on where you lived.
Click to expand...
Hi Eric.
It was called the pimple on the Ellerton Road side.
I lived at 101 Birdbrook Rd with My Mom & Dad from 1942 to 1959 when I got married.
You lived the other side of Dyas Rd. during war the Yanks lived in some of them.
They used to call houses with kitchen on the nosey parker houses.
 
Vivienne14 said:
Excavating the canal near Easy Row to provide air raid shelter in 1939. Viv.
Click to expand...
How much alike the rear view of all those cars are, the third one along looks like a big Austin (but do not quote me), the rest take your pick Morris, Standard etc, although the fifth one looks a bit exotic. However the interesting historic factor is the way they excavated in those days, no Cats or JCBs or Hitachis, but just a good old shovel, probably a Ruston-Bucyrus, judging from the bucket size probably also a dragline crane as no dipper arm is in the view, what a pity it was not caught in the picture, when used in a quarry also known as a face shovel. Can one of the map experts locate it on a map please.

Bob
 
Bob Davis said:
Can one of the map experts locate it on a map please.

Bob
Click to expand...
It is not clear from the description whether this relates to the former canal basins on the north side of Broad Street where Centenary Square now stands or the Old Wharf in the area south of Broad Street where the Crowne Plaza Hotel now stands. Easy Row stretched from Great Charles Street to Paradise Street so could be either side of Broad Street. Until the 1960s there was a big carpark off Bridge Street. There was also a car park where the Library of Birmingham now stands.
 
devonjim said:
View attachment 145758
The wharfs North of Broad Street.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the map, I had actually forgotten where Easy Row was, oh how I miss my little Bartholemews map of Birmingham, it was such a good map. Mind you when I look at all these old maps showing and naming works and chapels/churches etc, I realise how much work went into their preparation.

Bob
 
wendylee said:
Hi Lyn,
I lived at 81 common lane sheldon till I got married , my mum lived there most of her adult life till 2004 . It was then sold and extensively renovated.
When I google map it I can see the air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden it shares a wall with the air raid shelter next door. They are at the bottom of the garden on the right hand side looking at google maps .
If I still lived in uk (lived in Australia for 35 years )I would be interested to go to have a look, there was a gully a few houses up the road from us that went to the back of the houses that led onto a small dirt roadway that years ago was access to the backs of the garages there .
It would take some knocking down it was really solid brick with thick concrete roof with pebble stones on it, it would take some knocking down haha.
Wendy
Click to expand...


hi Wendy! This is my first time on here and I was wondering if you could give me any info! Iv recently moved in to number86, a bungalow set back slightly next to the flats on keeble grove. I was wondering if you knew of anyone who lived here or anything at all. I just love the history of old houses! Thank you
Emma x
 
Welcome to the Forum, Emma.

Whilst your post MIGHT get noticed by people other than wendylee who can help, this thread is about air raid shelters and so it possibly won't. I suggest you start a new, separate thread on the subject, either in the "Place Related Enquiries" section or in "Neighbours and Streets". Give any information you have already about the house or road.

Good luck!

Chris
 
I've been looking all through here with a question - does anyone know about the air raid shelter for the markets in town? I have read something where the market shelter was referred to but wonder if it was another surface shelter (and where?) or whether there were cellars. Anyone know? All best, Annie
 
I was born just after the war, there was an air raid shelter in Beeches Road allotments, where the Swimming baths are now. we would play on the top of it and jump off. many hours I spent there.
Also at School there were similar brick ones in the Beeches Road infant and junior school. Also in the senior school there were humps of earth which we ran up and down which i always thought were also shelters. We was always warned not to go on them as they may collapse. Is there anybody out there that can also remember them.
 
I was born about the same time and also went to Beeches rd senior School but can’t remember the humps of earth I do remember lunchbreak times spent sitting on the playing fields by the huts. Ipads switched to italics and I don’t know why :)
 
Hi Nick
When you came from the huts you came up some steps so you were level with the main senior school. You turn left following the path towards the school building then turn right up the side past the gym and towards the playground junior school. The humps were along side that path. We wasn't supposed to run over them so perhaps you were better behaved than I was.
 
micheline said:
Hi Nick
When you came from the huts you came up some steps so you were level with the main senior school. You turn left following the path towards the school building then turn right up the side past the gym and towards the playground junior school. The humps were along side that path. We wasn't supposed to run over them so perhaps you were better behaved than I was.
Click to expand...
Not sure about being better behaved but don’t think we ever went up that way in fact at the time I never realised there was a junior and infant School on the same site.
 
micheline said:
I was born just after the war, there was an air raid shelter in Beeches Road allotments, where the Swimming baths are now. we would play on the top of it and jump off. many hours I spent there.
Also at School there were similar brick ones in the Beeches Road infant and junior school. Also in the senior school there were humps of earth which we ran up and down which i always thought were also shelters. We was always warned not to go on them as they may collapse. Is there anybody out there that can also remember them.
Click to expand...
Yes I remember them because I spent time in them when the Luftwaffe sent ME110 fighter bombers over for some daytime machine gunning across the city - fortunately not in the Great Barr area. They were concrete half-buried in the ground with long benches for us to sit on. There is an aerial photo showing their location in the thread linked below ... :)
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/for...ry-beeches-secondary-school.17713/post-432904
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top