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Birmingham Co-op Belmont Row

Virusman26

Virusman26

master brummie
Originally built to be used as the Co-operative furniture factory(there were many co-op buildings around, producing various items on different sites) but the use was later changed to be the manufacture and maintenance site for scales and weights. Some of the items produced at that time are still in the basement, awaiting removal to a museum(well, they SHOULD be!!)

I've been waiting to see this place for a while now, but it's been well secured since the fire that almost destroyed it. Persistence has payed off today, and It's been worth the wait!!!

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The tower was used as a water tower as usual, with service hatches on each level. The metal stairs were damaged in the fires of 2007, and now hold little strength. Bigger balls and no commitments would have seen me climb it, but I hate heights at the best of times! LOL

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The basement was full of treasures.....

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Old AVERY scales
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I shots lots there, but these are the best. Since the fires, the place has been stripped out, and little of the original fittings remain. The building is planned to be used for a new hotel, with the original building being restored to its original state as per this planning permission.......

https://eastsideblog.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/rebuild-of-the-old-co-op-planning-submitted/
 
Edit. The seven photos posted in this post are no longer available.

Well, here's another one that's going the way of so many of our historical buildings. Since my visit here a couple months ago, the entire factory at the rear on the burned down section has now been demolished. Here's how it looked in April this year.....


All of the surrounding buildings were also standing back then. This is how it looks today.......Not much left at all.........






Another one lost.
 
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well neil...more sad photos off you....where will it all end...thanks for putting them on....

lyn
 
No problem Lyn. The entire area is now flat all bar the fire damaged section. I doubt this will be long standing, as companies seem to have gone mad lately. Just look at the Battery and Metal Co. That was listed, demolished, now Sainsbury's can't build on the land. I was talking to a geologist the other day who said the ground is so badly contaminated from the metal working, that the soil will have to be removed, cleaned an replaced on site. It will cost millions to do the entire plot, so I bet now it will never get done!!!!!
Should have saved the place when they had the chance. :(
 
I read the developers are keeping the front of the building and building the apartments on to it, is that not going to happen now?. Len.
 
I can only assume not, Len. After the fire 2 years ago, part of the facade collapsed. It's not been rigged up, so bit by bit it has been slowly falling down. When I was there in April, it looked like the brick work had been kept, for the purpose of re-building it. Looks like it's all going to be pulled down now.
 
think i posted about the ground contamination on the old croc works neil.....i also beleive it was found when lucas gt king st was demolished...

lyn
 
Virusman26, Thank you for your reply, lets hope the saved bricks etc from the facade will be used to rebuild it as it was. Len.
 
Astoness said:
think i posted about the ground contamination on the old croc works neil.....i also beleive it was found when lucas gt king st was demolished...

Lyn I think they will have same problem at the Lucas site, Shaftmoor Lane although the developers say they can deal with the problem, time will tell. Len.
Click to expand...
 
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Len - It took many years before the old Bakelite site was fully clear of contamination.
 
What was the function of Belmont Row for the co-op, I remember the meat hq is Albert St ...but not this one which was from my memory only across the road.
 
changingman - would it Co-op milk? I know they were Vauxhall - so would Belmont Row be classed as Vauxhall?
 
Re: Birmingham Co-op (Belmont Row) demolition photos

The 1939 Kelly's Directory gives the following two names
Birmingham Industrial Co-operative Society Ltd. (stables)
Co-operative Wholesale Society Ltd. (bedstead manufacturers)
I've not come across the BICS before, but the CWS was a nation-wide organisation which purchased materials and manufactured products which were retailed by the local Co-op Societies like Birmingham CS and the Ten Acres & Stirchley CS.
Peter
 
Peter
Linda & Anthony Chew's book "The Coop in Birmingham" states that the Birmingham Industrial Coop Soc. started among the railway workers of Saltley in 1881. The first shop was in Great Francis St, and this was soon replaced with a larger store and later they moved to Central birmingham and the industrial word seems to have been dropped, and it just became Birmingham Coop Society.
mike
 
An article describing The Co-op furniture factory in Belmont Row circa 2007. Len


Belmont Row was and is not the most popular of streets in Birmingham. It holds very little importance to its name. But it does have history – a history rarely told and little known.
Belmont Row is in the industrial backwaters of city centre Birmingham. Warehouses and workshops are dotted around the place offering little value socially, morally, economically and architecturally. But there is one building that always makes its presence known whether you are travelling to or from Birmingham New Street station towards Curzon Junction on the railway. Just look north and you’ll see an unusual tower poking above the conglomerate of corrugated metal roofed warehouses. Red brick with a strange dark top. That tower is the candle of the building which this posts directs its subject.
The usage of this tower is unknown but it most likely was a ventilation shaft or chimney stack for the building it is attached to. The Belmont Row warehouse is a locally listed council owned building that contrasts itself to the other buildings on the street. With arched windows and detailed arched entrance, it does hold some form of architectural beauty though it just looks out of place.
I, myself, know very little of the building. But I do know that it was built with the sole purpose of being the furniture factory for the Co-op (more recently renamed in a modernising scheme to The Co-operative). It was obviously a factory building, though the Victorian elaboracy does not indicate such, as a result of the engravings and extrusions decorating the entrance archway “Work people and Goods Entrance”.
 
Back in the 50s it was the Co-Op bakery i lived off the Vauxhall Rd near to the Co-Op Dairy. Vauxhall started at the bottom of Belmont Row The Bakery was in the Gosta Green area i believe. Dek
 
This site was originally Co-Op furniture factory, but at a later date it was used in the production of Scales under the name Co-operative Wholesale Society, hence CWS. There were loads of scales that never made it out of the place still down in the basement.
The tower which is described in the above article was never used as a chimney, it was a water tower with a huge cast iron water tank at the top, similar to most building of the period. There were/are stair on the inside which climb part way up, then an external ladder to the top!
My flickr set...

https://www.flickr.com/photos/8776781@N02/sets/72157616591645315/
 
The building was indeed a CWS factory originally,then Hugin cash registers used it and I'm not sure who rented it after that, but ultimately the C.W.S. obviously sold it off. Now behind this building and alongside the canal was the old Birmingham Co-ops bakery, together with stables for the horse drawn vehicles. When I worked for B.C.S in the 1960s the bakery had long been moved to Stechford and the old Bakery or Chateau Belmont as it was known to us was used as a Non Food warehouse, and for business purposes it was called Great Brook St Warehouse, housing Furniture, bedding, Carpets, Toys, and Hardware & Gardening merchandise, it was from here that they serviced the local branches and the city centre department store and also delivered to customers addresses. When you entered the building you literally stepped back in time to the 1930s / 40s, the walls were still tiled in brown glazed tiles on the lower half and white on the upper half, you could see where the ovens once were in the walls by the shape of the bricking up to fill in where they had been, the upper wooden floors still had flour in the joins between the masive floor boards, and as a consequence of this the flour bugs still lived on, so much so that when mattresses for beds were sent out the polythene had to be nicked and the mattress banged to make the bugs fall to the bottom of the packet and let them out before the customer took delivery. (They were harmless by the way) The Manager of the building during my time was a person named Ray Weaving, a large jolly sort of chap, one of his catchphrases was if he thought some thing was poorly done, he'd say "look, it's PATHETICAL".The Co-op fleet of vans were kept there and in those days they delivered all over Birmingham and the outlying districts like Bromsgrove etc. Ron Gibson was the Despatch Forman, I can't remember the Despatch Managers name, Ron was excellent if you wanted anything done quickly and delivered to a customer in double quick time. The Forman that was in charge of the Hardware & Gardening was named Stan Simmonds, another of lifes characters (something you don't see much of today), he said to me once "have you heard of the O.B. from Great Barr" so obviously I was curious as to what he was on about, and this is the story he told me. "Firstly I live in Great Barr" he said "and when the wife sends for the chimmney sweep, he comes along and gives our chimmney a good sweeping, when he is finished the wife then asks him into the kitchen and gives him a big slice of home made cake and a cup or two of tea, whilst drinking his tea he would get his customers book out and start writing in it, the wife couldn't help but notice on the top of some of the pages he had written in large letters OB, and being curious she asked him what it meant, and this is what he told her, "OB means OLD BRUSH, and this is for customers who can't wait to get me out of the house in 2 seconds flat without the offer of even a cup of tea, so next time I go I use an old brush so that it doesn't clean the chimmney so effectively and they have to send for me before people like youselves who always treat me kindly, so they end up paying twice for the same service, for you it is a new brush so you get the top class job done" At the warehouse there were times when the flood water drains would back up and when Stan and the staff arrived for work in the morning and it had been torrential rain overnight the ground floor was under 2 or 3 inches of water, he would phone me and say "don't get ringing for anything for the next hour while we bail this lot out, and if you see Floxham -Kidd (Mr F. Loxham-Kidd Personnel Manager) tell him Ideal conditions for the workers, I don't think so !!!". They finally cured the flooding problem by putting a non return valve in the pipe of the flood drains halfway down the yard. The Birmingham Co-Op wouldn't never spend any money on the place because initially it came under the responsibility of the Furnishing Manager (Keith Seymour in my day) and he didn't want the expense to impact on his departmental trading results, (everything down to a price not up to a standard) He couldn't get away with it today with all this health and safety malarky but that's another story. Right up untill the end you could see the old derelict stables still in the yard where the horses were kept for pulling the bakery wagons in the old days.
Regards Chris B
 
I believe the premises were built for by a Bicycle manufacturer who's name escapes me at the moment. By the time the construction was finished they had gone into liquidation.

The premises were purchased by the Co op and at first used for warehouse space.

It's been quite a while since I read this, which accounts for the poor recollection but it was definitely this building I was reading about.

Phil
 
sad but excellent pics, I noticed back in March things had taken a turn for the worst, and like most people I was under the impression that the place was a listed building.
Regards Chris B
 
I have been taking quite a few pictures round Eastside in the last few months (including this Victorian building).

Update: Sadly photos deleted.
 
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027.jpg023.jpg taken yesterday on belmont row , off ashted row nechells .. it was built in 1899 , but know nothing else about it ,does anyone have any information on it ? ... thanks matt:cupcake:
 
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