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Bomb Pecks

Earp
My brother was planning to break out ( if thats the right term to use) and had it all planned to swim across the cut and across the park but our Ma came the night he was going and got us out
 
Cromwell.
My memories are pretty much the same. There were 5 children and a dog (Pat) Even though my dad worked almost non stop, they found it very, very hard to get by week by week, always 'robbing Peter to pay Paul' we never went on holiday and we never knew when we came home from school if there would be any electricity on but these are the moments I now treasure. Me and my family taking it in turns to sing a song, mum or dad would make patterns in the air with their lit cigarettes. Many a time mum would go with out food so that the kids were fed as best as she could do. They were given no hand outs (I wonder if there was help in the 50's from DSS) Mum had no washing machine, no electric appliances but our house was spic and span with just using soap and water. The love mum and dad (and dad still does, mum died 1998) gave us kids was pure nectar. They taught us right from wrong. All of their kids have always been in work and still are today as they taught us to. As a grown women, with all the mod cons, I appreciate even more what my parents did for us.
Getting back to the Bomb Peck this was my grocery and veg shop, I played for hours. Stones and rocks were any think from pretend sweets to potatoes, grass and doc leaves were any type of green veg that my customers wanted. Us kids had wonderful imaginations.
 
Earp
Remember making shadow pictures on the wall at night with you hands by candlelight ( horses,birds etc)
and do you know how I learn to swim ? a neighbour taught me in a bucket of water
He told me to kneel down and when I could duck my head in the bucket and hold it there till I could count to ten I would be able to swim, and you know what I worked as I did it counting up to fifty till I was dragged out they thought I had drowned, Happy Times
 
I certainly do and setting my hair on fire, by leaning to near to the candle.
 
I think I can solve the mystery why we call waste land in Brum, Pecks (or Bomb Pecks)
In 1730 Peck lane ran from New St to Dudley St and it was always a right of way
The town council sold the land and right of way for the building of New St Station and all the building and surrounding's were gutted in the 1850's they spent 10 years trying to get the right of way back unsuccessfully but as a concession the Railway company provided a footbridge over the station which became a right of way once more by its constant use over a 100 years, when the present station was built the right of way was maintained.
During the war when the houses were blown up in the blitz it became quite easy to get from one street to the next across the Peck the good old Bomb Peck........
 
hi everybody andy anybody ,whom may be able to answer me a question ,
years ago i lived by tthe summer hill ice skating rink at spring hill
and along the road there is a place they call the sand pits ,
what i was always curious about how they got therte , or how they formed
is there anybody on the forum whom could explain to me how they was there or formed
i know they have been there for years , and they are still there
i hope some one can tell me , as they say curiososide killed the cat
many thanks for anybodys attention in this matter ,
best wishes , astonian ,;;;;;
 
I can remember playing on a bomb peck in Farm Street, Hockley, a stone's throw away from Aston. I think the last time I played on it was when I trod on a rusty old nail. I can remember what looked like washing-up mops lying around but they had multi-coloured strands, rather than white, and bits of the old carpets they used to make then, made up of little 1" (or some similar measurement) squares. This was across the road and down a bit from a factory called McEvoy & Pinnington, if I remember rightly.

By the way Cromwell, you reminded me of the dripping 'pieces' we used to eat and later we enjoyed HP sauce on a piece and tomato sauce pieces, too. Used to absolutely love the dripping sandwiches, with a bit of salt and pepper on.

Chris
 
Chris, I wonder how many kids heard their Ma shout "Just going down the Peck to see the old man"
Many many years ago............
They took the 3 buildings down fronting Peck Lane to enlarge the prison in 1757 and stayed Brums only prison until one was built in Moor St in 1795.......Peck Prison was knocked down in 1806 and all the building material was sold for £250
 
Happy days, Crom, when our only worries (although I know you don't worry!) were how many friends we could get out to play with us on the pecks.

I'd never heard of Peck Prison, either, where was it?

Chris
 
We dain't have any telly but learnt more about life playing in the bombed houses on the peck, and so what if we fell or got cut ya just stuck a plaster or an old sock on it.
We were kings of the wild frontier, out den's were down the cellar as we worn't scared of the dark not like the lily livered kids of today and we could be transported to another world when we went to the local flea pit and ride all the way home on an imaginary horse chased by Indians till we could form a wagon train on out beloved peck, fighting the Indians with their lavatory door hinge chopper's and bows made from rafters in-between swigs of "Tizer"(which we had pinched from the local shop) which we all passed around and when we was hungry it was "Give us a suck of ya sweet" if ya couldn't find any chewing gum in the gutter......My favourite Peck The Land Mine so called because a German parachute mine blew a few houses to bits during the war and we always found money or something when we was digging for treasure. How we hated the Scholefield mob just cause they lived in the next street and often ambushed them by a ducker fight......
Angels with dirty halos ...with invisible wings that took us anywhere we wanted to be
Our pecks could be a desert or a jungle one minute or a racetrack or a war zone the next.....Mention peck today and folk think ya have been to the gym
 
Walking across the Bombing as we called them, the grown ups called them Bomb Pecks
 
"Peck Lane" prison was demolished on the orders from William Hutton, but my date differs from Cromwells (reply 28,) I have it being demolished in 1780. :)
 

Loisand, page from book

OLD AND NEW BIRMINGHAM. Published 1874
The Old Prison of Birmingham
“It is easy “says Hutton “to point out some places only one-third the magnitude of Birmingham whose frequent breaches of the law, and quarrels among themselves, find employment for half-a-dozen magistrates, and four times that number of constables; whilst the business of this was for many years conducted by a single justice." He ascribes this law-abiding characteristic of the people of Birmingham to the industry of the people; the hand employed in business having, he says, "less time, and less temptation, to be employed in mischief." To the absence of "idle hands " in the town, therefore, may be attributed the smallness of the gaol accommodation necessary previous to the year 1733.
In earlier times the lord of the manor held a tribunal on his own premises, and probably, as was usual in such cases, a rude prison in some sort would be annexed thereto, with such implements for punishing as were then in use; as, the stocks and the whipping-post, which, as we have seen, were afterwards removed to the Welsh Cross. After the fall of the Bermingham family, one of the lower rooms of the Leather Hall in New Street was used as a prison; "but," says Hutton, "about the year 1728, while men slept an enemy came, a private agent to the lord of the manor, and erased the Leather Hall and the Dungeon, erected three houses on the spot, and received their rents till 1776, when the town purchased them for £500, to open the way." Up to this time the only entrance to New Street from the High Town had been through a narrow passage, similar to that at the entrance to Castle Street. In the days of the Leather Hall it acquired (from the use to which the basement had been put) the name of the Dungeon Entry, and this name remained for many years after the building of the houses in place of the-old hall.
From 1728 to 1733, the town had no other place of detention for offenders, except a dry cellar, belonging to a house opposite the site of the demolished Leather Hall. On the 9th of September in the latter year, however, a meeting of the inhabitants was held in the chamber over the Cross, at which it was "unanimously agreed upon that a Dungeon be forthwith erected at the Public expense of the said Parish, at the place commonly called Bridewell House, near Pinfold Street;" This was, according to Hutton, "of all bad places the worst; . . . dark, narrow, and unwholesome within; crowded with dwellings, filth, and distress without, the circulation of air is prevented." Its gloomy, forbidding aspect without is well depicted in the engraving on page 104, which is taken from the lithographic print by Mr. Underwood, contained in his series of views of "The Buildings of Birmingham, Past and Present," a work which is now becoming scarce.
This old "Bridewell" was like most of the provincial town gaols of that period; and what they were the reader may learn, if he can endure the recital of the sickening details, from the journals of visits paid to these wretched dens in 1773-5, by that noble-minded philanthropist, John Howard.
Whether the exemplary morality attributed by Hutton to the people of Birmingham suffered a relapse after the building of the new dungeon, we cannot tell; but it would certainly appear that the gaol soon became too small to accommodate its numerous prisoners; for, in 1757, it was found necessary "to take down the Three Houses fronting Peck Lane, in order to enlarge the Prison;" which proceeding was decided upon at a meeting held on the thirteenth of September in that year. This building remained the only local prison until the erection of the building in Moor Street, in 1795; and was not destroyed until 1806, when the building materials were sold for £250.
 
:angel: Great ain't he Loisand... He must have the whole history of Brum tucked away, or he's a lot older than he makes out... Shades of the portrait (not the character though) of Dorian Gray :cool:
 
I grew up in the sixties and lived in Allesley Street. When they demolished the houses I used to play on the Bomb Pecks.

Anyone got any photographs of Allesley Street?
 
Hi Beacon
Do You Remember A Shop On The Corner Of
Allesley Street It Was Called
George Wilkingsons , Or Should I Say The Owner Was
Called George Wilkinson ,
The Shop Retailed Fancy Goods ,
And He Sold Glass Mirrors
In Vhich He Manufactured Himself ,
And Sold Wholesale To Other Business ,s
His Wife Had Auburn Hair In Colour,
He Knew My Mother And He Treated Me Like A Son
And He Taught Me Engimeering
A Very Nice Guy And His Family
He Only Had A Daughter
I Don,t Know Whether He His Still Alive
Have A Nice Day , Astonian ,
 
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