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Castle Vale

H

harley

Guest
is there anyone who lives ,or has lived on castle vale .i dont see a mention of the place on here ,where are you all folks harley
 
I have two connections. When I was a student one of my holiday jobs was working on Castle Vale when it was being built. Me and my two friends where employed by one of the firms of finishers to clean the tile on the sides of some of the buildings. We found it a difficult job as the tiles were perfectly clean and so we were just going through the motions. The foreman did no work at all; he spent all day reading his paper, listening to the wireless, smoking and drinking tea in his base which was in a garage of one of the new blocks.
At the end of the week we collected our wages. We had all done exactly the same work for the same amount of time and were all three, students. However, we were all paid something slightly different. When we queried this with the foreman, he phoned up his office who told him to sack us on the spot for complaining. The next week we got a job at Wimbushes Bakery.
The second connection. A couple of years later one of my best friend lived in one of the high rises and so I visited regularly. I remember there was a sewage farm near bye with tomatoes growing on the side. I am told it is common for tomatoes to grow near sewage. My friends were Kevin Donaldson and his wife Eileen. Kevin had been a psychiatric nurse then went to universtity to study psychology and became and educational psychologist working for the prison service.
 
a friend of my farther-in-law lived in one of the blocks of flats i remember going with him to there a couple of times, and i used to work over the road at Pressed Steel Fisher. but befor all that i have been on the runway roller skating getting some practice in there would also be racing cars on there, and a long time befor that my dad took me to an R.A.F open day that the R.A.F had.
 
I lived on the vale in the early 70's, Meteor House, Filton Croft. I worked at the Trees Pub just down from our block. it was also my schools playing field before they built the estate.
 
I lived in Stornoway Rd. for 6 years, people used to call it millionaires row because it was one of the few private rows of houses, I used to drink in the Trees, Albatross, Tradewinds, Skylark, Tyburn House.
 
John what years did you live on Vale, I used the trade winds sometimes and drank in the albatross a couple of times but my local was the trees. I lived there from 71/75
 
i went to castle vale comp then left in 1972. lived in chigwell close ,then cosford tower top floor oooodizzy, then turnhouse road , then longclose walk ,loved the place then, and i think they done a fantastic job of it now bringing it all up to date.so very clean and tidy.harley
 
Does anyone remember which brewery owned and ran The Trees when it first opened? A clue..... the same brewery owned The Norton Arms in Coleshill at that time.

Ian
 
I worked at the Trees in the 70's it was Ansells then, could it have been Inde coope not sure on the spellingbut Ansells took them over.
 
chrisange said:
I worked at the Trees in the 70's it was Ansells then, could it have been Inde coope not sure on the spellingbut Ansells took them over.
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It was TK Ales, aka Thomas Keresley Brewery. I didn't much care for their range of beers and most people were happy to see the Ansells takeover.

I have a feeling that TK were based in Mansfield or that vicinity bur I'll be happy to be corrected.

Ian
 
never heard of them Ian but I was a little young when they owned the trees I did'nt move there until the early 70's I asked my husband last night and he was a pub manager for bass and he could'nt answer your question. clever one that.
 
chrisange said:
never heard of them Ian but I was a little young when they owned the trees I did'nt move there until the early 70's I asked my husband last night and he was a pub manager for bass and he could'nt answer your question. clever one that.
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Not clever, a little obscure, maybe. I've no idea why they were granted the licence. Perhaps it was the Monopoly's Commision thingy....
There are so many knowledgeable people on this forum that I feel sure at least one will have the answer....more than one, probably.

Ian
 
I have no personal connection with Castle Vale but a colleague of mine lived on the 14th floor of one of the high-rise blocks with his family. He had a toddler son, about 18 months old and the father and son bond was forming with the games of football being regularly reported on.
The guy was a bit of a scrounger really, liked his booze and his car was like an ashtray. One day he arrived home in mid-afternoon; someone told him that a bag of clothes had fallen out of a widow onto the canopy over the entrance. He climbed up to discover that the bundle was in fact his young son who had climbed through a window; Bob's son died in his arms.
This was one of the saddest experiences of my life.
It did lead to the modifdication of the window catches but at what cost!
 
Toddler tragedies are heart-rending. A deceased uncle of mine -not in Castle Vale-had a toddler son..this happened in the early 1940s..who put his head into a tub next to the mangle where there was a very small amount of water in the bottom of the tub-he drowned within minutes/moments.The boy's name was Malcolm.:angel:
 
harley said:
i went to castle vale comp then left in 1972. lived in chigwell close ,then cosford tower top floor oooodizzy, then turnhouse road , then longclose walk ,loved the place then, and i think they done a fantastic job of it now bringing it all up to date.so very clean and tidy.harley
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Hey there, if your still readinmg this, I lived in Cosford Tower 1966 to 76. 7th floor.
Regards Eddie
 
I didn't live on Castle Vale but,in the late 80's a brand new Mobil petrol station was built opposite Castle Vale next to the Drome cafe and I was given it as my first appointment as a manager.Two memories of my time there are,on our commissioning day we opened up and allowed the first 100 customers to fill up for a penny a litre and we also employed a couple of scantily clad girls to serve them.Well,we had a queue right down the road as you can imagine,the police had to be called to keep them in check but it was a great day,very busy and good fun.The opposite of that was,one night Leeds United had been playing at the Villa and had lost heavily.Quite a lot of them stopped to fill up before they hit the motorway home.Well,you can imagine the mood they were in after losing and,unfortunately we were the target.Some of them urinated all over the forecourt and some of them broke branches off the trees at the back of us ,piled them up round the petrol pumps and set them on fire.You can imagine the panic,we called the fire brigade,who put it out pretty quickly but I was never so glad to go home that night.
 
Hi all.
first post so please excuse any mistakes. we were one of the first families to move to the vale think it was about 1963.
There were two distinct sides dependant on the builder, we lived on the bryant side nearest to kingsbury rd, sumburgh
croft to be exact. the otherside was stubbings, as a teenager it was a magic place to grow up lots of open areas not yet built on everywhere clean and fresh. BUT there were downsides no bus service no school had to travel to slade rd erdington (walk and bus) to school, no shops except corner shop in innsworth drive a little later only one pub
on the other side ofthe estate the skylark, but a great bunch of people the old community spirit emerged everybody looked out for each other as we were all in need of lifts and help with shopping i can honestly say i loved every minute
and have great memories ofmy time there Edd
 
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Hi, I moved on in 66 into Cosford Tower, as a 6 year old it was such an adventure. The whole place was a building site for years. My mum used to work in the builders canteen on Yatesbury avenue and I used to take my mates in for free jam doughnuts and wagon wheels. One of our past times was collecting the small ceramic tiles used on the Tower block walls as decoration. We had hundreds of them. I have many fond memories of growing up on the vale. Some not so good, like when my Dad had his car pinched and used in a robery of the milk depot up water Orton. When we got it back it was full of bottle tops and puke.
Regards, Eddie M
 
chrisange said:
I lived on the vale in the early 70's, Meteor House, Filton Croft. I worked at the Trees Pub just down from our block. it was also my schools playing field before they built the estate.
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My nan and Grandad lived right next to The Trees pub. 97 Innsworth Drive. The old bungalows, they are gone now.
 
I also lived on the Castle Vale Estate from about 1968-1978. I went to Castle Vale Comp and know most of the pubs that have been mentioned. I also went to Chivenor Primary school on the vale. I was great back then as our house was brand new and it felt like luxuary compared to where we had lived. At the comp we had house teams named after the planes used in the war. I was in the gladiator team and my sister was in the spitfire team the third was known as hurricane. I also used to go to the Astral club (more of a youth after school hang out). The big tower block of flats opposite where we lived (Concorde Tower) as since been pulled down as I remember. I loved the vale back then but have been away for so long so not sure what it is like now.
 
I've had quite a bit to do with the 'Vale one way or another. I remember seeing it being built in the 60's. I worked on the Railway lines (based at Castle Bromwich 'Old' Station, now demolished and under the widened Chester Rd), we used to reach the track by driving over the rubbish strew Airport runways that BCC were covering up prior to remodelling. Through the 70's. I used to go to a Monday night 'DJ instead of a jukebox' session in the Albatross, and went out with a few girls off the estate. I still see many of my friends off the Vale.
Now ... as to its state, as a Police Officer in the late 70's until the late 80's, I often ended up on the Vale from Warwickshire, as the Vale became the haunt of serial car thieves, this ruined the place for many who had moved in out of poor housing stock in B'ham. Within a few years, it had become very run down. I joined the Ambulance Service in the late 80's and, once more worked on & around the Vale. It was awful. You daren't park under the Tower blocks as sharpened pieces of concrete reinforcing rods would be dropped on your vehicle. There was a serious Drugs problem, and violence was rife, esp against the elderly.
When the HAT took over, they worked a miracle. The place now is a lot better than it ever was.

There is a very good book out that traces the history of the area in pictures, from its time as a sewage farm up to the present day.
 
I lived on the Castle Vale for 8yrs and a barmaid at the trees in the 1980s..i live in Erdington now..not far away
Sheila
 
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I think Castle Vale has been much derided over the years, mainly by folks who knew only of it by reputation, having lived there between 1967-1996, let me give a positive spin. Most folks who ended up there mid to late sixties did so due to the process of inner city slum clearance, so the environment they came from in housing terms (but not necessarily sense of the community) was probably worse than the new urban sprawl, but this sprawl was located (on three sides) by open countryside and unlike the inner city, a kid could jump on their bicycle and within 5 minutes be in the middle of nowhere. Likewise within the boarders of the square mile of the Vale it's self, green open space was at premium, if folks could see past the concrete, in terms of position within the natural environment, folks could have been considered lucky.
For all the changes made to the housing stock by the HAT, when I drive through the vale now, o.k the towers have gone, but so has all the green space, swallowed by the new housing, the Park Lane fields just across the railway are now an industrial complex, meaning that a once little oasis of urban jungle, is now a faceless residential sprawl, yes even with rose coloured specs, one cannot deny the social problems 5000 people crammed into one high density square mile could create, but it was good to look outwards, not inwards.
 
We lived on castle vale 1974 - 2002 in st athans croft 2 years then yatesbury avenue opposite the residents club loved every minute on there,really miss the place still have friends on there, left because of work move.
 
SNOWY ? ... There was a young lad who was a ? Milkman ? off the Vale ... is that you? If so, how does the name Knoxy McKay sound to you?

Pete R ... (750 Norton - The Albatross, Monday nights with Maggie McKay).
 
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