Eutrino
master brummie
I wrote this a while back for inclusion on the Streetly Historical Group page but it occurs to me that parts of it might resonate with some of you here on the BHF? As a true born Brummie (Dudley Rd. Maternity Hospital, Sept 15 1947) and new to this forum I don't know if this is the best spot for this thread but I thought I'd just throw it up and see what happens!
Born in 1947, towards the leading edge of the baby boom era, I moved to Streetly from Stockland Green at the age of 9 when my parents purchased their first home on Elmtree Road. The newly built 3 bedroom semi was on the old Cottage Farm land off the NE side of Aldridge Road between Foley Road and Bridle Lane. At that time I seem to remember the address being Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, Warwicks and much was made of that connection, with greater cachet attached to it than an association with geographically closer Walsall, Staffs! Years later, when we got our first telephone, it had an 021 prefix vs. 0922 which, once again, seemed to be rather significant for some Streetly folk!
Ours was one of the first houses on the street to be occupied, and for many months I was in small boy heaven. I met and befriended several other young refugees from ’Brum’ while playing in, on and around all the other partially built houses and the attendant equipment around the building site. Interestingly, in those days, tools and materials were often left where they were at the end of the workday, with little fear of theft or damage…..what a contrast to the present!
As families began moving into the homes immediately surrounding ours we got to know the Cowleys, the Hams, the Bristows, the Padgetts, the Yates and the Parkers. A little further down Elmtree Road were the Mayburys and the Stubbs and over on Cherrywood Road were the Parrs. During the evenings and weekends, when no building work was going on, Zorro, The Lone Ranger and Daredevils of the Red Circle could be found tearing around the neighbourhood as we kids aped our idols from the Saturday matinees. The back of our house, and my bedroom window, faced the old farmyard, the barn and the outbuildings, which survived for a number of years after construction was completed. Despite this dilapidated outlook I still enjoyed a largely uninterrupted view of the open farmland west of Aldridge Road with Barr Beacon beyond.
I attended Blackwood Primary School, as it was called back then, on Blackwood Road. A 1959 (I think?) class photo is attached with me wearing specs and sitting cross legged in the front row, left. When the school first opened on a site built into the rapidly shrinking Foley Wood. I recall being shown a newspaper article at the time highlighting “The School in The Wood” which, I think, came from the Walsall Observer. Back then the whole area between Hazelwood and Blackwood Roads was still essentially open field and woodland and I was able to get to school by walking across the field and through the remaining vestiges of the wood. I also seem to remember a private school of some sort located on Blackwood Road where Foley Wood Close is now, Sandwell is a name that comes to mind? A little further along Blackwood Road was our doctor’s surgery, where both Dr. Szamocki and his wife practiced out of the same office.
At the completion of that first phase of construction of the so called ’Cottage Farm Estate’ around 1960, Elmtree Road ended a few houses past Yewtree Road, Limetree Road ended at Cherrywood Road and there was open land and woods between Hazelwood and Blackwood Roads. Lowlands Avenue ended at Hazelwood Road and resumed again at Blackwood Drive. The paving on Maxholm Road ended at Lilac Avenue, where another friend from Blackwood Primary lived on the corner, their family name was Meacham. A recent aerial flyover of the area courtesy of Google Earth showed clearly the different house styles dividing that initial Cottage Farm construction from later developments in the area.
Back then the intersection of Foley and Aldridge Roads was a simple rural crossroads, no roundabout, no petrol station and no Foley Arms pub. The only retail outlet in the area was Willis’ Store, which preceded the petrol station at the SW corner of Aldridge Road and Beacon Hill. As a pushy kid I talked my way into a Saturday job there helping make doorstep deliveries of groceries from Willis’ to local patrons, under the watchful eye of their driver, Jack, who spent most of his time on each trip trying to keep his old J type Morris van from conking out!
Spurred by a visit to the Boy Scout World Jamboree in Sutton Park back in 1957 I had joined the 2nd Streetly Scout Troop, eventually aspiring to the dizzy heights of Patrol Leader! Meetings were held weekly in an old wooden building on Blackwood Road that also doubled as a Methodist Church at the time. Unfortunately, leadership was never my forte and my initial enthusiasm to follow in the footsteps of Baden-Powell failed to stand the test of time. I soon found myself unable to continue to ‘do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen’! Hey, I tried!
A regular bicycle trip for me in those days was being dispatched by my mother “down to Slims“ on some errand or other. Bert Slim had a sort of general store at the corner of Bridle Lane and Chester Road which was enthusiastically patronised by all and sundry in the absence of any of the new fangled supermarkets. There was also a barbers on the same corner that I used from time to time over the years. Sidney Ceney always had a gag or pearl of information that he would share….whether you wanted it or not….while clipping and shearing! Going north along Chester Road took me to the home of a school friend from Blackwood Primary who lived above an off-licence run by his parents at the junction of Wood Lane and Little Hardwick Lane. The family name was George.
After confounding dire predictions from my father (and several of my Blackwood Primary teachers) with my strong showing in the ‘Eleven Plus’ (remember that?) I was slated to attend what was then known as Aldridge Grammar-Technical School on Tynings Lane in Aldridge. That school was also brand new and couldn’t accept pupils until later in the year I graduated, so my first term was held a strenuous bicycle ride away, uphill along Bridle Lane to Barr Beacon and then a high speed descent of Beacon Road to a secondary school that was then known as Barr Beacon School. The Grammar Grubs and the Secondary Slugs, thrust together involuntarily, struggled to achieve peaceful co-existence! Conflict resumed with new protagonists at Aldridge the next term where the new Grammar School was right next door to the Secondary Modern School. Of course, all this was well before the era of Comprehensive Education. If the weather was fair to middling I would cycle to school and if it was crummy I would catch the Green Bus at the corner of Foley and Erdington Roads, opposite Willis’ and across from where the Foley Arms would be built in later years.
During my early teens, having learned about Izaak Walton and ‘The Compleat Angler’, I went through my avid angler phase! I would load up my bicycle with my creel, rods and a pint of maggots and head off to Sutton Park, usually to Bracebridge Pool. Operating on a typical teen budget I would sneak into the Park through the golfers entrance on Thornhill Road, dodging the ‘Parkies’ and thus avoiding the price of a ticket……entrance fees were charged back then for us poor ’non-residents’ of Sutton Coldfield! Occasionally I would partner up with a friend and rent a punt to go after the pike that were to be found at the northern end of the pool. Other expeditions from Streetly around that time were to the public swimming baths at Kingstanding, with a choice of riding either a Blue or Green Bus from Bridle Lane or Aldridge Road then changing to a Birmingham bus at Kingstanding Circle. Happy times!
Around that time I also took my first underage drink in public, on a dare, at the Hardwick Arms. Two friends and I went down to the Hardwick Arms one evening. We dithered on the threshold of the bar arguing over what we should drink and which of us looked the oldest, to place the order. My idea of a coin toss for the privilege was rejected and my peach fuzz chin proved to be my undoing! We knew that draught beer came in two basic varieties, mild and bitter. Being possessed of above average intelligence, we reasoned that mild was the light coloured, watery stuff while the thick, dark stuff had to be bitter. Further, our logic indicated that as neophytes we would do better with mild for our first experience. All pretty obvious, right? So, I sallied forth to the bar with my most confident air and placed our order….“three pints of mild please“! When the three mugs of foaming dark beverage arrived in front of me I was horrified. Had the barmaid made a mistake? Had I not spoken clearly when ordering? What to do? Not wishing to draw attention to her obvious error I paid up and took the mugs to my pals. Needless to say there was much consternation amongst us until we listened to other orders being placed and observed the results. Ah, the challenges of youth!
After O Levels in 1963 I elected to go straight into the workforce and hired on at a manufacturing company in West Bromwich, while studying engineering in the evenings at Walsall Tech. I bought an old motorbike to get myself around, but only succeeded in securing an unwanted three week stay at the West Bromwich District Hospital in 1964 by demonstrating conclusively that a BSA C15 would not deflect the passage of a LWB Land Rover travelling at 30 mph! That bike had introduced me to Tony Dayman who lived on Bridle Lane and John Pritchard who lived on Wood Lane. We joined the 59 Club and rode together all over the place at a time when riding a motorbike defined us as ’Rockers’ as opposed to the more effete weirdo ‘Mods‘ who spluttered around on their Lambrettas and Vespas. Someone must have made a fortune back then selling parka shells and rear view mirrors to those dolts! (Apologies to all those who swooned at Quadrophenia) A popular Rocker haunt back then was Dunbars Cafe in Mere Green. Eventually it was the reactions of the opposite sex that prompted me to make the move onto four wheels……..the really good looking ’birds’ were much more inclined to date a bloke with a car than one who rode a bike (or a scooter!)! Best Driving School was chosen for the crucial task of preparing me for the transition, their location on Elmtree Road, only 6 doors away from our house, had no bearing on the selection process!
In addition to being the location of my initiation into the finer points of beer consumption the Hardwick Arms also figured, indirectly, in the aforementioned motorcycle saga. The traffic light outside, at the corner of Chester Road and Little Hardwick Lane, was the launching point for drag races and speed trials northward on Chester Road down what came to be known as the ’mad mile’. Crouched low over the petrol tank, and securely armed with the assured immortality of youth, we would go flat out down ‘The Mile’ before letting off at the last moment so as to negotiate the bend under the railway bridge at the end. Until 1965 speed limits were non existent outside urban areas and we young ‘immortals’ made the most of the open roads!
Time passes and youth fades into adulthood. I left Streetly in 1971, moving to East Grinstead in Sussex to start on a career in engineering that took me all over the world, eventually ending up in California where I still live today. My parents stayed at Elmtree Road until 1975 and then moved to Tenbury Wells when my father took early retirement. Over the years I have returned to Brum and the old neighbourhoods several times while on trips back to the UK and have always been disappointed to see the ongoing deterioration in the area. Urban blight and decay were abstract concepts to me until I saw all the changes, particularly in Brum, where the whole character of the city has been lost amid disjointed and ill advised ’developments’ from the desks of the so called planners. Don’t misunderstand, I am a great proponent of positive development and change but how ridiculous that, today, so many badly conceived, designed and built buildings are being razed after a few decades of life on the sites where architecturally inspiring and durable buildings had sat proudly for centuries! It has been said that one should never go back to places that possess good memories, everything changes. Sadly I have to agree.
Born in 1947, towards the leading edge of the baby boom era, I moved to Streetly from Stockland Green at the age of 9 when my parents purchased their first home on Elmtree Road. The newly built 3 bedroom semi was on the old Cottage Farm land off the NE side of Aldridge Road between Foley Road and Bridle Lane. At that time I seem to remember the address being Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, Warwicks and much was made of that connection, with greater cachet attached to it than an association with geographically closer Walsall, Staffs! Years later, when we got our first telephone, it had an 021 prefix vs. 0922 which, once again, seemed to be rather significant for some Streetly folk!
Ours was one of the first houses on the street to be occupied, and for many months I was in small boy heaven. I met and befriended several other young refugees from ’Brum’ while playing in, on and around all the other partially built houses and the attendant equipment around the building site. Interestingly, in those days, tools and materials were often left where they were at the end of the workday, with little fear of theft or damage…..what a contrast to the present!
As families began moving into the homes immediately surrounding ours we got to know the Cowleys, the Hams, the Bristows, the Padgetts, the Yates and the Parkers. A little further down Elmtree Road were the Mayburys and the Stubbs and over on Cherrywood Road were the Parrs. During the evenings and weekends, when no building work was going on, Zorro, The Lone Ranger and Daredevils of the Red Circle could be found tearing around the neighbourhood as we kids aped our idols from the Saturday matinees. The back of our house, and my bedroom window, faced the old farmyard, the barn and the outbuildings, which survived for a number of years after construction was completed. Despite this dilapidated outlook I still enjoyed a largely uninterrupted view of the open farmland west of Aldridge Road with Barr Beacon beyond.
I attended Blackwood Primary School, as it was called back then, on Blackwood Road. A 1959 (I think?) class photo is attached with me wearing specs and sitting cross legged in the front row, left. When the school first opened on a site built into the rapidly shrinking Foley Wood. I recall being shown a newspaper article at the time highlighting “The School in The Wood” which, I think, came from the Walsall Observer. Back then the whole area between Hazelwood and Blackwood Roads was still essentially open field and woodland and I was able to get to school by walking across the field and through the remaining vestiges of the wood. I also seem to remember a private school of some sort located on Blackwood Road where Foley Wood Close is now, Sandwell is a name that comes to mind? A little further along Blackwood Road was our doctor’s surgery, where both Dr. Szamocki and his wife practiced out of the same office.
At the completion of that first phase of construction of the so called ’Cottage Farm Estate’ around 1960, Elmtree Road ended a few houses past Yewtree Road, Limetree Road ended at Cherrywood Road and there was open land and woods between Hazelwood and Blackwood Roads. Lowlands Avenue ended at Hazelwood Road and resumed again at Blackwood Drive. The paving on Maxholm Road ended at Lilac Avenue, where another friend from Blackwood Primary lived on the corner, their family name was Meacham. A recent aerial flyover of the area courtesy of Google Earth showed clearly the different house styles dividing that initial Cottage Farm construction from later developments in the area.
Back then the intersection of Foley and Aldridge Roads was a simple rural crossroads, no roundabout, no petrol station and no Foley Arms pub. The only retail outlet in the area was Willis’ Store, which preceded the petrol station at the SW corner of Aldridge Road and Beacon Hill. As a pushy kid I talked my way into a Saturday job there helping make doorstep deliveries of groceries from Willis’ to local patrons, under the watchful eye of their driver, Jack, who spent most of his time on each trip trying to keep his old J type Morris van from conking out!
Spurred by a visit to the Boy Scout World Jamboree in Sutton Park back in 1957 I had joined the 2nd Streetly Scout Troop, eventually aspiring to the dizzy heights of Patrol Leader! Meetings were held weekly in an old wooden building on Blackwood Road that also doubled as a Methodist Church at the time. Unfortunately, leadership was never my forte and my initial enthusiasm to follow in the footsteps of Baden-Powell failed to stand the test of time. I soon found myself unable to continue to ‘do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen’! Hey, I tried!
A regular bicycle trip for me in those days was being dispatched by my mother “down to Slims“ on some errand or other. Bert Slim had a sort of general store at the corner of Bridle Lane and Chester Road which was enthusiastically patronised by all and sundry in the absence of any of the new fangled supermarkets. There was also a barbers on the same corner that I used from time to time over the years. Sidney Ceney always had a gag or pearl of information that he would share….whether you wanted it or not….while clipping and shearing! Going north along Chester Road took me to the home of a school friend from Blackwood Primary who lived above an off-licence run by his parents at the junction of Wood Lane and Little Hardwick Lane. The family name was George.
After confounding dire predictions from my father (and several of my Blackwood Primary teachers) with my strong showing in the ‘Eleven Plus’ (remember that?) I was slated to attend what was then known as Aldridge Grammar-Technical School on Tynings Lane in Aldridge. That school was also brand new and couldn’t accept pupils until later in the year I graduated, so my first term was held a strenuous bicycle ride away, uphill along Bridle Lane to Barr Beacon and then a high speed descent of Beacon Road to a secondary school that was then known as Barr Beacon School. The Grammar Grubs and the Secondary Slugs, thrust together involuntarily, struggled to achieve peaceful co-existence! Conflict resumed with new protagonists at Aldridge the next term where the new Grammar School was right next door to the Secondary Modern School. Of course, all this was well before the era of Comprehensive Education. If the weather was fair to middling I would cycle to school and if it was crummy I would catch the Green Bus at the corner of Foley and Erdington Roads, opposite Willis’ and across from where the Foley Arms would be built in later years.
During my early teens, having learned about Izaak Walton and ‘The Compleat Angler’, I went through my avid angler phase! I would load up my bicycle with my creel, rods and a pint of maggots and head off to Sutton Park, usually to Bracebridge Pool. Operating on a typical teen budget I would sneak into the Park through the golfers entrance on Thornhill Road, dodging the ‘Parkies’ and thus avoiding the price of a ticket……entrance fees were charged back then for us poor ’non-residents’ of Sutton Coldfield! Occasionally I would partner up with a friend and rent a punt to go after the pike that were to be found at the northern end of the pool. Other expeditions from Streetly around that time were to the public swimming baths at Kingstanding, with a choice of riding either a Blue or Green Bus from Bridle Lane or Aldridge Road then changing to a Birmingham bus at Kingstanding Circle. Happy times!
Around that time I also took my first underage drink in public, on a dare, at the Hardwick Arms. Two friends and I went down to the Hardwick Arms one evening. We dithered on the threshold of the bar arguing over what we should drink and which of us looked the oldest, to place the order. My idea of a coin toss for the privilege was rejected and my peach fuzz chin proved to be my undoing! We knew that draught beer came in two basic varieties, mild and bitter. Being possessed of above average intelligence, we reasoned that mild was the light coloured, watery stuff while the thick, dark stuff had to be bitter. Further, our logic indicated that as neophytes we would do better with mild for our first experience. All pretty obvious, right? So, I sallied forth to the bar with my most confident air and placed our order….“three pints of mild please“! When the three mugs of foaming dark beverage arrived in front of me I was horrified. Had the barmaid made a mistake? Had I not spoken clearly when ordering? What to do? Not wishing to draw attention to her obvious error I paid up and took the mugs to my pals. Needless to say there was much consternation amongst us until we listened to other orders being placed and observed the results. Ah, the challenges of youth!
After O Levels in 1963 I elected to go straight into the workforce and hired on at a manufacturing company in West Bromwich, while studying engineering in the evenings at Walsall Tech. I bought an old motorbike to get myself around, but only succeeded in securing an unwanted three week stay at the West Bromwich District Hospital in 1964 by demonstrating conclusively that a BSA C15 would not deflect the passage of a LWB Land Rover travelling at 30 mph! That bike had introduced me to Tony Dayman who lived on Bridle Lane and John Pritchard who lived on Wood Lane. We joined the 59 Club and rode together all over the place at a time when riding a motorbike defined us as ’Rockers’ as opposed to the more effete weirdo ‘Mods‘ who spluttered around on their Lambrettas and Vespas. Someone must have made a fortune back then selling parka shells and rear view mirrors to those dolts! (Apologies to all those who swooned at Quadrophenia) A popular Rocker haunt back then was Dunbars Cafe in Mere Green. Eventually it was the reactions of the opposite sex that prompted me to make the move onto four wheels……..the really good looking ’birds’ were much more inclined to date a bloke with a car than one who rode a bike (or a scooter!)! Best Driving School was chosen for the crucial task of preparing me for the transition, their location on Elmtree Road, only 6 doors away from our house, had no bearing on the selection process!
In addition to being the location of my initiation into the finer points of beer consumption the Hardwick Arms also figured, indirectly, in the aforementioned motorcycle saga. The traffic light outside, at the corner of Chester Road and Little Hardwick Lane, was the launching point for drag races and speed trials northward on Chester Road down what came to be known as the ’mad mile’. Crouched low over the petrol tank, and securely armed with the assured immortality of youth, we would go flat out down ‘The Mile’ before letting off at the last moment so as to negotiate the bend under the railway bridge at the end. Until 1965 speed limits were non existent outside urban areas and we young ‘immortals’ made the most of the open roads!
Time passes and youth fades into adulthood. I left Streetly in 1971, moving to East Grinstead in Sussex to start on a career in engineering that took me all over the world, eventually ending up in California where I still live today. My parents stayed at Elmtree Road until 1975 and then moved to Tenbury Wells when my father took early retirement. Over the years I have returned to Brum and the old neighbourhoods several times while on trips back to the UK and have always been disappointed to see the ongoing deterioration in the area. Urban blight and decay were abstract concepts to me until I saw all the changes, particularly in Brum, where the whole character of the city has been lost amid disjointed and ill advised ’developments’ from the desks of the so called planners. Don’t misunderstand, I am a great proponent of positive development and change but how ridiculous that, today, so many badly conceived, designed and built buildings are being razed after a few decades of life on the sites where architecturally inspiring and durable buildings had sat proudly for centuries! It has been said that one should never go back to places that possess good memories, everything changes. Sadly I have to agree.
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