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Handsworth

[QUOTE=the greengrocers (was that Tibbetts?)


No, it wasn't "Tibbetts" - they were much further down, on the opposite side, on the opposite corner of Louisa Road to "The Barrell" pub. My parents were great friends of Gertie (who ran the fruit stall) and Ted (who did the fish) Tibbetts. Another Tibbetts brother ran the veg.stall, and another, the meat, in the butchers shop next door.

Moving towards the city centre, I remember "The Barrell" (many evenings spent waiting in the front or back porch - I can still remember being bored and cold - waiting for my Dad to bring me out a lemonade and bag of crisps!).


Next to "The Barrell" was a cheap ("seconds") shoe shop, then a little market, then the "West Bromich Building Society", and then the newsagents/tobbaconist's shop on the corner of Ninevah Road.
 
Interesting question .. not sure if this is covered elsewhere ...

When were upstairs bathrooms built-in on new houses ? ... (eg. Baths and wash basins in a bathroom).
I'm assuming most Handsworth houses built before the 2nd world war were built without upper bathrooms ?

And that bathrooms would have been added as a (luxury ?) item at some time after the second world war.
And maybe standard to new buildings after 1955-60

I know the outside toilet was the standard and it was from 60s onwards that upstairs toilets were added then.
 
Stephen this is an awkward one really, but I can give you some idea from my own experience. We rented a house for a few months at 33 Philip Victor Road, which is off the top end of Grove Lane. It was built by Percy Cox the builder who was also Lord Mayor so I believe, and it was constructed in 1916. That had an inside bathroom, but of course it was larger than an ordinary house and built for someone with a very good income. Percy Cox's brother lived two doors away from us and most of the other people in the road had incomes we could only dream about.

My mother was born in a back to back in Ladywood, but moved to a new house in Yardley Wood in 1928. That had an inside bathroom (it was a council house). I think from the 1920's you will most certainly find houses having bathrooms, but before that they were probably quite rare. The Yardley Wood houses were all different, some had a toilet actually inside the building but you had to go out of the back door and through another door, back into the house, to get to it. Effectlvely an inside toilet which was outside. My aunt lived in one in Grendon Road, off Warstock Road, and her bathroom was off the kitchen as was ours, but hers had a toilet in there too. I think bathrooms were standard from the 1920's, all the 1930's bay-fronted houses had bathrooms complete with toilets, but apart from the Yardley Wood houses I can't think of any 1920's houses I have been into. I feel quite lucky that I have never lived in a house without a bathroom, but perhaps I have missed out on something too. Interestingly, the houses in Bournville which were built in the 1890's had baths built in, but sunk into the kitchen floor. I presume the toilets were outside though.
 
Shorty thats a very interesting reply thank you. And good to hear about the "inside" bathroom.

But I am really interested also in the "upstairs" bathroom.
When I lived in Babington Road (1955's onwards). I always remembered a bathroom "upstairs" - but it could be that the houses were actually built without bathrooms and they were added at a later date. It seems difficult to imagine an upstairs bathroom being viable - without hot water - and I cant really see people wanting to tramp upstairs with kettles of water - hence my query... to start the ball rolling. Like you I too feel lucky to always have had an inside bathroom and also one upstairs
 
Stephen, the house in Philip Victor Road, built 1916 had an indoor, upstairs bathroom and toilet, perhaps I did not made it too clear. I would think that as council houses were built with bathrooms from the 1920's that private houses would have been the same, but upstairs rather than downstairs. Terraced houses built early 1900's did not have them, but like yours in Babbington Road, were installed later, as these house were built either in Victorian or Edwardian times. All the 1930's houses had indoor upstairs bathrooms (and I lived in one of those, too). The house in Philip Victor Road would probably have been a kind of blue-print for private housing from thereon in I would say. I don't know if I gave you the wrong impression about the inside bathroom - it was a fully functional proper bathroom, the houses were built with them, it was not an add-on, it was just the toilet bit that in some houses had to be reached from an outside door. Once we left Handsworth we lived in a house built 1960 and it even had central heating.
 
I know that the houses built for Cadburys in "Bournville" , circa 1910, had upstairs baths and toilets, my house here built 1946, has a downstairs toilet built into the outhouse, and a in around 1956 they converted the box room 6'x8', into a bath and toilet, so we have two working toilets, I suggest that this was the same nationally. paul
 
Several types of bath were tried out at Bournville . Below are two types from Michael Harrisons book, "Bournville, model Village to garden suburb". One is the sunken bath already described, the other is stored vertically in a cupboard till use.
Baths_in_Bournville_housesA.jpg
 
Excellent replies thank you (& my apologies shortie for my miss-understanding).

Our house had a boiler half way up the chimney (I think) so the open fire warmed the water. The hot water then could be fed to the hot taps downstairs - but I dont know how it would have got to the upper floors ? ... I'm assuming then that the original house was built with the bathroom and the emersion heater too then. I think it was circa 1930's.

I also remember the clothes rack (for drying) in the kitchen with a winch that took damp clothes up to the ceiling.
 
Going back to the house I was born in, I think hot water to the bathroom was via a gas heater, but not altogether sure. There was a range in the living room which went by the time I was about 5, that could have initially heated the hot water if, as in your house, there was a tank half way up the chimney. I once lived in a house built in the 1970's which had a back boiler behind the gas fire which heated the water for both central heating and the water. Perhaps that was why the early bathrooms in council houses had their bathroom on the ground floor? The house in Philip Victor Road had an immersion heater, but I don't know if that would have been installed when the house was built. When we lived there the house had gas fires, however, what it was like earlier I cannot say, but certainly the 1930's houses all had that, but also using the open fire in the winter heated the water for the colder months as there was a boiler behind the fire or just above it. I have to say I have never given this much thought before.
 
Oh Mike, those photos are brilliant. I can't imagine, however, what it would have been like having a bath in the kitchen, seems dreadful to me, but then I have been spoilt!!
 
Shortie you have been spoilt! Tin baths were horrible! I was born in Edgbaston and our bath was stored outside, next-door had theirs in a cabinet like #342 but it was horizontal and not rough surfaced like ours. Our bathroom was "built on" in about 1956.
rosie.
 
Oh Rosie, you make me feel quite guilty!! I imagine a bath in those circumstances was not very nice, especially, I guess, if one had a lot of brothers! I have given it thought before that if my grandparents had not been re-housed, I might have been born in Ladywood myself and having the same conditions. I am probably very lucky.
 
I lived in Cooksey Road in the early 60s with a bath in the kitchen under a detachable work surface. A luxury for me not having lived in Handsworth. It was a tin bath for twenty odd years in Guildford Street then about three years with a proper upstairs bathroom in a council house in West Heath. Then getting married and off to the bath in the kitchen. After a couple of years moving to a flat in London as a student with a shared bathroom - money in the meter
 
Shortie
Not in Birmingham, but until I left Chichester to go to university, I never used a bathroom. The other thing was the outside toilet with large bulbous spiders wandering around !!
 
On the subject of spiders I just read this ... a quick factoid ...

Spiders climb down into the bath tub because there is water there. Houses are dry, especially with air con and heating, and spiders need water. They sense that water is in the area of the bath tub and crawl in, only to not be able to crawl out. That's why they also like to hang out around sinks and in the basement, where there is less AC/Heating and there is more moisture.
 
What a nice surprise to find that the buildings to the left of this 1907 view of Hamstead Road are still there and recognisable! Pity the chemist has fallen into disrepair, or maybe it's had sme attention since the Streetview photo? Viv.

ImageUploadedByTapatalkHD1387630770.909922.jpg 1907
ImageUploadedByTapatalkHD1387630790.924578.jpg today
 
And a view from the other direction looking down Hamstead Road towards the Villa Road junction. Again, quite a lot is still in tact, but many frontages have changed. Note the typo by the postcard maker "Hampstead". Viv.

ImageUploadedByTapatalkHD1387631305.167773.jpg
ImageUploadedByTapatalkHD1387631320.127756.jpg
 
Nice to see the chemist shop Viv, in the 1960's it was Barclay's Bank on that corner. The buildings might be there, but it is so sadly neglected these days it's almost unrecognisible. It's abou tnine months since I travelled along this road.
 
We left Handsworth about three months ago but even now, when we drive through to visit our daughter, we can see how it's gone down since we left. It seems nobody there has any interest in their environment any more. A lot of the neglect can be attributed to "Rackman" type landlords who buy up all the properties they can and then move in anyone the DSS will pay the rent for. :crushed:
 
OISIN;
Handsworth is not alone when you say deteriation ;first of all i used to be a midland counties dairyman [ milk man ]
way back in sixty one and it was a cracking place i covered most of handsworth roads and streets and at that time there was only part
was for those peole whom was unfortunately haveing to go rakman and that was at the very top end of holly lane it was like a tunnelled entrace
a small in wthe dimention and it had litle tiny rooms and sadly they was a great bunch of people of all creeds whom fell short of rackman
we called it the dungeons they was por people trying to survive but they paid there way for there milk bills never missed aweek
we used to have a laugh with them and they would make you smile like wise my asstistant and my self was alway pleasant to them i hink they was happy to see us but the rest of the houses was fine and well kept so dd the people but we did have a problem with one or two on hamstead rd owing money
and my mate was threatened by a big bloke standing over him with a bottle [ empty bottle of milk ; as he owed weeks and weeks we stopped his supply
and we wanted the IOU moneyand he was demanding milk still as i sent him to this building i thought he is a log time so i went to invstigate
and lord and behold he was standing over taffy with the bottle so i came behind and shouted verbal abuse at him and drop the bottle or else and so he did
handswoth was a cracking place to live years ago my ancesters lived there on hamstead rd in a big house with servants my mother told me
as i have said i have covered most rds of handsworth and coffee shops for delivering there milkyou name the road i dne it and on saturday evening around five oclock ; i would finish out side the red lion pub toting up my book of cash and sorting the emptys and the crates for the sorters back at the dairy in moland street
my brother inlaw tony jones from catherine street also used to work there as a milkman and he eventualy went to live in brunswick rd hands worth around the back of soho rd and the grove lane it used to be a great area as you say its definately down rapid as i have seen it for my self ;
the big question is ; whom is at fault'?. the inhabbintants or council; to let it run down; the council can control so much but the private sector no but the cleaning of the streets yes and if they are council tennants that i do know ; as i was on harborne committe many years ago so i do know a fair bit ;
but take around the rest of brum they are only concetrating on the centre of brum where upon the birmingham peopleshould be first
and there standard of living best wishes Astonian;;
 
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