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Lickey Hills

I just realised the first few photo's phil did on page 5 shows a little wooden hut with a house behind, earlier in the thread I mentioned "Mr Dickens who kept the pigeons" that was his house, ho the memories especially of my dear old dad all young with his shirt sleeves rolled up like "Short sleeve order" in the summer I'm getting all emotional now.
paul
 
Don't we all. when I am planing my vegetable plot each year it is done with dad in my mind. I even still make every attempt to obtain 'Heritage seeds' of the varieties he used to grow..
 
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Polly, take a few crusts with you so can feed the ducks (swans).
The text with this one reads; The tranquil setting of the ornamental pool was a regular spot for a Lickey Hills picnic.
 
Paul - that little hut and the house are still there - I will get a photo for you. You have some lovely memories of your dad - it is funny how quite often it is the small details we remember about our parents that make us emotional isn't it.

Stitcher - I love feeding the ducks/geese/swans on that pond - although fairly recently I found out that bread is bad for aquatic birds - I dread to think how much harm I have done to them over the years :culpability: apparently you are supposed to give them frozen peas.
 
Thank you so much Polly. Do you know Polly, someone said something too me when I was young, " when you are older, you will think of your family much more than now, and if you had good parents you will really miss them" how true that was.
paul
 
Great photo's phil, I love No4 with the hundreds climbing, and down in the village I think is the old pub.
paul


Paul what you could see down below was possibly Billberry Hill Tea Rooms which I believe later was converted to some sort of a hostel and training centre. I can remember when the Lickeys used to get that crowded that it was hard to find somewhere to sit down to have a picnic. The pub you mention the Hare & Hounds was further up the road.

Phil
 

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Polly, when you have taken dozens of photo's for the forum, then fed the ducks, you can call into the Bilberry tea rooms.
 
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I should have put this one on first because this party of people from Handsworth are just setting out for a day at the Lickey's. See the two girls and a baby getting in the photo although they are not going with the party. Again there is no a date on this.
 
I should have put on the previous post that I think I have now used all my pictures of the Licky's.
 
Polly, when you have taken dozens of photo's for the forum, then fed the ducks, you can call into the Bilberry tea rooms.

I wish it was still a tea room stitcher - wouldn't that be grand! Although the visitor centre (opposite where the fair used to be) has a nice cafe with a terrace that you can sit out on and look down onto the picnic/play area.
 
Hi Stitcher, all those wooden steps are still very much there, gave me a good workout on my visit last year!

Simon
 
Hello Simon, I have not been on the hills for years but it is nice to know they are still similar to the memories.
 
I've just come across this wonderful series of memories of the Lickey Hills. I would like to add that in the mid 40's I used to go ,with my friends from just outside Selly Oak ,during snow cover in the winter months on the tram with our sledges fitted in by the side of the driver. A long haul to the top of Beacon Hill and a rapid ride to the bottom. This often resulted in some broken bones, hence at busy times an ambulance was stationed at the bottom of the hill!!
It was at the Lickeys I saw my one and only red squirrel.
 
Yes i used to go to the Lickey Hills a lot used to start off from the tram depot at Witton and can't remember
where we used to change, my Husband Proposed to me in a brick bus shelter in a wall at the Licket Hills
and that was in 1956 and we are still going strong.
 
I think that is a lovely story deedee, like many Brummies from the 50's I had many happy adventures, and visits, with my mom and dad, over many years and though I have been gone from Brum for over 40yrs, those memory's, are still as fresh as to-day for me. paul
 
Thanks Paul, Yes we used to go to the Lickey Hills a lot. It was easy for us to get to as we both worked on the Witton Island
my husband worked at Jolly's selling radio's and a few TV's and i worked 2 doors away at the Wool shop.
 
yes you can , and if your hungry you can get a curry in the old terminus ,its now a balti house or chinese , i forget
 
I don't know what is in the background Paul but it looks a long way off to be the Austin but it wouldn' be Selly Oak and I can't think where esle it could be. As for the two men being Wardens, they certainly appear to be wearing some sort of uniform. These are all newspaper cuttings and I think they were originally an Old Brum Magazine or something similar.

Looking at the shape of the building and its position in the landscape I am pretty sure it was the Austin-Aero Ltd Aeroplane Factory building at Cofton Hackett, (where my father worked after leaving Kings Norton Grammar School in the 1930s) ... which was closed in the 1960s and finally demolished in the early 1990s and the land developed for housing
 
Interesting to read about peoples experiences of the Lickey Hills. Living in Northfield as a boy I regularly visited the hills the only problem was on a summer Sunday, we couldn't get on the 70 Rednal tram (after 1952 the 62 on bus) because they were full up with passengers from the city so we had to catch the 71 tram to Rubery (after 1952 the 63 bus) and walk up Leach Green Lane to the hills. In the 40's and 50's these were the only times we had the four wheel open fronted trams on the 70 service which I think were provided by Moseley Road garage.
Well remember the trams and buses being parked around the circle at Rednal terminus waiting to take people home.
Happy days.
 
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