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They Were Caught In Our Old Street Pics...

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Thanks for posting OldMohawk, Mom did mention to me that there was a "mine" dropped on Handsworth, sometime in 42/3, and damage and casualties were quite sever. You can just see a barrier erected to the RHS of the photo so it was probably over that side the explosion occurred, and the lady and little "UN", just carry on, what a generation they were. Paul
 
That looks very much like Hamstead Road to me, the park side.

I thought it was the house on the corner of Holly Road and Hamstead Road but the design isn't quite the same.
However, there is a grassed space on the corner of Broughton Road and Hamstead Road where the house in the photo could have been.
 
A Sparks said:
That looks very much like Hamstead Road to me, the park side.

I thought it was the house on the corner of Holly Road and Hamstead Road but the design isn't quite the same.
However, there is a grassed space on the corner of Broughton Road and Hamstead Road where the house in the photo could have been.
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Thanks, I'll have a look round there on some of the old pics and aerial views etc. The slightly puzzling thing is the road going off to the right looks like a commercial area, shops etc. The house could have been a 'commercial travellers' hotel or Doctors maybe, there does not look space for a back garden. I have looked at the signpost in the pic and it seems to show the word 'shelter'.
 
The house in question looks very like one that stood at the corner of Byron Road and Waverley Rd Small Heath. If you look to the extreme left of the photo you can just see the edge of a large flat roofed building that could be the old Labour Exchange building where the number 28 bus bundy clock stood outside. Most of Byron Road and that part of Waverley Rd disappeared under the Small Heath Bypass, but there still remains a house on the corner of Tennyson Road opposite that is of more or less the same design.
 
I'm a bit lost in that part of the city, 'britainfromabove' does show Byron Rd and Waverley Rd in a 1927 pic and the school can be seen.
https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/epw018236?x=409797&y=285041&extent=1000&ref=13
Quite a few pics of Waverley Rd on the forum and the one below shows the No 28 bus and the Bundy clock you mentioned.
The bus driver and bus conductor caught in the pic !
index.php

It is in a post here https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=38737&p=487668#post487668
 
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oldMowhawk: Re posting #1568. My 'manor'! The Small Heath GWR marshalling yards can be clearly seen towards the top left hand corner, and the railway station just above the BSA works, the BSA sports field and the Grand Union Canal. Just visible, beneath the marshalling yards is Anderton Road, and the GWR stabling for their horses, and carriers. Great photo. Many thanks.

Eddie
 
Phil

That is the place where the 28 bus Bundy clock was located, and the house I was referring to was along to the right from there on the corner of Byron Rd diagonally opposite Small Heath Park. It could have been a stray bomb meant for the BSA just the other side of the railway track.
 
Phil said:
Phil

That is the place where the 28 bus Bundy clock was located, and the house I was referring to was along to the right from there on the corner of Byron Rd diagonally opposite Small Heath Park. It could have been a stray bomb meant for the BSA just the other side of the railway track.
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A closer look at the house on the corner of Waverley Rd and Byron Rd suggests it isn't the house we are looking for.
WaverleyByron.JPG


The original photo below is an interesting one of a Birmingham Street but it looks as if it's location will probably never be known.
Vivienne14 said:
Let's now turn our attention to residential properties as we've probably exhausted clues for the time being on the commercial properties damaged during the War. Here are three:

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oldMohawk:

I remember sitting beside the Grand Union canal, watching GWR trains, and engine spotting, from behind the back of, I think, an employment exchange, somewhere just there. This would have been around 1945/46.

Eddie
 
Hi Eddie, Yes these old pics bring back the memories. The hobby of engine or train spotting !
The young ones of today would wonder what we saw in it - but it was a day out with the lads.
I think these days some people collect the names on Eddie Stobart lorries.
oldmohawk
 
A lovely Edwardian scene of Grove Lane, Handsworth. Two seated ladies waiting for the tram, the interest of one lady in the photographer while others are unaware of him and the guy on the bike who seems oblivious to all, including the approaching tram! The photo calls it 'Boulevard', and by that I take to mean having the appearance of a boulevard rather than its location. Or is it? Viv.
 

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Hi Viv, it certainly is a very nice photo of Handsworth, looks like a Sunday Morning and they're off to church. As far as I can see, there is only a single tramline with the tram going away from the photographer. I had a look on GE and there is a part of Grove Lane today which is dual carriageway.
Phil.
 
Hi Phil. Just had a look at the 1917 OS map and it seems to be the junction of Grove Lane and Oxhill Road. The tram lines seem to split along the dual carriageway. Viv.
 

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Hi Viv I think you have found the exact spot. When I look at the pic more closely, I can see the tram track on the other side of the road, and the overhead lines on that side. Phil.
 
At the junction of Freer Rd and Fentham Rd two houses had taken blast damage from WW2 bombing. The neighbours and the kids in the pic had probably got used to seeing bomb damage. The lady in that corner house had hung out her washing out even though her roof and others nearby were covered in debris .... carrying on as normal !
FreerRoad.jpg

The house is still there and the pic below shows signs of the repair work on the corner brickwork and gable wall.
Freernow.JPG
From https://goo.gl/maps/c1W962SWibA2
 
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I doubt the WW2 photo #1581 was used as propaganda, but it might easily have been. Shows true British grit. Or in the style of those popular posters you see around today (which were never actually used in WW2):
"keep calm and carry on" or even "keep calm and hang out the washing" or maybe "keep calm there's a building about to collapse behind you!"


Viv.
 
I see a thread and look at the forum's old pics and noticed when someone photographed a street corner pub how a little kid seems to get in pic. Look at the little one sitting on the step of the Geach Arms. Perhaps his mom and dad were in the pub for a drink or he was just out for daytime play in Summer Lane, or perhaps he lived at the pub.
The_Geach_Arms2C_Summer_Lane.jpg


and the little chap below, he's already in this thread and he's out shopping.
 
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A street scene in the decade of my youth so that's why I like it. It's Dale End from High Street in 1955 with people wandering across the road, cars edging through them, life seemed a bit slower then although it was a time when Britain designed and made fast jet aircraft and flew them at air displays. Parking was easy but it was 9 years before I bought my first car and that RAF office on the right reminds me that I was one year away from RAF National Service. Petrol was 4s 6p (22.5p) a gallon and the PM of the day said 'we had never had it so good' ... but an historic inflation calculator puts that equivalent to £5.51 a gallon today so not so different from today's price if I've got my litres and gallons correct ...
img749.jpg
 
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oldMohawk said:
I see a thread and look at the forum's old pics and noticed when someone photographed a street corner pub how a little kid seems to get in pic. Look at the little one sitting on the step of the Geach Arms. Perhaps his mom and dad were in the pub for a drink or he was just out for daytime play in Summer Lane, or perhaps he lived at the pub.
The_Geach_Arms2C_Summer_Lane.jpg


and the little chap below, he's already in this thread and he's out shopping.
Click to expand...


Love the Austin car in the centre. I believe it was called the A90 Atlantic. When Jeff Hall, the Blues & England footballer sadly died, very young, my cousin bought Jeff's A90 from the family.
 
Hi Oldmowhawk
thanks for the cracking picture of dear old dale end as it brought memories back home from my younger days
In manys ways ore than one
friday nights our uncle joe used to take us to jacy and see micky mouse cartoons even on saturday afternoons
and sunday mornings get up early and get the 39 bus to dale end and walk down through the alley onto bordesly street
and down to new cannal street to our gran and grands coffee shop spend the day there and walk there dog as
some times I Would walk up from Aston crosse city pasing costa green and the old fountain
on the bus of 39 it cost me a penny
And yes Moj times was relaxed nd people spoke to each other and felt relax said to say its a pity life was not like that today
 
Astonian said:
Hi Oldmowhawk
thanks for the cracking picture of dear old dale end as it brought memories back home from my younger days
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Hi Alan - I suppose we all have different thoughts when we look at the old pics. I look at them and see old bus stops where I waited for 'corporation' buses' or 'midland reds', and sometimes it was so foggy you could not see the other side of the road. Birmingham in the 1950's was still scarred and rather shabby from WW2 bombing but I was young and enjoyed such simple things as riding on the upstairs open balconies of the old trams. A nightly meeting place was the entrance to Snow Hill station, Sunday evenings at the Gaumont Cinema, all of it nothing like the bright shiny Birmingham city centre of today. If we really wanted to be posh we went in the 'American Bar' in the back of the Grand Hotel and bought one drink, but the staff were a bit 'snooty' and we felt out of place !

I spent many evenings of the fifties with crowds in a rather shabby building shown below. It did not need 'door staff' or 'bouncers', there was just an ex-army sergeant in his smart black uniform, one look from him and we all behaved !
Phil ...:)

 
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Yes parking was easier in those day but look at the Dale End picture and see the cars parked on bus stops on both sides of the road.
 
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