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Trafalgar road moselely

I`ve only just realised that the smaller of the two girls is holding a cricket bat and not as I thought, a stick. The older girl is probably holding the ball and she went on to be a very good cricketer and lifelong Warwickshire fan spending many, many hours at Edgebaston. Morturn`s magic with the photo revealed so much more detail!
 
I will have to 'dig' in my paperwork but there is a Chantry Road History Association. Maybe you can Google it. I contacted them doing my birth search as I was in a Mother and Baby Home nearby. My birth mother lodged in Trafalgar Road. There is an entrance to a school and the Trafalgar pub on the corner. As people say the houses are enormous. They were halved and some halved again and some turned in to flats and re numbered and renumbered. One was bombed near where I was, and rebuilt as a substantial modern block of flats. A Court. And another new one was built but whether it replaced a house or was built in a garden I don't know. One of my Adoptive parents' friends once lived in a divided house there. They told me about the bombed house which was shored up with timbers for years. One day when redecorating they discovered a hidden staircase which led to a 2nd floor they didn't know about. Their children loved it I would have been spooked I think. I can't work out which was which either as I was trying to discern if my parents' friends had lived next door to my birth parents, who rented rooms or next door or further on. My birth parents had the ground floor and there were at least 6 flats in one half of that divided house.
The Chantry Rd Assocation unearthed who lived in the houses at that time in the road where I had been adopted from. A child I think had been working on a school project. And the Forum helped me and others.
 
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I will have to 'dig' in my paperwork but there is a Chantry Road History Association. Maybe you can Google it. I contacted them doing my birth search as I was in a Mother and Baby Home nearby. My birth mother lodged in Trafalgar Road. There is an entrance to a school and the Trafalgar pub on the corner. As people say the houses are enormous. They were halved and some halved again and some turned in to flats and re numbered and renumbered. One was bombed near where I was, and rebuilt as a substantial modern block of flats. A Court. And another new one was built but whether it replaced a house or was built in a garden I don't know. One of my Adoptive parents' friends once lived in a divided house there. They told me about the bombed house which was shored up with timbers for years. One day when redecorating they discovered a hidden staircase which led to a 2nd floor they didn't know about. Their children loved it I would have been spooked I think. I can't work out which was which either as I was trying to discern if my parents' friends had lived next door to my birth parents, who rented rooms or next door or further on. My birth parents had the ground floor and there were at least 6 flats in one half of that divided house.
The Chantry Rd Assocation unearthed who lived in the houses at that time in the road where I had been adopted from. A child I think had been working on a school project. And the Forum helped me and others.
Really enjoyed reading this. What a lot of info & history. Sadly "The Trafalgar" has been renamed "The Patrick Cavanagh". Not sure why but I can't help but feel another small piece of Moseley's history gone.
 
Really enjoyed reading this. What a lot of info & history. Sadly "The Trafalgar" has been renamed "The Patrick Cavanagh". Not sure why but I can't help but feel another small piece of Moseley's history gone.
Had I still been at work I might have known the answer as our Commissionare, (do they say that now?) drank may still drink in there. I can't remember why, but he discovered I was born in Moseley though I did not disclose why I was there. Oooh that's posh he said. Yowm posh Nico! When we went back exploring and researching, some houses in the tree lines streets were still as they were built, not turned into flats and massive. We parked near one where a little girl with a hair ribbon in her luminous long dark curls in a frilly dress was playing a grand piano in the window. It was like looking back in time.
 
Does anyone know why the house numbers (according to Google Maps) stop at 27 and the restart at 43? This is the site of Trafalgar Road park now, but according to my family research in the late 1800's my relatives lived at number 37 and had done for a few decades. Were a few houses bombed in WW2 perhaps? Another member of my family lived at Trafalgar Cottage, Trafalgar Rd, but I've no idea where that was.
 
Were a few houses bombed in WW2 perhaps?
The aerial view below was taken in 1946 and shows Trafalgar Rd running from Woodbridge Rd at the bottom of the view to the top where it turns left towards Alcester Rd. The view is not very high resolution but no houses appear to have been demolished by bombing in WW2.
TrafalgarRdBham1946.jpg

for comparison .... a similar aerial view of the area today.
Trafalgar Rd_2021_iOS.jpg
 
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Really enjoyed reading this. What a lot of info & history. Sadly "The Trafalgar" has been renamed "The Patrick Cavanagh". Not sure why but I can't help but feel another small piece of Moseley's history gone.
As I remember it, the Traf was getting a reputation for drugs (as were several other bars in Moseley) so they closed it down for a while. At least it's open again. Although all I saw in a brief visit before the virus happened was one bar (the one on Trafalgar Road), I don't think any of the older clientele were still about (none of them seemed old enough) and there seemed to be less of it.
 
The aerial view below was taken in 1946 and shows Trafalgar Rd running from Woodbridge Rd at the bottom of the view to the top where it turns left towards Alcester Rd. The view is not very high resolution but no houses appear to have been demolished by bombing in WW2.
View attachment 160138

for comparison .... a similar aerial view of the area today.
View attachment 160139
Thanks for the information and quick response (I only asked the question at 11pm last night!) So, if the houses were still there in 1946 I wonder how the land occupied by about 5 or 6 houses was acquired to become a small park? Upon further investigation It seems my ancestors lived at number 39, not 37, and another relative lived at Trafalgar Cottage, Trafalgar Road.
 
Hi Bicko, welcome to the forum. There are a number of possible expiations to your question about house numbering. Bombing in WWII could be a reason. Birmingham was heavily bombed in WWII.

Its looks like there were houses all the way along Trafalgar Road prior to the bus depot being built too.

This link to Side by Side map’s is a always a good resource for research.
Thanks for the quick response to my question. I’m wondering how they acquired the land for the park as they’d have had to knock down 5 or 6 houses and clear the site.
 
For information, the website link below shows that a man was injured at 56, Trafalgar Road during a heavy air raid on 3rd December 1940.

The above link appears to have gone offline so use the one below
 
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Thanks for the quick response to my question. I’m wondering how they acquired the land for the park as they’d have had to knock down 5 or 6 houses and clear the site.
Again, there are a number of possible explanations. A lot of the local houses were built and owned by private landlords and trusts. The Barber Trust was one social landlord as is the Bournville Trust.

Birmingham Council acquired a number of these houses from some of these trusts post WWII and had to do some significant modernisation to some. Others it was more cost effective to demolish them.
 
In the modern aerial view post#30 a small 'pocket park' can be seen to the right on the bend. At the start of the 1900s there were 4/5 houses there and they show on the 1946 aerial view. They were probably demolished later than 1960s.
 
Hi Bicko, welcome to the forum. There are a number of possible expiations to your question about house numbering. Bombing in WWII could be a reason. Birmingham was heavily bombed in WWII.

Its looks like there were houses all the way along Trafalgar Road prior to the bus depot being built too.

This link to Side by Side map’s is a always a good resource for research.
If it is like Parkhill around the corner, one was in a bad state, it was so big they demolished it and built Alexander House, names after a friend of my parents. One was shored up for years and years. Being so big they were divided an re numbered. This may have happened in Trafalgar Road.
 
Does anyone know why the house numbers (according to Google Maps) stop at 27 and the restart at 43? This is the site of Trafalgar Road park now, but according to my family research in the late 1800's my relatives lived at number 37 and had done for a few decades. Were a few houses bombed in WW2 perhaps? Another member of my family lived at Trafalgar Cottage, Trafalgar Rd, but I've no idea where that was.
1890s map - the red dot marks Trafalgar Cottage which is named. Looks as if it is just north of Harrison's Pleck on modern maps
1628512730761.png
 
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