Recent content by Andy Foster

I used to pass the Wrights Ropes factory on the train on the way to school in the 1960s. You could always recognise it by the little clock turret. I never went there, but my father knew the managing director, Percy Shakespeare. My Dad was a Labour man and Percy Shakespeare, unusually for a...

I was brought up in Sutton and attended Town School, right by all the bus stops, from 1957 to 1963. In those days they were: 100 Birmingham - Erdington - Chester Road - Sutton - Mere Green - White Farm Road 101 Birmingham - Erdington - Chester Road - Sutton - Mere Green - Four Oaks church -...

Yes, I'd like to know where the galleon went. It was a good piece of sculpture, the bets bit of a very plain building. So if anyone does know...

Birmingham is indeed at a crossroads. The attitudes of Herbert Manzoni, the greatest disaster that ever hit this city, are back. "The whole place must be new, and it must look completely different...". Birmingham had a lot of history and still has some, though it's disappearing at a rate. It was...

Corporation Square, as it was, was the classiest 1960s development in the city. It was designed by (Sir) Frederick Gibberd, the architect of Liverpool Catholic Cathedral ('Paddy's Wigwam'), and Harlow New Town. Gibberd was trained at the Birmingham School of Architecture but this is his only...