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Wake Green Road
- Thread starter Vivienne14
- Start date
superdad3
master brummie
Just came across this fascinating postcard for sale on ebay which set me off thinking as it does. The building looks Georgian perhaps and the postcard was postmarked in 1903. The building is long gone.
If you look carefully above the roof of the building you can see a cupola with a weather vane on it and a "tower" to the left of it. My wife recognised it straight away; "It's Gracie Hall!" She's right as well. Here's a street view from Wake Green Rd & you can just see the cupola/tower.
This is another Moseley building I'd like to research further when time allows but this is what I know at present:
1893: Designed by John Bowen & Son, the famous Birmingham architects. Called the Dingle.
1914: Used as an Auxilary Hospital.
1932: Dingle Nursing Co-operation & Nursing Home [from at least 1927 & continuing after WW2 [thanks Mike Gee etc]
1960s: Student accommodation for Aston University. Renamed Gracie Hall [after Sir James Gracie]
2021: ??
A c1905 view of WGRd. Viv.
A house in Wake Green Road with an important role during the 1947 fuel crisis (coal shortage) and it's impact upon electricity supplies.
Source: British Newspaper Archive
Source: British Newspaper Archive
BrummieGeoff
Sparkhill Lad
An earlier photo of 53 Wake Green Road .... I think when it was a residence called The Grange.
53 Wake Green Road, known as “The Grange’ was the home of Barry Jackson (later Sir Barry Jackson) the noted Director of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. He is recorded as living there (with his widowed mother and others, including servants) in the 1911 census, when he was 32. He was similarly recorded in the 1921 census. On each occasion the name of his partner, Harry Scott-Sunderland, film and theatre actor, is recorded as a ‘visitor’. Sir Barry was later one of the founders of the Malvern Festival.
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The house in the photo posted by Vivienne on 24.1.21(near the start of this thread) appears to be ‘Charlton Lodge’ on the site of what is now 40 Wake Green Road (a Grade II Listed Building) according to a 1903 plan of the Wake Green Estate. (See photo). ‘The Dingle’, later the James Gracie Centre and now private flats is not shown on the plan but is on the opposite side of Cotton Lane.
