Balsall Heath
I lived in Upper Cox Street. I had a part-time job as errand boy at the Coop Fish, Fruit and Greengrocery (Branch 66) on the corner with Balsall Heath Road, when I was at school . In the excellent 'The Co-op in Birmingham' there is a picture of the shop, wrongly captioned as Branch 26. The Luxor cinema was in Balsall Heath Road, on the side of the culvert controlling the River Rea. Pinnicks sold furnishings on the Longmore Street corner, The Wallace was on another corner and a Bank on one side of the Cox St West corner. This was an incredibly congested few square yards, with Jakemans Walk and Clevedon Road all more or less meeting with those other roads I mentioned. There was an old, filled-in air raid shelter on the Clevedon Road bend opposite Calthorpe Park, which we kids attemted to explore from time to time.
The Rea had been culverted in the late 1800's, because it could spread over its broad floodplain at times of heavy rain. The original course ran where parts of Cheddar Road were later built. The area then occupied by the Black Patch had previoulsy been very swampy and I suspect the cinders were a drainage medium. Not many Black Patch footballers emerged unscathed! The culvert ran behind Longmore Street, and that trickle of a river was tranformed into a deep,raging torrent by heavy rain. The Rea was once the County Boundary between Warwickshire and Worcestershire and still has some boundary status, separating Edgbaston and Balsall Heath. Longmore Street buzzed with activity with dozens of shops and pubs.
Calthorpe Park had a statue or two, one was Robert Peel, Birmingham MP and founder of the modern Police Force. Bobby now resides at the Police Training Establishment on the Pershore Road. Under Calthorpe Park runs the Elan Valley water pipeline; note the gap in the houses in Edward Road and the inspect man holes in the park before the pipeline travels under the middle of the old Varna Road, famous for prostitution in the 1950s and 60s, actually in Edgbaston but always 'attributed' to Balsall Heath.