This photo has been in Carl's magazine, but not previously on the forum. It shows two houses, 90 Balsall Heath Road and 28 Princess Road. Although Balsall Heath Road is a much older road, dating from 1829, these houses are somewhat younger,being built in the late 1870s.
No. 90 (then 67 before renumbering) was first occupied by Henry Ashton, shortly after by his daughter, Marie, and then by Edward Philemon Timmins, a mechanical engineer, which in those days meant someone of high status. For about seven years around 1900 the building was the home and workplace of William Johns, Professor of Music. At that time this description meant only that he was a music teacher, in this case of the piano, not someone with a university post. He was the late-born son of the licensee of the White Swan in Islington Row, who left his wife well enough off to enable William to pursue his profession first in Islington Row, then here and finally opposite the Queen's Hospital (later the Accident Hospital) in Bath Row. From the late 1920s till 1960 it was occupied by the Whiles family, who had a business in Caroline Street, but after that the occupants of the house changed almost yearly, and, despite the dereliction, it can still be seen that once it was a desirable residence.
The attached 28 Princess Road was first occupied by William Picton. He was a partner with his father Charles and brother Charles, in the firm of Picton & Sons, canal carriers, coal merchants and wharfingers, with bases at Birmingham Wharf, Monmore Green in Wolverhampton and at Crescent Wharf, off Cambridge Street in Birmingham. The company had been going from the 1860s and the main trade seems to have been cargoes from Wolverhampton to Birmingham and around that area. In 1882 the partnership was dissolved and George seems to have carried on the business himself, adding deliveries by road to what was then called Picton & Co. The company was prosecuted several times for cruelty to the horses pulling the delivery carts, though this would have been more the fault of his employees than him and seems not uncommon at the time though often brought to light by the efforts of the RSPCA, which was active even then. The company continued until WW2, but George moved house in the mid-1880s to a larger house in Pershore Road near the cricket ground, where he remained till his death.
George was followed by Henry Jones, a button maker with a factory in the city, married to Rebecca. Henry died soon after and Rebecca went to live with her father, a retired pub landlord, six doors away at 80 Balsall Heath Road. By 1895 it had been rented out to Thomas Hunter, a manager at a wine merchant’s in his late 50s, who lived there for about seven years. For a short time it was divided into apartments, but by 1908 Rebecca was again living there. In 1915, at 59, she married again to a 68 year old estate agent, James Haslam. However, for whatever reason, he remains living at his previous home, 34 Beaconsfield Road, until his death in 1930, while Rebecca stays at Princess Road till her death in 1940. Again the house, even just before demolition, can be seen to have been an impressive building.
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It was, without doubt a charming building and a shame it had to go. I guess it got in the way of those with expansionist ideas.
