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Brookvale Park & Witton Lakes

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rod
  • Start date Start date
On my nostalgia tour, I went from Streetly Road to Slade Road, up Kings Road, along Queens Road (my grandmother used to live at no20), and down Mere Road to Brookvale Park. All those swans, is it a recognised swannery or just pure chance that there are so many there?
Bob
 
#73 - Brookvale Park - Feeding Swans.
Larger version of previous Post #258 (My Post #55) and Post 268.
Highlights more of the background on far side of Park.
#73 - Brookvale park - Feeding Swans.jpg

#74 - Brookvale Park - Little Girl.
Appears to be the same as little girl in Post #245 (My post #42 & 43) and Post #289 (My post #58)
#74 - Brookvale Park - 1917 little Girl.jpg
 
yes I lived in Dovedale rd. born in 1951 and left in 69 when got married my name was Hillier the family had lived there a few years went round there the other day for look around oh how it has changed.
 
Very happy memories of Brook Vale Park and Witton Lakes.
But when researching a few years back I was deeply saddened by the sight of the vandalism and conditions of both of them.
A park bench had been partly burnt
by mindless vandals.
And the total destructions of both the boat houses. The one in Brook Vale was very special to us.
Birdy
 
#75 - Brookvale Park - Rustic Bridge - Children's Corner - c1912.
#75 Brookvale Park - Rustic Bridge - c1912.jpg

#76 - Brookvale Park - Rustic Fence - Children's Corner.
#76 Brookvale Park - c1912.jpg

#77 - Brookvale Park- Rustic Bridge in Foreground - Brick built bridge behind - George Road to the left.
#77 Brookvale Park - The Bridge.jpg
 
I were nowt but a nipper when i walked across the lake in Brookvale park. It was of course frozen, & i remember like it was yesterday the freezing fog that descended when i was half way across. Luckily i was just a skinny runt otherwise............ Years later as a teenager i met a Hungarian refugee in the bandstand above the boathouse. I think he escaped from the Hungarian uprising in `57? I remember he said he didn`t like English ciggies as they wern`t strong enough! I told him to try Capstan full strength.
 
Fascinating to look through these pictures. I've lived on the Brookvale for 41 years and have spent many a childhood down the park. I've sailed on the lake too. I remember the old boathouse before it was burned down. I used to paddle in the stream down at the George Rd end too, which used to be called Children's corner.

Curious though. Someone in one of the comments mentioned a story about GI drowning in the lake during the war perhaps? Did the area of Brookvale house US troops during the war?
 
Only just found this thread. What happy memories it brings at the age of 88. Born in Abbey Road [other end of George Road from Marsh Hill and next to Rosemary and St. Thomas Roads] So I spent childhood and later, going to Brookvale park catching tiddlers and sailing my yacht as I got older. I remember that before the war the lake froze so much people were skating on it and there were several braziers on the ice for people to warm themselves. During the war, when a bomb had hit a water mains and our water supply was cut off, my brother and I used to take buckets to get water from a standpipe in the park. As said by others, sadly there were a number drowned having been caught up in the weeds. Also, during the war all the iron railings were removed along with others from many other places and buildings to help the war effort. My nan lived in lodgings in George Road [if I remember right at 155] They were lovely large houses.
Thanks to all who have posted pictures. One in particular jolted my memory when I saw the overflow hole at the end near the bandstand. It always scared me to death as the water poured down it.
 
This image must be around the 1910/20 period. Nice scene of a family enjoying the park. Unusual wooden structure to the right - an earlier post says it’s a boathouse, but above it must be some sort of a viewing platform or bandstand ? Viv.

03DB72E7-604F-4662-8484-5A9247D5487A.jpeg
 
Pedrocut said:
Witton Lakes c1970 ?

View attachment 148828
Click to expand...
From 1963 to 1974 I lived in one of the four-storey maisonettes in Faulkner's Farm Drive, overlooking the Lakes, where friends and I spent endless summer and weekend hours playing 'tracking' and generally enjoying our young selves. Sundays were dedicated to family walks and also to speedboat displays on the bigger of the two lakes. As a young teenager crazy on tennis, friends and I would spend a lot of time on the grass courts at the end of Witton Lakes (where it met Marsh lane). On long summer evenings we would stay out until ten o'clock - unthinkable these days - and I too remember girls from school knocking on doors and asking if they could take the householder's baby for a walk - again, unthinkable in our hypervigilant times. Brookvale Park was unchartered territory for us and we ventured there rarely. I haven't walked round Witton Lakes for a few decades, now; my parents lived in Huntingdon House (the aforementioned flats on Faulkner's Farm Drive) until 1984, when they bought a house in Turfpits Lane. I left Birmingham in 1974, never to live there again. I did, however, visit family regularly, and was increasingly saddened by how the area deteriorated over the years. My father died in 2014 and although I still have family in Birmingham, visits there are confined to funerals, unfortunately. I don't really enjoy going there these days, if I'm honest, because it's never as I knew it as a kid. But then nothing ever is, I guess. Even nostalgia isn't what it used to be... ;-)
 
Reminds me of the times I sailed my yacht on Brookvale Park and it got stuck on the island and i had to wait and wait and wait until someone in a boat retrieved it for me. Got fed up so started going to Salford Park instead
 
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