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Castle Vale

  • Thread starter Thread starter harley
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I didn't live on Castle Vale but,in the late 80's a brand new Mobil petrol station was built opposite Castle Vale next to the Drome cafe and I was given it as my first appointment as a manager.Two memories of my time there are,on our commissioning day we opened up and allowed the first 100 customers to fill up for a penny a litre and we also employed a couple of scantily clad girls to serve them.Well,we had a queue right down the road as you can imagine,the police had to be called to keep them in check but it was a great day,very busy and good fun.The opposite of that was,one night Leeds United had been playing at the Villa and had lost heavily.Quite a lot of them stopped to fill up before they hit the motorway home.Well,you can imagine the mood they were in after losing and,unfortunately we were the target.Some of them urinated all over the forecourt and some of them broke branches off the trees at the back of us ,piled them up round the petrol pumps and set them on fire.You can imagine the panic,we called the fire brigade,who put it out pretty quickly but I was never so glad to go home that night.
 
Hi all.
first post so please excuse any mistakes. we were one of the first families to move to the vale think it was about 1963.
There were two distinct sides dependant on the builder, we lived on the bryant side nearest to kingsbury rd, sumburgh
croft to be exact. the otherside was stubbings, as a teenager it was a magic place to grow up lots of open areas not yet built on everywhere clean and fresh. BUT there were downsides no bus service no school had to travel to slade rd erdington (walk and bus) to school, no shops except corner shop in innsworth drive a little later only one pub
on the other side ofthe estate the skylark, but a great bunch of people the old community spirit emerged everybody looked out for each other as we were all in need of lifts and help with shopping i can honestly say i loved every minute
and have great memories ofmy time there Edd
 
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Hi, I moved on in 66 into Cosford Tower, as a 6 year old it was such an adventure. The whole place was a building site for years. My mum used to work in the builders canteen on Yatesbury avenue and I used to take my mates in for free jam doughnuts and wagon wheels. One of our past times was collecting the small ceramic tiles used on the Tower block walls as decoration. We had hundreds of them. I have many fond memories of growing up on the vale. Some not so good, like when my Dad had his car pinched and used in a robery of the milk depot up water Orton. When we got it back it was full of bottle tops and puke.
Regards, Eddie M
 
I have reinstated my photos on this thread as best I am able, but I'm not even sure they are the same photos. I hope it doesn't distract from the enjoyment of the thread.

Phil
 
I moved to 25 Neville Walk in the 60's. The place was a sea of mud. There was no bus service so everyone had a bit of a walk from the no. 28 bus stop at the entrance of the estate.
A single decker bus ran as soon as the main roads onto the estate were cleared and finished off. My family moved from Hearnfield Rd Shard End. Why on earth my parents decided to move to Castle Vale I will never know.
It was mid 60's and the Beatles were at the top, so was flower power. I had very long hair (I'm male and 64 now) which my old man dissapproved of. He went ballastic when I refused to get it cut. Hey! wish I still had it to get cut!!
There was a bloke the same age as I was and he lived across the roadway. There were a block of garages there at the time and his house was just behind them but he could see over them and into my bedroom window. Years later he admitted
that he thought I was a girl and that was why he was looking. Cheeky sod! All these years later me and Colin Palmer are still really good friends- my oldest friend in fact.

He took me to the Top Rank in Dale End and it was there that I met my future first wife. Its facinating how your life is guided by who you meet. Fate and destiny. Think back yourself and see just how your own life has been steered by who you have met. in your past.

Any road up, (as my grandmother used to say) back to Castle Vale days; At the time it was exciting to watch all the people moving in. I was 18 and like my friend Colin, we were on the lookout for any fresh Totty that we could get to know.

We used to walk to the Tyburn Pub or nip into the Skylark just round the corner. Very handy. I remember clearly going in there on the first day of decimalization and ordering a pint of Brew (I still drink it) It cost 13p!
When I married I moved to Solihull where I worked. I now live in Moseley. I have just had a look at the Vale on Google Street view and all I can say (and Im sorry) what dump its become. At least in the early days people were new to the place. It was a new beginning for us all in a way. Eventually the bad apples move in and make themselves known by spreading their rot amongst everyone else. For years the useless council had this notion that you could dilute the bad apples with the good. What rubbish. The bad apples should always be left to rot together in a big barrel of slime.

They were good times then.
 
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In the early eighties I bought a house at the front of Castle Vale. The address was RAF Dwellings, as the houses I am told were for officers of the RAF in past times. Nice big and spacious, but we moved after about 18 months, The 80's were bad times, crime was rife. I remember walking past burned out cars on the way to work. Some poor lad was stabbed to death in the block of flats just next to us, so I thought enough is enough. Nice to see it is a different place these days.
 
Around 1962/63 our school (Cherrywood in Bordesley Green) used Castle Vale as our sports field. We went by bus and went in from Chester Road. We used to get changed in old huts.
 
As most of the roads on the Vale had aircraft connections i lived in Albert Shaw House ..14th floor..in the early 70`s can anyone tell me what connection Albert Shaw had with the Vale
 
I lived in Stornoway Road (millionares row as it was known on the vale) and didn't see much trouble basically 1985-90, and there again where does Stornoway come into the equation.
 
I shall have to pass on Albert Shaw but Stornoway was an RAF base during WW2. Now a civil airport.
 
dippy101 said:
I have had a quick look around, ask of the neighbours and rode my pushbike over there earlier on and it turns out there is some remnance of the hangars left down the very far end of the estate, by the nature reserve which leads off farnborough road. Also i have been told of a cycle path right next to a small brook that leads to an old factory platform used during the war/ industry fair years so i shall have a look and take some pictures tomorrow.

I must say that i take great interest in local history. I am 26 and i know about the estate now but i want to know about its past because i hear all these horror stories and looking out of my window now i cannot imagine it.
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Im 33, grew up on the parkfields and we NEVER! went near the vale ever. everytime we went passed it something happened from being chased by gangs to being mugged, one of the few area's of Birmingham I truly loathe.
 
I've just had a look at the 1980 utube clip. What a load of bolloney! Pity they didn't just show the stinking stair-wells and the stolen cars and the people generally that lived there at the time.(and probably still do).
The planners can design to their hearts content but you cannot design the low-life that move in.
 
The old name for Castle Vale was Berwood. The moat and Berwood Hall, stood until the 1930s. In its time Berwood has belonged to the Arden family, who gave it to the abbey of St. Mary de Pratis in 1160. After receiving the gift of land, the abbey decided to charge the Arden family, who still lived on the land rent. During the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536, Thomas Arden bought back the land from Henry VIII. After Edward Arden was hanged for treason, the Crown confiscated the land and gave it to Edward Darcy. When Darcy heard of a court case brought by the son of Edward Arden to reclaim half of Berwood, Darcy deforested the area, leaving a swampy land unfit for farming. In 1881, the Bagot family, who owned Berwood, as well as Pype Hayes and who lived at Pype Hayes Hall sold much of the land to the Birmingham Tame and Rea Drainage Board, which used the land to spread the sewage of Birmingham. That might explain why my roses grow so well. By 1909, Berwood had become the Berwood Playing fields, and it was in that year that a local mechanic assembled a flying machine in the fields and flew it at a height of 50 ft, making it the first ever flight in Birmingham, and beginning Berwood's use as an aerodrome.
 
chrisange said:
I lived on the vale in the early 70's, Meteor House, Filton Croft. I worked at the Trees Pub just down from our block. it was also my schools playing field before they built the estate.
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My nan and Grandad lived right next to The Trees pub. 97 Innsworth Drive. The old bungalows, they are gone now.
 
I also lived on the Castle Vale Estate from about 1968-1978. I went to Castle Vale Comp and know most of the pubs that have been mentioned. I also went to Chivenor Primary school on the vale. I was great back then as our house was brand new and it felt like luxuary compared to where we had lived. At the comp we had house teams named after the planes used in the war. I was in the gladiator team and my sister was in the spitfire team the third was known as hurricane. I also used to go to the Astral club (more of a youth after school hang out). The big tower block of flats opposite where we lived (Concorde Tower) as since been pulled down as I remember. I loved the vale back then but have been away for so long so not sure what it is like now.
 
I've had quite a bit to do with the 'Vale one way or another. I remember seeing it being built in the 60's. I worked on the Railway lines (based at Castle Bromwich 'Old' Station, now demolished and under the widened Chester Rd), we used to reach the track by driving over the rubbish strew Airport runways that BCC were covering up prior to remodelling. Through the 70's. I used to go to a Monday night 'DJ instead of a jukebox' session in the Albatross, and went out with a few girls off the estate. I still see many of my friends off the Vale.
Now ... as to its state, as a Police Officer in the late 70's until the late 80's, I often ended up on the Vale from Warwickshire, as the Vale became the haunt of serial car thieves, this ruined the place for many who had moved in out of poor housing stock in B'ham. Within a few years, it had become very run down. I joined the Ambulance Service in the late 80's and, once more worked on & around the Vale. It was awful. You daren't park under the Tower blocks as sharpened pieces of concrete reinforcing rods would be dropped on your vehicle. There was a serious Drugs problem, and violence was rife, esp against the elderly.
When the HAT took over, they worked a miracle. The place now is a lot better than it ever was.

There is a very good book out that traces the history of the area in pictures, from its time as a sewage farm up to the present day.
 
I lived on the Castle Vale for 8yrs and a barmaid at the trees in the 1980s..i live in Erdington now..not far away
Sheila
 
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I think Castle Vale has been much derided over the years, mainly by folks who knew only of it by reputation, having lived there between 1967-1996, let me give a positive spin. Most folks who ended up there mid to late sixties did so due to the process of inner city slum clearance, so the environment they came from in housing terms (but not necessarily sense of the community) was probably worse than the new urban sprawl, but this sprawl was located (on three sides) by open countryside and unlike the inner city, a kid could jump on their bicycle and within 5 minutes be in the middle of nowhere. Likewise within the boarders of the square mile of the Vale it's self, green open space was at premium, if folks could see past the concrete, in terms of position within the natural environment, folks could have been considered lucky.
For all the changes made to the housing stock by the HAT, when I drive through the vale now, o.k the towers have gone, but so has all the green space, swallowed by the new housing, the Park Lane fields just across the railway are now an industrial complex, meaning that a once little oasis of urban jungle, is now a faceless residential sprawl, yes even with rose coloured specs, one cannot deny the social problems 5000 people crammed into one high density square mile could create, but it was good to look outwards, not inwards.
 
We lived on castle vale 1974 - 2002 in st athans croft 2 years then yatesbury avenue opposite the residents club loved every minute on there,really miss the place still have friends on there, left because of work move.
 
SNOWY ? ... There was a young lad who was a ? Milkman ? off the Vale ... is that you? If so, how does the name Knoxy McKay sound to you?

Pete R ... (750 Norton - The Albatross, Monday nights with Maggie McKay).
 
Hi pete, sorry mate my names Brian and iam a plumber my local was the residents club and the lancaster before it became sainsburys regards Brian
 
My brother and sister in law lived in Castle Vale when it was first built. They lived in Stornoway Road for a long time. My step mother lived in a flat on Yatesbury Avenue at the same time, I think it was Kemble Tower, possibly no longer there.
I remember the school which was called Pegasus too.
 
Good Morning maggs, what was your brothers surname?, I lived in two properties on Castle Vale between 1967 and 1996, both off Stornoway Road. Kemble Tower and the rest of the centre eight have long gone, as a result of the Housing Action Trusts referb, an organisation that cost us personally a lot of money and grief, but that is another story.
 
i wonder if anyone remembers the harris family...used to have a mate named chad harris late 60s early 70s..i can see the house and the road/grove or street but just at the min i cant recall the name of it...

lyn
 
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