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Cleveland Tower, Holloway Head

  • Thread starter Thread starter Frantic
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Frantic

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Can someone tell me if the towers are still at Holloway Head. I used to live in 'Cleveland Tower', I can't remember the name of the other one. We were some of the first people to occupy the towers and our flat was 'Brand New'. We returned some years later to see if our neighbours were still there, and the mess was disgusting. They were so smart and clean when we lived there on the 30th floor, and the view was fantastic.
 
From the 80's 90's our Ma lived at the next one down from the top of Cleveland Tower, Noele Gordon lived on the top for a brief time, other Tower is Clysdale but spelling might be wrong as I never went over to check,towers are still their
 
never knew you lived there for a bit,i worked on both cleveland and clydesdale when they were racing each other to see who topped out first,it must have been 63,64 as i was still on my first job,on the topping out day the irish lads thought it was hilarious to stick me in the crane bucket and leave me in mid air while they had a tot,they did the same when they topped out the dental hospital and hung me out over steelhouse lane,i thumped this huge paddy so hard i almost broke my arm and guess what,he never budged an inch,i remember thinking just before the pain,that was a silly thing to do.health and safety ,never heard of it then
 
Graham, Noel Gordon lived in the flat directly above us (foul mouthed so-and-so)
We hadn't long been married, and were living in a flat in Heathfield Rd when we heard that the council was having trouble renting out the flats, so we jumped in. We were there for about a year and then I joined the police and they wanted me to live in a 'Police house' in Harborne, but I must say, I enjoyed living there. We just walked out of the front door and we were in the middle of town. When we used to go up to Wales, we just went round the corner onto the expressway, an we were off...no traffic jams....(then).
I thought that they might have knocked them down by now as buildings in brum don't seem to have much longevity these days.
Thanks to all for the info.
 
I had just started working for Marley Tile back then when the sentinels were being built. Marley produced roof tiles and floor tiles or thermoplastics as they were known. The Birmingham branch of Marley was run out of Saltley and everyone of those 32 storeys had floor tiles laid in each flat, an enormous job which I remember a floor tiler named Albert Sherriff carried out along with his son Derek. He would get on site around 4am carry up his boxes of tiles and lay all day, every day, day after day. He probably made good money though. There was also the internal staircase hand rail to the stairs to do. That was also PVC so Marley did that too. I remember being shown how that was done and helping an Irish guy maybe Dave who showed me how that was fixed onto the flat metal rail. It had to be dropped in a hot bath of boiling water to soften the PVC which was then wrapped around the flat top- burning fingers. They were famous blocks of flats and part of Birmingham Councils answer to housing problems. Not enough land - build upwards.
 
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