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Franchise St

J

jonsyl

proper brummie kid
Re: information on street

Hi Mikejee


I see on site that you are very good at finding old maps and street names I am trying to find a place called Kensigton Gardens somewhere of Franchise Street Perry Barr where the UCE is now any help would be most welcome
 
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Re: information on street

Afraid the only Kensington Gardens I can find are off Balsall Heath Road, the other side of town
 
Re: information on street

jonsyl said:
hi Mikejee


i see on site that you are very good at finding old maps and street names I am trying to find a place called Kensigton Gardens somewhere of Franchsie Street Perry Barr where the UCE is now any help would be most welcome
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Looking at 'Britain From Above', a photo showing Perry Barr Stadium in 1937, also shows Franchise St. It does look to be a residential area. However, I too cannot tie down Kensington Gdns, BUT, have found an article on 'Perry Barr and Beyond' describing the untimely demise of an 11yo boy:- "the victim being a boy named Wallace Wellington Green, aged 11
of 1, Kensington Gardens, Franchise Street, Perry Barr."

There are a number of historical maps on www.old-maps.co.uk - search for Birchfield, not Perry Barr. All I can identify is Franchise St and the building layouts. I would suspect that Kensington Gdns was a row of houses between Franchise St and the railway, at the Wellhead lane end of Franchise St.Anyone have any larger scale maps of Birchfield?
 
brummy-lad said:
Looking at streetview the frontage is certainly part of the hospital but the main school isn't
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well ive learnt something new than john as i had always believed these frontages are the gate house to the IMI factory wellhead lane i never dreamt they were part of the old hospital

lyn
 

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john yes it is the entrance to the new school but when i read your post 7 i thought you meant the white buildings was the entrance to the old hospital and so part of the hospital...sorry i read you wrong.. :rolleyes: :D

lyn
 
No you didn't read me wrong Lyn, I was going on this 1950s map which clearly shows the gatehouse with entry and exit (same footprint as the current buildings) and the building marked as 'Hospital'.
 

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Kynoch's works which became IMI has been demolished and Eden Boy's School occupies part of the site since about 2016. The gatehouses were listed and have been preserved. When I started work at Birmingham Poly staff and students could use the medical facilities at IMI as they had nurses and a doctor in attendance at the works. Some of the IMI directors were on the board of Polytechnic governors so enabled this arrangement.

The IMI site was vast and in the 1950s they wouldn't have labelled the place an ammunition works. I think that the gatehouses are the last surviving remnants of Kynoch / IMI.

Incidentally in about 1990 a Poly staff member with a geiger counter walked round some accessible parts of IMI and got a reading. He told me that the early work on the atomic bomb was done there by scientists from Birmingham University under the cover name of the Tube Alloys project. This was in the early years of the war, before production of uranium was switched to the Manhattan project in the USA. We can find out more about Tube Alloys these days, but I don't think there's a blue plaque.
 
hi john and stokkie...must apologise for being a sandwich short of a picnic :D but were the gate houses built for the hospital or where they built for kynochs/IMI ? can we date them ?

lyn
 
Astoness said:
hi john and stokkie...must apologise for being a sandwich short of a picnic :D but were the gate houses built for the hospital or where they built for kynochs/IMI ? can we date them ?

lyn
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Hi Lyn,
Gatehouses built for Kynochs/IMI - the works hospital was inside the site and a small building compared to the entire works. They had a fire brigade as well.

Here's the listing description linked to by Brummielad above: "The Gatehouse Buildings at the former IMI works, of 1915 by William Haywood, are listed at grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architectural interest: the buildings are a strong Beaux Arts composition and provided an impressive public face to the site; * Historic interest: they are related to the site of major arms manufacture during the First World War, and are designed by a noted practice later known as Buckland and Haywood; * Level of survival: despite some loss of fabric and minor alteration, the buildings remain substantially intact."

Derek
 
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thanks derek all cleared up...i must say i am impressed with the way the gate house has been preserved...i had to walk past it on a regular basis when it was in a bad state and often wondered if it would be demolished..

lyn
 
Astoness said:
thanks derek all cleared up...i must say i am impressed with the way the gate house has been preserved...i had to walk past it on a regular basis when it was in a bad state and often wondered if it would be demolished..

lyn
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I agree Lyn, it is a quality building and part of our industrial and military past. Derek
 
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