Growing up in Streetly in the 60's

[Anglia1967]

Great story and definitely not too long M

Sattherwaites Puzzle

 

[Richard Dye]

Lots of happy memories living in Streetly as a boy in the 1960's. I lived in one of the large houses on Chester Road North before what is now a large traffic island at the junction of Queslett Road and Chester Road North. Spent hours and hours in Sutton Park. During the summer holidays a group of us would walk along the railway line from Streetly station into the park and collect pieces of coal along the line, then start a coal fire in the fire grate inside little huts that used to line the track- making our own toast. The smoke would eventually attract the attention of one of the Parkies on his bike and we would all scatter in fear of our lives.
The family Doctor was an old lady called Doctor Reeves who was absolutely marvellous both in her manner and her ability to go straight to the problem. Her surgery was on Chester Road just before the Hardwick Arms Pub. Next Door was the Dentist Mr Stammers, a smashing chap but his idea of oral education was to drill for hours without pain relieve. I used to go every six months but I knew it would be a visit to the house of pain.
I used to have a paper round at Slims , the rounds were very long and the pay very poor compared to other News Agents. We had words one day about this and I left shortly afterwards.
My Father was cremated at Streetly Crematorium and the funeral reception was held at the Hardwick Arms Pub- didn't recognise the place when I walked in. My early memories was of the bar,lounge and then a swish eating area at one end, great atmosphere. The re-vamp was just one huge room with plain decoration and no atmosphere at all.
The Royal Sutton Coldfield Golf Club was situated on Thornhill Road just before Streetly Village and the course was inside the park itself. Some of the fairways were very long and if you waited long enough the balls would fly off in all directions. I spent many a long hour collecting lost balls and selling the undamaged balls back to the club shop for a few pennies.
My Aunty was very friendly with the Wife of Colonel Leach who ran a riding stables in Manor Road . I had a part time Saturday job mucking out the stables and polishing the leather work with saddle soap. I think Colonel Leach thought I was one of those strange boys from the village who did not want to ride a horse.
I could rattle on for hours, Streetly was a great place to live during the 1960's and it's true, if you have happy memories of a particular place you should never go back at a later date.
Best wishes, Mike.

Great stories Mike, brought back a lot of memories of that area!

 

[Anglia1967]

Thanks for your interest and reply, I have plenty more memories to share about Growing up in Streetly with Sutton Park and Barr Beacon on our doorstep.

 

[Anglia1967]

I spent quite a lot of time at the youth club on Foley Rd East in the early 60's......I was starting to realise that girls weren't always soppy and giggly! I seem to remember Jimmy Savile coming to open the newly expanded building around that time. Ian

Thanks for that, Ian - a wonderful link and so useful for many other purposes as well. It proves again the location of that ammunition site. I always understood it to be a testing area but its name, "Factory", and the extent of the buildings shown on the map, suggest that it was something more than that. Perhaps a facility for shell or cartridge filling or something like that, better carried out in a thinly populated area than at the mother factory, Kynoch, at Witton. That map predates all the late 1920s-early 1930s ribbon development along the Chester Road, including that on the side of the road where the ammunition factory was sited.

It's a bit surprising that the place wasn't resurrected in any way during WW2 but I am fairly certain it wasn't. I overlooked it in the distance from my bedroom window and am sure would have known about it. (During this time there was a regular rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire but this was in the distance and I always assumed it came from the Kynoch factory some miles away).

The map also proves that my VE Day bonfire, Wendy's Buccaneer pub and, later, Old Boy's home were all built on a field belong to Manorial Farm. The semi-derelict buildings of the latter seemed to linger for a long time. Can't remember the name of the farmer.

Sorry, Wendy, your Youth Club experiences are FAR too recent for me!

Chris

Spent a Quite a few lunch times and evenings in the Buccaneer Pub, under the watchfull eye of Mrs White ,the landlady, who ran the pub with her husband, I left my keys on the table one night, went back at 1.00am and she told me to come back the next day. Luckily for me her husband passed them through a window for me, Other wise i would have been doing a bit of outdoor sleeping! They later moved to the Halfway house in Mere Green if my memory serves me correctly.