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Heaton St Hockley

great phil...icknield st school sandwiched between heaton and icknield streets hockley hill far right.think i can see the awnings of some of the shops on lodge road...looking at that area now it really is hard to believe it was such a hive of activity i was down that way again the other day checking up on 2 or 3 buildings..area totally wrecked now...just glad i can remember it as it was..

lyn
 
Hi Lyn, I've just had a look on Streetview and the school buildings are still there and the shops on the corner of Lodge Rd but somehow it just looks like a place one would simply pass through. A larger view of that whole area is on https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/eaw013575?x=405773&y=288362&extent=1000&ref=13
and if you register (easy process) you can zoom in on it.
Phil
ps ... sorry Lyn, just noticed you are already on it !
 
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carolina said:
We called it All Saints School annexe. This is where we had our coronation street party from Park Road. We went there as through our back yard we could get into Park Road so we had the best of two worlds Ford Street and Park Road.View attachment 113396
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Great pic Carolina (Who could have known you were destined to lose your prefect status 9(?) years later!) Many wore fancy dress for that party, I suffered at the hands of my mother and a much older female cousin who dressed me up in a Grenadier Guard's uniform complete with dodgy bearskin (brass toilet-pull chain chin strap) but that wasn't an end to the insult - when they first purchased the uniform somehow they managed to buy a female version - what was that all about? There is only one female in the entire universe who wears a female Grenadier Guard's uniform, their Commander-in-Chief, The Queen. Maybe my mother wasn't telling me something.
Luckily no photos of me wearing the uniform have survived - for sure, they would have been potential blackmail material.
I had relatives who lived at the station end of Park Road, a few doors away from the Gt Western Pub.
Looks like oldMohawk's aerial shot has left me nowhere to go with the St Simon's Mission thing, the shot's dated 1948, only a year before I was born so I must have known about it, wait! I've just found another get out of jail card - what if I was taken to a coronation party at that hall? It's highly likely as it was the nearest establishment of its type to my house, I would have bee forced to wear the Guard's uniform, was probably traumatised and blacked out the whole memory.

Regards,
Peg.
PS, sorry to bring up the prefect thing again.
 
Hi Folks, how's this for irony? My father, a South Wales Coal Miner, wanted to escape the pit so in his early twenties he moved to Birmingham (circa 1940), where he had heard the streets were paved with gold. This was as brave move as folk in his home town seldom strayed more than a mile or two from their birthplace. On arrival in Birmingham the only work he could find was down the pit at Hampstead Colliery! He did get work in a metal rolling mill (Earl Bourne) where he stayed for many years.
The irony is, he had 3 brothers who stayed put and all ended up with their own substantial properties and cars, my father never drove and died penniless.
The moral: When searching for your fortune take care you are not moving away from it.
Ah well! That's life.

Peg.
 
Rabones - vital to the economy of the area and makers of world-class tools, my vivid memories: hearing Worker's Playtime on the factory radio as I walked past the factory and a curious loud ratling noise that could be heard occasionally from a large tube (like ducting) dropping vertically down the side of the factory building from top to bottom, probably scrap wood - good quality hardwood made up a large proportion of the tools.

Peg.
 
Hi Folks, any holiday memories? from age 0 to maybe 13 (I'm not prepared to admit I may have been older) annual summer holiday spent in a caravan at Brean Down, just south of Weston-super-mare, nearest major resort to Birmingham. Generally 2 weeks (messed booking up one year: then 1 week and another we missed altogether), my father's logic - going for 2 week gave us a chance of some good weather. Brean seemed to have micro-climate - some dreadful storms even in July/August, that Bristol Channel can be pretty wild, but we did have some good times. Brean Down Hotel (changed to Brean Down Inn when they stopped pr0viding accommodation) was the nearest hostelry (I think it is still there) but my father favoured the Berrow Hotel, a bus ride away near Burnham-on-Sea.
Caravan site after caravan site as far as the eye could see apart from Pontin's Holiday Camp which was built later. Our site had pretty basic facilities in the early days - the toilet was a shed about 3 fields away, a dot on the horizon, and water was obtained from a tap in the middle of the field.
Ah! happy Days.

Peg.
 
Radiorails said:
I think the thread .Birmingham on Sea' has many postings as that area of North Somerset seemed to be Brummie favourite.

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/birmingham-on-sea.14259/
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Hi Alan, thanks for that - wow what a high number of postings! It seems economy of W-S-M based on Brummies, I've tried to post on the thread but somehow I'm logged out and when I try to log-in it wont let me - it seems my firewall doesn't like the cookies the site is trying to implant, not the first time I've had this problem with the Forum, previously it corrected itself after a few attempts.
Ah well! Not the end of the world!
Regards,
Peg.
 
The Grand Heaton Street and The Flat Tour of The 50s.
Hi Folks, You are invited to take a trip with me down Memory Lane, tour details attached, I've done this as attachments to avoid taking up too much main page space.
Regards,
Peg.
Heaton St Guided Tour..jpg Heaton St Guided Tour Part 2.jpg
 
Well the only hill I can think of would be Lodge Road so I can only think he ran off out by All Saints and down the road into the shop.
 
carolina said:
Well the only hill I can think of would be Lodge Road so I can only think he ran off out by All Saints and down the road into the shop.
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Hi Carolina, I've just had a look at Lyn's Map on Pg 5 of HLS thread and I concur, everything matches up - goods depot - direct route to give the full-on impact with the wine shop, not sure about 200 yds but all news reports have to be treated with caution.
We'll never know why the horse bolted, slamming door, etc - driver probably got sacked for not securing the horse properly.
Amazing the only fatality was the horse.
Regards,
Peg.
 
Hi Folks, here's an enigma - Can a house (not on a hill) have 3 floors at the front and 2 at the back? Answer: Yes, if it was on Heaton or a neighbouring Street; drawing showing how (for posterity) attached.

Did anyone have a ceiling clothes airer? My wife and I did in our second house (an old semi in Sycamore Road, Erdington), it was great, (They worked well, of course, because the top part of the room is the warmest). Modern houses with their low ceilings heralded their demise

Regards,
Peg.
Heaton St House.jpg
 
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Hi Folks, I remember whenever a tradesman using a horse and cart (rag and bone man, milkman, coalman, baker) entered the street it wasn't long before an assembly of youngster, all carrying buckets and coal shovels, formed behind the cart, all anxious to scoop up the jewels that were destined to emerge from the horses rear-end. I could never understand why the precious by-product was in such demand, if people were lucky enough to have some outside space it was usually a surface of blue engineering bricks.

I suppose there must have been people trying to cultivate tiny areas at the rear of their house (or at the front in the case of back-to-backs), in my father's case he had a fantastic annual display of dahlias late August/early September. Why he chose that particular bloom I'll never know - whilst I know less than nothing about horticulture it did seem to me he was putting in an awful lot of effort for a relative short flowering reward.

Regards,
Peg.
 
Afraid Peg I tend to agree with you, but people get a lot of pleasure out of it. Not me
 
peg just quickly before i put myself in the corner and tell myself off for going off topic:D:D our dad grew wonderful dahlias for as long as i can remember...our front garden in villa st was awash with those and also lupins and stocks..continued to grow them all into his 80s...dad would always pick them for our mom for the house..she was never without flowers..

lyn
 
yes peg not a big one though and a large back garden..front and back living room..2 bedrooms plus attic..2 cellars:eek: large long kitchen and inside toilet although could use the outside lavvy as well (the kitchen and toilet were added much later as the house was built round about 1850s) and trust me it came with all the problems of a house that old..damp was awful etc...but coming from our nans back to back it must have seemed like a mansion to our mom and dad and we were happy enough which is the main thing..right time for me to shut up now else i will have to ban myself..3 strikes and im out:D

lyn
 
I had a paper round and some of the gardens in the back to backs were little jewels and a credit to the people that tended them. One I recall had a small pool that was home to a couple of terrapins and another was edged with beautiful porcelain beer engine pull handles all different colours , a priceless collection which may have been buried when the area was demolished.
Sorry for off topic a bit!
Cheers Tim.
 
Hi Folks, I don't think I appreciated, at the time, just how well we were served in Heaton Street for shops and the like - The Flat had it all (well, almost) don't think it had a Chippy, nearest was Key Hill.
One vivid, but unsettling memory, I have is that of live animals being herded down the side entry to the butchers shop that was near Sport and Play Cycles shop. Then again, may be its wrong to bury your head in the sand about such things.

Regards,
Peg.
 
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carolina said:
Peg it was the opposite side of the road to Sport and Play.
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Carolina, I thought we were about to have our first disagreement! I'm pretty sure it was where I said, but there were at least 3 butchers on The Flat and buying animals on the hoof was no doubt commonplace.

Regards,
Peg.

PS I can hear Lyn tutting - we should be on The Flat thread.
 
peg we allow a little discretion so long as we dont go completely off the rails:D

lyn
 
Astoness said:
nice photo carolina...is that ford st on the left if so this is todays view and looking at it the shop where i bought a twin set from has gone

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.4...4!1sJvI2-IEnl2PPKkUajDoa1Q!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

lyn
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Yes L
Peg Monkey said:
Carolina, I thought we were about to have our first disagreement! I'm pretty sure it was where I said, but there were at least 3 butchers on The Flat and buying animals on the hoof was no doubt commonplace.

Regards,
Peg.

PS I can hear Lyn tutting - we should be on The Flat thread.
Click to expand...
We certainly watched the ones by Playfair's shoe shop.
 
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