Malvernian
master brummie
Here's a long thread starter....but I hope that something might trigger a memory or two, or three.......!!!
My dad, Bill Burton, worked at Pimms the Pets and Gardens Suppliers based in Icknield Port Road for all his working life, apart from his national service in the RAF. My mum, Phoebe, worked there too for about 15 years, as did I, part-time and during some of the school holidays. We lived at 166 IPR opposite the Pimms HQ. They also had big storage unit and vehicle parking and maintenance yard at the back of our house, accessed by a narrow drive off Summerfield Road (always referred to as Park Road). Our lives therefore revolved around Pimms – and we had very short journeys to work!
Pimms, more properly known as William Pimm & Son Limited, were based at 229 Icknield Port Road, in the next block of shops to those shown in the photograph labelled 226 IPR on Mac Joseph’s website Old Ladywood. William Pimm the elder and founder of Pimms, was born in 1881, an iron worker from Burford, Oxfordshire and moved to Birmingham in about 1900, lodging in New Spring Street in 1901. He appears to have started up a wireworking business somewhere and according to my dad’s stories, soon made enough money to build the whole block of houses/shops eventually numbered 227-230 IPR and stretching up to the railway bridge over the Harborne Railway. He and his wife lived (and worked) at 229 and rented the other three units out. His business at the time seemed to be a mix of speculative building, as well as the wireworking and it looks as if the Pimms pets and gardens empire had started with the manufacture of birdcages! William (and Lily whom he married in 1903) had four children and the sons William (born 1910) and Frank (born 1919) went into the family business. The business was eventually handed down to the two sons with Bill, as he was always known, taking the leading role. My dad started work there in about 1937 as a 15 year wire solderer. The firm rapidly expanded from making birdcages at 229 into the wider pet trade and became a major Midlands wholesaler as well as having a number of retail pets and gardens shops – “Pimms for Pets” being painted on the shop fronts as well as on the fleet of delivery vans and lorries that they ran.
The business expanded in IPR. They eventually occupied two of the units in the block, taking over 230, which I think had been a café at some time. Bill and his family (wife Evelyn and daughter Irene) moved to a detached house he built in Selwyn Road, off Gillott Road. The remaining two units 227 and 228 were, in my time, occupied by Violet Dawson’s grocery store and Sammy and Wally Taylor’s “Livewires” electrical store. Pimms also occupied a large single storey building at the back of the block, accessed down a passageway alongside Livewires. The passageway also lead to Railway Terrace, a row of terraced houses. Pimms also eventually, used two substantial terraced houses opposite the block, 166 and 167, as warehouses. Behind these houses was the large concreted yard area used by Pimms for their vehicle parking/maintenance and the storage of further supplies in the open and in a long corrugated iron shed that backed onto the walling of Summerfield Park and the Harborne Railway. The area was accessed by the long narrow drive from Summerfield Road, the park entrance.
In the 1950s/60s Emily Fulford, and her husband Dick lived in 165 IPR. Emily ran the administration side of Pimms business. Dad thought that 165 was also used at one time as the stationmaster’s house for when the Harborne Railway’s Icknield Port Road railway station was moved to the west side of IPR. By the 1940s my dad’s cousins Dick Burton and Eric Burton also worked at Pimms. Dad worked then more in the warehouse side of the business and my uncles more as salesmen and delivery drivers. Vi Dawson’s grocery store eventually closed down and Pimms occupied that unit too. In about 1956, my dad persuaded Bill Pimm that 166 was no longer required for storage and the Burton family, Bill, Phoebe and me, young Bill, could move from our tiny back-to-back house in Irving Street and into 166. Uncle Eric and his family eventually did a similar thing moving into 167 next door. They subsequently moved into the off-license (the “outdoor”) on the corner of Summerfield Road where Auntie Ella became the “licensee”.
My mum, Phoebe, also worked at Pimms from about this time - she worked in an upper unit built on the old single storey building at the back of the Pimms block. With two other ladies, Judy Lennon and I think, her sister-in-law, Teresa, they did pre-packing of bulk pet and garden supplies into small plastic bags for the retail side of the business. I was also a part time employee of Pimms at about this time. For a bit of extra pocket money I used to engrave the dog and cat identity disks that Pimms sold from their retail shops and supplied to other shops. I was always fascinated by the addresses on the disk order slips, from all over the Midlands, looking them up in A-Z map books and street guides – it improved my Midlands geography no end.
Other folk I can remember working at Pimms were Jack Morris, a capable builder and repair man as well as the Pimms’ ratcatcher – mice and rats being a constant problem with the nature of the business – as well as occasional frighteners for mum and her co-workers! Frank Gossage and his brother David were sales reps/drivers, as was Freddie Frost. Dougie Giles was also a driver – I remember his broad London accent – he was an ex-London cabbie – I think he lived in the one old house that still stands next to the Bricklayers’ Arms just along IPR. Geoff Perks looked after the fleet of vehicles from a workshop in one of the corrugated sheds in the yard at the back of 166. He was a Dunkirk veteran and always told the tale of how his tough wiry hair allowed someone to pull him, by his hair, from the sea into a rescue boat that had crossed the channel. He taught me a fair bit of my vehicle maintenance skills, push bikes to start with, then the family car. There was also an interesting Somali chap called Johnnie working at Pimms at this time – he was famous for the spicy dishes he used to make at home, that started with a can of Chum or Pal dog food – delicious?
Pimms had various retail shops around the Midlands. I can’t remember where they all were now. The one in the roofless old Market Hall in the Bull Ring was perhaps the best known. I think Jim Wise was the manager there although dad did some time there too. That one eventually moved out from the Market Hall to a more conventional shop on the opposite side of the Bull Ring just up from Oswald Baileys – there’s a photograph of it on the front of Carl Chinn’s Streets of Brum Book 2. My favourite shop was the Harborne one – where George Bird, known to me as Uncle George, was the manager. Whenever I went there with dad, sometimes on a school holiday or Saturday delivery run to the shop, we would always get tea and biscuits from Uncle George. There’s a picture of the shop (see the advert for Melox Marvels dog biscuits on the side) on Post 543 on the BHF Harborne thread)
Pimms had some wonderful vehicles that would nowadays grace any veteran car rally. I remember a great big Austin flat-bed lorry, a flat-fronted Austin J-type van, and a pair of Trojan vans – three speed, three cylinder diesels that when fully- (or over-) loaded had to be reversed up very steep hills (reverse was a lower gear than first). There were also Ford 8 and Ford 10 vans – dad used to borrow one occasionally for the weekend. We went on a family weekend away to Blackpool Illuminations once – camping in the back of the van in a Blackpool car park. He also used to borrow one for our Sunday fishing trips. Someone crashed into the back of us one Sunday morning – we were unscathed - but dad had to return the van to Pimms on the Monday with the rear doors tied back on with string! I think Mac Joseph’s website photo of 226 IPR includes the very same van, standing outside the Livewires shop. Bill Pimm ran an Austin Sheerline, quite a posh limousine type car, but it was often pressed into service for deliveries, back end hanging down on the road and sacks of pet food stacked on the back seat and sometimes tied on the running boards. Frank Pimm always seemed to run sensible Landrovers – he lived in the country (Solihull!) and I think his wife and daughter were into horsey things – Landrovers were much better suited to occasional Pimms deliveries.
I’m not sure how Pimms came to fade away and eventually disappear. Some competitors in the Midlands, like H G Turner, grew larger and there was much more competition from around the Midlands with Home Counties and Northern firms moving in on the Pimms patch. Bill Pimm died quite suddenly in 1971 and Frank took over the business. He brought in at different times, chaps called I think, Gordon Phillips, and then Dennis Clayton in some sort of executive management capacity, to try and grow what had always been a small family business but it still seemed to wane in the face of bigger competition. Pimms eventually moved from IPR when the whole block of shop units and the block of houses opposite, including our family home, were required to be demolished to make way for IPR to be widened as part of the city’s planned new middle ring road. Much of the property in IPR was demolished, but IPR was never widened of course, Monument Road becoming the new ring road instead. Last time I visited the area, only the original kerbstones of that part of IPR that I knew so well, remained – and the tree that was once in our back garden – now part of an extended Summerfield Park.
Pimms moved out to Farm Street, Hockley, just below the famous Hockley flyover. I think the retail side of the business started to disappear about this time along with the city centre shop. They later moved to Kendrick Way in West Bromwich – a stone’s throw from the then new motorway system. The business by then was only wholesale and struggling to survive. Dad eventually negotiated a small redundancy-cum-retirement package in 1985 when Pimms were taken over by some large “Northern” pets and gardens wholesalers. The name William Pimm and Son Limited is still registered, but not trading, and its address is the same as that for a firm called Laurel Pet Supplies in Bury, which is maybe the large Northern wholesalers that acquired Pimms.
That’s about as much as I can recall of Pimms from my 65 year old memory bank – how about you?............
Bill Burton
My dad, Bill Burton, worked at Pimms the Pets and Gardens Suppliers based in Icknield Port Road for all his working life, apart from his national service in the RAF. My mum, Phoebe, worked there too for about 15 years, as did I, part-time and during some of the school holidays. We lived at 166 IPR opposite the Pimms HQ. They also had big storage unit and vehicle parking and maintenance yard at the back of our house, accessed by a narrow drive off Summerfield Road (always referred to as Park Road). Our lives therefore revolved around Pimms – and we had very short journeys to work!
Pimms, more properly known as William Pimm & Son Limited, were based at 229 Icknield Port Road, in the next block of shops to those shown in the photograph labelled 226 IPR on Mac Joseph’s website Old Ladywood. William Pimm the elder and founder of Pimms, was born in 1881, an iron worker from Burford, Oxfordshire and moved to Birmingham in about 1900, lodging in New Spring Street in 1901. He appears to have started up a wireworking business somewhere and according to my dad’s stories, soon made enough money to build the whole block of houses/shops eventually numbered 227-230 IPR and stretching up to the railway bridge over the Harborne Railway. He and his wife lived (and worked) at 229 and rented the other three units out. His business at the time seemed to be a mix of speculative building, as well as the wireworking and it looks as if the Pimms pets and gardens empire had started with the manufacture of birdcages! William (and Lily whom he married in 1903) had four children and the sons William (born 1910) and Frank (born 1919) went into the family business. The business was eventually handed down to the two sons with Bill, as he was always known, taking the leading role. My dad started work there in about 1937 as a 15 year wire solderer. The firm rapidly expanded from making birdcages at 229 into the wider pet trade and became a major Midlands wholesaler as well as having a number of retail pets and gardens shops – “Pimms for Pets” being painted on the shop fronts as well as on the fleet of delivery vans and lorries that they ran.
The business expanded in IPR. They eventually occupied two of the units in the block, taking over 230, which I think had been a café at some time. Bill and his family (wife Evelyn and daughter Irene) moved to a detached house he built in Selwyn Road, off Gillott Road. The remaining two units 227 and 228 were, in my time, occupied by Violet Dawson’s grocery store and Sammy and Wally Taylor’s “Livewires” electrical store. Pimms also occupied a large single storey building at the back of the block, accessed down a passageway alongside Livewires. The passageway also lead to Railway Terrace, a row of terraced houses. Pimms also eventually, used two substantial terraced houses opposite the block, 166 and 167, as warehouses. Behind these houses was the large concreted yard area used by Pimms for their vehicle parking/maintenance and the storage of further supplies in the open and in a long corrugated iron shed that backed onto the walling of Summerfield Park and the Harborne Railway. The area was accessed by the long narrow drive from Summerfield Road, the park entrance.
In the 1950s/60s Emily Fulford, and her husband Dick lived in 165 IPR. Emily ran the administration side of Pimms business. Dad thought that 165 was also used at one time as the stationmaster’s house for when the Harborne Railway’s Icknield Port Road railway station was moved to the west side of IPR. By the 1940s my dad’s cousins Dick Burton and Eric Burton also worked at Pimms. Dad worked then more in the warehouse side of the business and my uncles more as salesmen and delivery drivers. Vi Dawson’s grocery store eventually closed down and Pimms occupied that unit too. In about 1956, my dad persuaded Bill Pimm that 166 was no longer required for storage and the Burton family, Bill, Phoebe and me, young Bill, could move from our tiny back-to-back house in Irving Street and into 166. Uncle Eric and his family eventually did a similar thing moving into 167 next door. They subsequently moved into the off-license (the “outdoor”) on the corner of Summerfield Road where Auntie Ella became the “licensee”.
My mum, Phoebe, also worked at Pimms from about this time - she worked in an upper unit built on the old single storey building at the back of the Pimms block. With two other ladies, Judy Lennon and I think, her sister-in-law, Teresa, they did pre-packing of bulk pet and garden supplies into small plastic bags for the retail side of the business. I was also a part time employee of Pimms at about this time. For a bit of extra pocket money I used to engrave the dog and cat identity disks that Pimms sold from their retail shops and supplied to other shops. I was always fascinated by the addresses on the disk order slips, from all over the Midlands, looking them up in A-Z map books and street guides – it improved my Midlands geography no end.
Other folk I can remember working at Pimms were Jack Morris, a capable builder and repair man as well as the Pimms’ ratcatcher – mice and rats being a constant problem with the nature of the business – as well as occasional frighteners for mum and her co-workers! Frank Gossage and his brother David were sales reps/drivers, as was Freddie Frost. Dougie Giles was also a driver – I remember his broad London accent – he was an ex-London cabbie – I think he lived in the one old house that still stands next to the Bricklayers’ Arms just along IPR. Geoff Perks looked after the fleet of vehicles from a workshop in one of the corrugated sheds in the yard at the back of 166. He was a Dunkirk veteran and always told the tale of how his tough wiry hair allowed someone to pull him, by his hair, from the sea into a rescue boat that had crossed the channel. He taught me a fair bit of my vehicle maintenance skills, push bikes to start with, then the family car. There was also an interesting Somali chap called Johnnie working at Pimms at this time – he was famous for the spicy dishes he used to make at home, that started with a can of Chum or Pal dog food – delicious?
Pimms had various retail shops around the Midlands. I can’t remember where they all were now. The one in the roofless old Market Hall in the Bull Ring was perhaps the best known. I think Jim Wise was the manager there although dad did some time there too. That one eventually moved out from the Market Hall to a more conventional shop on the opposite side of the Bull Ring just up from Oswald Baileys – there’s a photograph of it on the front of Carl Chinn’s Streets of Brum Book 2. My favourite shop was the Harborne one – where George Bird, known to me as Uncle George, was the manager. Whenever I went there with dad, sometimes on a school holiday or Saturday delivery run to the shop, we would always get tea and biscuits from Uncle George. There’s a picture of the shop (see the advert for Melox Marvels dog biscuits on the side) on Post 543 on the BHF Harborne thread)
Pimms had some wonderful vehicles that would nowadays grace any veteran car rally. I remember a great big Austin flat-bed lorry, a flat-fronted Austin J-type van, and a pair of Trojan vans – three speed, three cylinder diesels that when fully- (or over-) loaded had to be reversed up very steep hills (reverse was a lower gear than first). There were also Ford 8 and Ford 10 vans – dad used to borrow one occasionally for the weekend. We went on a family weekend away to Blackpool Illuminations once – camping in the back of the van in a Blackpool car park. He also used to borrow one for our Sunday fishing trips. Someone crashed into the back of us one Sunday morning – we were unscathed - but dad had to return the van to Pimms on the Monday with the rear doors tied back on with string! I think Mac Joseph’s website photo of 226 IPR includes the very same van, standing outside the Livewires shop. Bill Pimm ran an Austin Sheerline, quite a posh limousine type car, but it was often pressed into service for deliveries, back end hanging down on the road and sacks of pet food stacked on the back seat and sometimes tied on the running boards. Frank Pimm always seemed to run sensible Landrovers – he lived in the country (Solihull!) and I think his wife and daughter were into horsey things – Landrovers were much better suited to occasional Pimms deliveries.
I’m not sure how Pimms came to fade away and eventually disappear. Some competitors in the Midlands, like H G Turner, grew larger and there was much more competition from around the Midlands with Home Counties and Northern firms moving in on the Pimms patch. Bill Pimm died quite suddenly in 1971 and Frank took over the business. He brought in at different times, chaps called I think, Gordon Phillips, and then Dennis Clayton in some sort of executive management capacity, to try and grow what had always been a small family business but it still seemed to wane in the face of bigger competition. Pimms eventually moved from IPR when the whole block of shop units and the block of houses opposite, including our family home, were required to be demolished to make way for IPR to be widened as part of the city’s planned new middle ring road. Much of the property in IPR was demolished, but IPR was never widened of course, Monument Road becoming the new ring road instead. Last time I visited the area, only the original kerbstones of that part of IPR that I knew so well, remained – and the tree that was once in our back garden – now part of an extended Summerfield Park.
Pimms moved out to Farm Street, Hockley, just below the famous Hockley flyover. I think the retail side of the business started to disappear about this time along with the city centre shop. They later moved to Kendrick Way in West Bromwich – a stone’s throw from the then new motorway system. The business by then was only wholesale and struggling to survive. Dad eventually negotiated a small redundancy-cum-retirement package in 1985 when Pimms were taken over by some large “Northern” pets and gardens wholesalers. The name William Pimm and Son Limited is still registered, but not trading, and its address is the same as that for a firm called Laurel Pet Supplies in Bury, which is maybe the large Northern wholesalers that acquired Pimms.
That’s about as much as I can recall of Pimms from my 65 year old memory bank – how about you?............
Bill Burton
