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A selection of his scanned photographs and slides together with his accompanying notes taken between the 1960s and 1990s, in and around Birmingham, Bromsgrove, Smethwick, West Bromwich and Walsall. Old Birmingham Page 3
Colmore Depot on the right is approximately where the entrance to Wilton Market is now. Next door to Colmore Depot is the Erdington Photographic Centre, one of the shops of the W H Wilkins Ltd chemists chain, and where I worked for eighteen months during the 1960s. I remember it as a very happy time until the chain was sold to a firm which had the amazing knack of totally destroying years of goodwill with both staff and customers in just a couple of weeks of their taking over.
The Photographic Centre from the opposite direction. There is a poster in the window to say that the business has moved to York Road (opposite
the Curry Garden). It later moved to the precinct - Central Square - where Timpsons are now, before its closure with the very well deserved collapse of its proprietors.
The Swan public house, High Street. The name is still there but on a totally new building
She was watching a wedding at the church in Erdington High Street. You couldn't take this picture today because the wall has been lowered by several feet since then.
in Gravelly Lane. They had several of the units in this block and another shop in Sutton Coldfield. They've all gone now - this corner shop now sells
antiques.
There were three of these in Rookery Park but they were all closed from the time I first saw them. The other two currently remain - still closed - but this one has since been demolished and replaced by a private house, which doesn't seem to have a name. I'm sure we could all think of one 27-MAR-2003
Another landmark public house in the throes of demolition. There were plans for 33 flats to be built on this site at the junction of Short Heath Road and Turfpits Lane, but following objections by the police, they've been rejected. 2nd July 2005
These old shops were demolished to make room for a new bank.
The former owner has seen this photo and says that the bike was his wife's. (This photo has been reproduced on various publications' pages and
covers, sometimes with my permission and sometimes illegally! My thanks go to viewers who have seen and reported them to me.)
Wylde Green lies between Erdington and Sutton Coldfield. These were the postcard advertising frames outside the Post Office, which moved 200
yards into a supermarket. This building is now an Oxfam charity shop.
One of the Princess Alice's Orphanage buildings being demolished to make way for the M&S shopping centre at the back of Tesco, New Oscott. Tesco and its car park were built upon a green field, a once pleasant area at the junction of Chester Road and Jockey Road, where we used to
enjoy some good car boot sales. This particular building, if left undamaged, would have been situated in the car park in front of Curry's Electrical
store. The biggest drawback of the establishment of this retail park has been the transformation of a simple but effective traffic island into the overcomplicated traffic light set-up that is the cause of a very annoying and totally unnecessary bottleneck.
This was the reason for demolishing the Orphanage buildings in the previous photograph. There used to be one pleasant, inviting shop here, but it has sadly been replaced by Next.
Craftsmen and women, and manufacturers of jewellery have been drawn over many decades to a few streets in Hockley. The large houses that were
originally built as imposing residences for the wealthy proved to be ideal for accommodating several workshops.
Park Road, Hockley, a shopping street known throughout the area as "The Flats," before the partial demolition of the area (some fragments of it still remain intact).
Some old Jewellery Quarter workshops prepare to bite their own dust while the workers move into the luxury of the flatted factory behind, in Warstone Lane.
and this was the interior of one of the workshops. Although it was clearly a bad day for the charm and character of this declining city, it was a big leap forward for some people's working conditions.