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The Keith Berry Photo Archive - Old Birmingham Page 6

41. Canterbury Cross School Perry Barr 1970s

Though we didn't meet there, my wife and I both attended this school. It was called Canterbury Road School then, renamed Canterbury Cross later when my brother and sister went there. The area just beyond the first archway was called "the Quadrangle," which separated the infants and juniors to the left of it from the senior girls, right. When I went past there recently, the tree had gone, leaving the 1906 date visible. I see from the list that it is a Grade II Listed Building.

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42. Fentham Road Aston 1960s

There used to be eight shops here when I was growing up round the corner, now there are only two. This is Fentham Road near its junction with
Freer Road. The junction with Arden Road is on the right, and opposite that, at the extreme left of the picture, is the entrance to the alleyway shown in the next photograph. From right to left, when I was growing up, Fred Aucott, shoe repairer, had the nearest shop and always cycled to work; next was Woodroffe's greengrocery and fruiterer's. We had occasional gluts in those pre-EEC days and I remember sitting on a wall with Leonard Hallett, a friend from further up Freer Road, eating a huge bag of cherries that cost very little. The near corner shop was an outdoor and the one over the road was Carr's grocery shop. Beyond that, and just out of sight, was the newsagent and sundries shop run by a Mr Weatherley and later, his grandson.

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43. Fentham Road alley 1981

This alleyway runs from Fentham Road's junction with Arden Road to Witton Road opposite The Guild public house. The Witton Road end was made possible by the clearing and rebuilding of a block of houses. It would have been very useful for me if it had existed back in the 1950s when I had to walk to school as it would have been almost in a direct line.

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44. Freer Road Aston 1960s

This was Edna Jones' shop on the corner of Freer Road and Fentham Road. I knew it well in my early days as her daughter, Margaret, and I were sort of school friends, except that she had a propensity to drop me in it by telling tales of my exploits that she came to hear of to my mother. After Edna's death it became an Indian run supermarket for a few years but now, like most former corner shops around here, it is a private residence.

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46. Milk horse late 1950s

A horse pulling a Birmingham Co-Operative Dairies'milk cart in Freer Road, where most of the houses were owned by the Bournville Trust, but
were later to be adopted by Birmingham Council at he request of many residents in the very mistaken belief that things would improve. In the event, the unelected omnipotent denizens of the city's housing department simply saw the new acquisition as somewhere handy to dump their problem families, with the result that this once very respectable road became an instant slum

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47. Paving slab Sutton Coldfield 2003

In the lower right corner of the last photo, 'Milk Horse,' you can just see the original paving slabs, a distinctive Maltese Cross pattern. By the time of the next picture, 'Freer Road,' the pavements had been repaved with plain slabs, boring but probably easier to walk on in high heels. Years later, I found these original type slabs, just two of them, embedded in the soft soil near a tree in Falcon Lodge.

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Morturn said:
6. Grid House Witton 1999

The low building in the right foreground carried an iron plaque with the words "Grid House" upon it. Not long after I took this photograph, just the other side of the bridge from Witton Lock, the building had completely disappeared.

View attachment 222245

This is the view of a bit of machinery of the Grid House from the inside (see previous photograph). I have searched Google without success to find out what the purpose was of such a building.

I always look for that GEC 'Magnet' chimney when I'm on the train to Birmingham!
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