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unknown courtyard

Astoness

Astoness

TRUE BRUMMIE MODERATOR
Staff member
hi all.. ive just come accross this great pic of an unknown courtyard..circa 1960... you can just see 2 kids in what i presume maybe the brewhus..and just look at the bags of coal piled up and the lampost in the yard.. i just love this one...

astoness
 
Happy New Year Lyn!

What a powerful photo! I love it - you would think it was earlier that c1960. I would love to know where it was.

Judy
 
Thats what I love about this site. Photos like this that appear every now and then. Wonderful. And a Happy New Year to you and yours Lyn. Regards, Barry.
 
Lyn

It has the look of Nechells to me, I'm sure I recognise that coal barrow with its cast iron wheels. What a pig they were to push. Marvelous photo.

Phil
 
These photos certainly bring back childhood memories of grand parents homes, don't they. Great photo Lyn. Mo
Rather like this one back of Brewery Street, Handsworth about 1920. My grand parents and children except my mom, maybe she was taking it.
 
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lovely photo mo... thank you... and a happy new year to you all and lets keep on turning up the pics...(especially the vine inn villa st) just thought i would mention it yet again phil... i never give up do i??

lyn
 
An interesting thing about the photo of the courtyard is it shows the size of the house windows. The upstairs are large sash windows, similar to our house in Wilton street. That was a three storey back terrace. The only way to get furniture into the upstairs rooms was to remove the windows and use a ladder and ropes. I've often wondered if the windows were made like that on purpose.
 
Lovely photo's Lyn and Mo. Lyn yours is so like where my dad's cousins lived at the top of Park road where you had to go down a narrow entry that led you to their yard with a lampost to the right. They had a big coal cellar and as a child I was frightened of falling down the grid into it. Love to know where that is on your photo?. Jean.
 
we had a courtyard like this one in weston street nechells, and it had a great big wall like that one, because behind it im told, was the gas works i was born in weston st and that was in 1957 harley.
 
hi jean...glad you liked it and reminded you of park road...by the way is that park road hockley? as i did have about 28 pics of it but accidently deleted them...but i have asked for them to be sent to me again so i will be putting them on the forum as soon as i get them...i hated the 2 cellars we had....so scary having to go down by candle light to put a tanner in the meter... we were met by all sorts of creatures...lol

lyn
 
the house is a bit posher but they have had to take the window out to get the piano in
 
Thanks for your comments. I thought this photo was interesting as it is my dad's family and although I don't think they were much better of than mom's it is quite a contrast.
Dad is on the left standing up.
 
Nice photo Lyn.
That photo was taken in the morning and was a windy day. Milk on the step and the washing wrapped around the line. elementary my dear Watson.
 
Thanks for the brewhouse picture, Lyn. Without photos like these how could we possibly convey to future generations what life was like in the courts?
Shirley
 
very good froth..lol
shirley i agree with every word you said and this pic is now one of my favourite 2 i now have.

lyn
 
Lyn no, the Park road Aston. It was on the left going up towards Victoria road from Aston church opposite the co-op. You could easily have walked past it and not known the yard and houses were at the back. It was verry creepy at night. Jean.
 
Duggy said:
The only way to get furniture into the upstairs rooms was to remove the windows and use a ladder and ropes. I've often wondered if the windows were made like that on purpose.
Click to expand...

I was told they were, when clearing a deceased relative's house in Shireland Road, Smethwick, by the removal company - and furniture was made to 'just fit' through windows of terraced houses and 'round the corner' of stairs in semi's.
 
John I've seen furniture being thrown out of bedroom windows but never delivered through them. I think years ago furniture had to last till it fell apart and was no longer of any use so it was easier to throw it than hump it down those steep stairs. Jean.
 
To try and maintain a positive outlook on life whilst living in such mean circumstances was no easy task I think. It’s all broken down and can not be envisioned to be pleasant even when just built. If Charles Dickens were standing in that courtyard and making notes about a new book…he would not have been out of place…and yet this lasted certainly into the fifties and beyond. The pictures are important but they make me so sad. The abodes were so dark and dismal and I wonder if the outside world ever knew of the hardships of the mean times for many in this industrial city.

I had forgotten about the steralised milk...the narrow necked bottles and yes it was used for tea. Different taste to pasturised. Remember the notes in the bottles...2 Past. 1 Sterra.
 
Thanks to Winston for the link, and to Lyn for the first photo, which I think could run and run until someone comes up with the answer. Those upstairs windows were very wide, and divided into three with two narrow bays either side. That should be unusual, I would think.
Oh, by the way, when we moved into our new 3-storey 'town house' (as the agents called them) in Croydon 40 years ago, we were lucky that the builders were still working nearby. Without asking, one of the builders saw our new settee arrive, sussed out the problem, took the first floor window out and got his mate on the dumper truck to lift it up. It sounds dreadfully mean, but I think I only gave them a quid each - this was when beer was about 1s 8d a time of course.
Peter
 
How right you are Rupert. I can still remember having to go up my nan's garden to the toilet in the cold and dark, I was terrified. She was lucky she had her own toilet and didn't have to share it like many other people. We would walk home in the dark, up Crockets Road and down Sandwell Road with my teeth chattering from the cold. How glad I am that is not my life today, no wonder people didn't live to the great age they live to today. Mo
 
Nice pic Lyn.
Winston, I'd misses that video, thanks for posting the link.
Sakura, when I was about 17 (early 60s) I went out briefly with an Irish girl who lived in the cottages at the side of Castle Bromwich railway station and their loo was down the bottom of a very long garden. The seat was a big piece of wood with a hole in the middle. It seemed quite a large affair compared to our outside privy in Bromford Lane where I spent my early years. It was a bit of a shock to me, however, as by now we were living in Tyburn Road with a nice tiled inside bathroom.
 
I remember those David, in fact there still are some in some of the camping grounds here in Canada. I would hate to have one every day though, we really are spoilt now. But as it is today, freezing, I prefer the inside loo. Mo
 
It was not only that though. Even as late as the 50s/60s these places had maybe one or two electrical outlets and a large coal burning fireplace where cooking was also done in a side oven in the living room. Clothes were dried on a rack hung over the fireplace...raised and lowered by pulleys as I recall and in the winter you were only warm if you sat near the coal fire. A single lead pipe brought cold water into the house and no facilities at all were in the design for taking a bath, or heating water for such. The local community bath house was used maybe once a week, if you could find it in the fog. Or a galvanised tin tub in front of the fire with water heated in a large iron kettle on a gas stove maybe. Insect infestations were not uncommon as I recall and from reading here.
Around the world the word was spread...Made In Birmingham...on products... long gone by this time but one might have thought that the recipients of these goods at those times, had ideas that the mass producers of them lived the good life themselves in total. Not so of course for many and, in an era of failed Black Night missile systems and abandonned airplanes...the sometimes sarcastically refered to but always faithful engine of the Old Empire, was allowed to slowly fade.
 
My grandparents in Bevington Road, Aston, died within a few months of each other in the 1960's. My dad and I were stuck with the usual problem of getting their possessions moved out, which we managed to do with the exception of a massive solid oak wardrobe in the main bedroom. We couldn't get it through the door onto the landing. My old man did some quick measurements and it seemed that it would go through the window....anyway, we took the window out, got some rope and the help of neighbours, and lowered the wardrobe through the window into the backyard. Once we'd got it to the ground, one of the neighbours (an old, old lady) said that that was how it had been got into the house in the first place!

Reference the photo on the very first post of this thread, I don't think that was taken so late as 1960, with the best will in the world. I'd say it was pre-War.

Regards,

Big Gee
 
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