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I was born in Birmingham in 1947, at the leading edge of the Baby Boom, and arrived in Streetly in 1956 when my parents purchased their first home in Elmtree Road. The brand new 3 bedroom ‘semi’ was built on the old Cottage Farm land, on the NE side of Aldridge Road between Foley Road and Bridle Lane. The new house was a big step up from my Paternal Grandmothers’ council house in Stockland Green, our previous billet. It also had ‘all mod cons’; electric appliances, a front driveway and an attached garage.
Now my Father had secure, covered parking for his old BSA motorcycle combination. How I hated being crammed into the tiny back seat of the child/adult sidecar behind Mum, who persisted in smoking. Things got even worse in 1961 when my parents bought their first car, a 1954 Citroen Light 15…. like the one Inspector Maigret drove in the TV series. Now I was stuck inside a small space with TWO smokers! Worse yet, with British weather being what it was, the car windows were invariably closed and the heater turned up full. I felt (and probably smelled) like a piece of beef jerky!
I seem to remember our address being written as: Streetly, Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire with much greater cachet attached to that than an address associated with geographically closer Walsall, Staffordshire! Years later, when we got our first telephone, it had the 021 (Birmingham) prefix vs. 0922 (Walsall) which, once again, seemed to be rather significant for some Streetly folk, particularly those East of Chester Road. Back then there was definitely some ‘address snobbery’ at play and I always I wondered how they felt in later years to discover they were all going to be lumped together into the West Midlands?
Ours was one of the first houses on the street to be occupied, and for many months I was in small boy heaven. I met and befriended several other young refugees from ’Brum’ while playing in, on and around all the other partially built houses and the attendant equipment on the building site. Interestingly, in those days, tools and materials were often left where they were at the end of the workday, with little fear of theft or damage. What a contrast to the present! The back of our house, and my bedroom window, faced the derelict old farmhouse, barn and outbuildings, which all survived for a number of years after the first phase of housing construction was completed. Despite this rather uninspiring outlook, and before later housing developments were built along Aldridge Road, I enjoyed a largely uninterrupted view of the open farmland to the West, with Barr Beacon beyond.
As more families began moving into the homes immediately surrounding ours we got to know the Cowleys, the Hams, the Bristows, the Padgetts, the Yates and the Parkers. A little further down Elmtree Road lived the Mayburys and the Stubbs’ while over on Cherrywood Road were the Parrs. During the evenings and weekends, when no building work was going on, Zorro, the Lone Ranger and Daredevils of the Red Circle could be found tearing around the neighbourhood as we kids aped our idols from the Saturday Matinees.
On one memorable occasion I was trying to copy the roofers, who I had earlier watched walking across the corrugated asbestos roofs of the garages, only to succeed in falling right through the roof, gashing my leg and spraining my ankle. Sadly, my reconnaissance observations hadn’t detected that the roofers were following the rafters on their trips across the roof and so, when I wandered out onto an unsupported area……!
I started attending the newly built Blackwood Primary School, as it was called back then, when it first opened on a site in the rapidly shrinking Foley Wood. I recall being shown a newspaper article at the time highlighting the opening ceremony for “The School in The Wood”. I think it was taken from the Walsall Observer. Back then the whole area between Hazelwood and Blackwood Roads was still essentially open field and woodland and I could get to school by walking across the field and through the remaining vestiges of the wood. I also seem to remember a private school of some sort located on Blackwood Road where Foley Wood Close is now. Sandwell is a name that comes to mind? A little further along Blackwood Road was our doctor’s office where Dr. Szamocki and his wife both practiced out of the same surgery. This was at a time when doctors still routinely made house calls…. what a concept!
At the completion of that first phase of construction of the so called ’Cottage Farm Estate’, Elmtree Road ended a few houses past Yewtree Road, Limetree Road ended at Cherrywood Road and there was open land and woods between Hazelwood and Blackwood Roads. Lowlands Avenue ended at Hazelwood Road and resumed at Blackwood Drive. The paving on Maxholm Road ended at Lilac Avenue, where another friend from Blackwood Primary lived on the corner. A recent aerial flyover of the area, courtesy of Google Earth, showed clearly the different house styles dividing that initial Cottage Farm construction from later developments in the same area.
Back then the junction of Foley and Aldridge Roads was a simple rural crossroads, no roundabout, no petrol station and no Foley Arms pub. The only retail outlet in the area was Willis’ Store on the site now occupied by the petrol station at the SW corner of Aldridge Road and Beacon Hill. As a pushy kid I talked my way into a Saturday job there, helping make doorstep deliveries of groceries from Willis’ to local housebound and senior citizens, under the watchful eye of Jack, their delivery driver, who spent most of his time on each trip trying to keep his old J type Morris van from conking out!
Inspired by a visit to the Boy Scout World Jamboree in Sutton Park in 1957 I had joined the 2nd Streetly Scout Troop, eventually aspiring to the dizzy heights of Patrol Leader! Troop meetings were held weekly in an old wooden building on Blackwood Road that also doubled as the local Methodist Church at the time. Unfortunately, my initial enthusiasm to follow in the footsteps of Baden-Powell failed to stand the test of time and in 1959 I found myself unable to continue to ‘do my best, to do my duty to God and the Queen’! Hey, I tried!
A regular bicycle trip for me in those days was being dispatched by my mother down to “Slims “, on some errand or other. Bert Slim had a small general store at the corner of Bridle Lane and Chester Road which was enthusiastically patronised by all the locals because there weren’t any of the new-fangled supermarkets nearby. There was also a barber shop on the same corner that I used from time to time over the years...back then I had hair! The proprietor, Sidney Ceney always had a gag or pearl of information that he would share, whether you wanted it or not, while clipping and shearing! Going further north along Chester Road took me to the home of another school friend from Blackwood Primary, who lived above a shop at the junction of Wood Lane and Little Hardwick Lane.
In 1960, after confounding the dire predictions from my father and several of my Blackwood Primary teachers with my strong showing in the ‘Eleven Plus’, (remember that?) I was slated to attend what was then known as Aldridge Grammar-Technical School on Tynings Lane in Aldridge. However, that school was brand new and couldn’t accept all its pupils until later in the year I graduated, so my first term was spent in temporary classrooms, at Barr Beacon School, on the old Pheasey Estate on Beacon Road. The Grammar Grubs and the Secondary Slugs, thrust together involuntarily, struggled to achieve peaceful co-existence! Conflict resumed with new protagonists at Aldridge the next term where the new Grammar School was right next door to a new secondary school, Aldridge Secondary Modern. Of course, all this was at a time when kids were still being ‘streamed’, well before the debacle of Comprehensive Education. If the weather was fair to middling I would cycle to school and if it was crummy I would catch the Green (Harpers) Bus at the corner of Foley and Erdington Roads, opposite Willis’ and across from where the Foley Arms would be built in later years.
During my early teens, and after reading ‘The Compleat Angler’ by Izaak Walton, I became an avid fisherman! I would load up my bicycle with my wicker creel, rod, reel and a pint of maggots and head off to Sutton Park to do battle with the small Perch, Roach and Dace in Bracebridge Pool. Operating on a typical teen budget I would sneak into the Park through the golfers’ entrance on Thornhill Road, dodging the ‘Parkies’ and thus avoiding the price of a ticket. Back then an entrance fee was always charged for ’non-residents’ of Sutton Coldfield! Occasionally I would partner up with a friend to rent a punt and go after the Pike that were to be found at the northern end of the pool. Other expeditions from Streetly around that time were to the public swimming baths at Kingstanding, with a choice of riding either a Blue or Green Bus from Bridle Lane or Aldridge Road then changing to a Birmingham bus at Kingstanding Circle. Those trips to the Baths introduced me to the delights of a steaming mug of Oxo stock after a swim. To this day I still enjoy one whenever I can find Oxo Cubes. Happy times!
Around that time, I also took my first alcoholic drink in public. Underage, and on a dare, two friends and I went down to the Hardwick Arms one evening. We dithered on the threshold of the bar arguing over what we should drink and which of us looked the oldest, to place the order. My idea of a coin toss for the privilege was rejected and my peach fuzz chin proved to be my undoing! We knew that draught beer came in two basic varieties, mild and bitter. Being possessed of above average intelligence, we reasoned that mild was the light coloured, watery stuff while the thick, dark stuff had to be bitter. Further, our logic indicated that, as neophytes, we would do better with mild for our first experience. All pretty obvious, right? So, I sallied forth to the bar with my most confident air and placed our order…. “three pints of mild please “. When the three mugs of foaming dark beverage arrived in front of me I was horrified. Had the barmaid made a mistake? Had I not spoken clearly when ordering? What to do? Not wishing to draw attention to her obvious error, I paid up and took the mugs to my pals. Needless to say, there was much consternation until we listened to other orders being placed and observed the results. Ah, the challenges of youth!
After O Levels in 1963 I elected to go straight into the workforce and hired on at John Brockhouse, a manufacturing company in West Bromwich, while studying Mechanical Engineering in the evenings at Walsall Tech. I bought an old 250cc BSA motorbike to get myself around and succeeded in losing an argument with a Rover 90 at the Coles Lane – A41 crossroads in Hill Top, West Bromwich. After an uncomfortable two week stay in Sutcliffe Ward at the West Bromwich District Hospital, and a further six weeks convalescing at home, my parents suggested I move onto four wheels. Naturally I dismissed their counsel and bought a bigger and newer bike, a 500cc Triumph. That bike introduced me to several other motorcycle nuts in the area. We rode together all over the place at a time when riding a motorbike defined us as ‘Greasers’ or ’Rockers’! A popular haunt back then was a snack bar in Mere Green called Dunbar’s.
The aforementioned Hardwick Arms also figured, indirectly, in my motorcycle exploits. The traffic light outside the pub, at the corner of Chester Road and Little Hardwick Lane, became the launching point for drag races and speed trials northward on Chester Road, along what came to be known as the ’mad mile’. Crouched low over the petrol tank, securely armed with the assured immortality of youth, we would go flat out along ‘The Mile’ before letting off at the last moment to negotiate the bend under the railway bridge at the end. Until 1965 speed limits were non-existent outside urban areas and we young ‘immortals’ made the most of the open roads!
Eventually it was the reactions of the opposite sex that prompted me to make the move onto four wheels. The really good looking ’birds’ were more inclined to date a bloke with a car than one who rode a bike! Best Driving School was chosen for the crucial task of preparing me for the transition, their location on Elmtree Road, only 6 doors away from our house, had no bearing on the selection process. So, in 1966, I took the driving test, the examiner gave me the benefit of the doubt and turned me loose on the unsuspecting motoring public………silly man!
Time passes and youth fades into adulthood. I left Streetly in 1971 and moved to Scotland to take up a new job in the Glasgow area, starting on a career in engineering that took me all over the World, eventually ending up in California, USA where I lived until retirement. My parents stayed on at Elmtree Road until 1975 and then moved to Tenbury Wells when my Father took early retirement from IMI in Witton.
Over the years I have returned to the old neighbourhood several times while on trips back to the UK and have always been disappointed to see the deterioration and congestion in Streetly and the surrounding towns. Rather than the positive nostalgic experiences I was expecting, I found the whole area increasingly shabby and run down and, on the last trip in 2009, when I took my wife up to Barr Beacon we saw signs of extensive recent vandalism to the War Memorial.
Urban decay was a somewhat abstract concept to me until I saw all the changes in the old neighbourhood and its surroundings. I read somewhere that it is always unwise to go back to old haunts as they rarely live up to the images in our memory and in my case, that proved to be very true. I found that last visit rather sad and quite depressing. The lyrics of the 60’s song by The Kinks; Living on a Thin Line, came to mind………There’s no England Now………….
Ian Westbury, San Antonio, Texas.
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