CHURCHES AND SCHOOLS 1977

After a decade of clean air the parish church is less black than it was. The churchyard is untidy with vandalised tombs and litter. St. Mary's Aston Brook has gone, but the parish churches of Sts. Silas & Paul (Lozells), and James survive. Following the Nonconformist union, and reflecting West Indian and Asiatic immigration, the Wesleyan churches at Aston Villa and Mansfield Road have been taken over as Churches of God, while the renovated Congregationalist chapel is the Sri Damesh Sikh temple. At Lozells/Gerrard Streets corner the Methodist Church Centre flourishes: on Sutton Street stands a new United Reformed church, and the Salvation Army has a citadel in Gladstone Street.

Of the Aston Board schools only Anglesey (now infant and Nursery), Burlington, Prince Albert (Albert Road) and the handsome Yew Tree survive. The last building of Gower Street School (1931, 1954) on Lozells Road is used as an annexe of the new Holte School on Wheeler Street. Former secondary schools in the manor have been replaced by Holte and Aston Manor (Phillips Street) Comprehensive Schools. St. Francis's R.C. Primary School replaced two old buildings in 1954: the former boys' school (1859) still stands off Wills Street, in other use. Four new primary schools are Aston Tower (Upper Sutton Street), Manor Park in Church Lane, Lozells in Wheeler Street, and the new Anglesey in Nursery Road.

The former Sacred Heart R.C. School in Prestbury Road is the John XXIII Centre, West Indian Chaplaincy; a new school has been opened on Trinity Road. On Whitehead Road the 1893 building we used to call 'Aston Tech', is now the Handsworth and Erdington Technical College: the 1899 building opposite, having been Holte Grammar/Technical School, is now an annexe for Broadway Comprehensive School (in Handsworth).

To keep out hostile natives King Edward VI Grammar School (Aston) has high walls and guard dogs: a new block faces the fortress across Albert Road. Signs of the times are the Training Centre in the former Burlington Infant School and the new Craft Centre (Jobs Preparation Unit) on Park Road. The University of Aston, which grew out of a college of technology, is not in the manor and only the northmost end of its site is even in the Parish, but the name is a compliment to Aston's antiquity.

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