SERVICES AND AMENITIES

Inns with gardens on the town outskirts have long been favourite resorts of Birmingham people. The Ship was the meeting-place of the Georgian versifier Freeth and his friends. There was a bowling green opposite The Gate. 'Guinea Gardens', allotments worked for profit and pleasure, were mapped all round the built-up area, not least in Bordesley. As development spread over the nearer plots, so farm pastures were let out beyond. A century ago horse charabancs took roistering parties along the freed turnpikes to Cole meadows and rural taverns, trains and steam trams brought more trippers, and former coaching inns came back to life. The Ship was rebuilt in 1869 on a corner site. The Sydenham Hotel, with its gardens and fishpond, catered more for townees than for locals.

In 1876 Miss L.A. Ryland gave 43½ acres of Little Hay for a public park, and later met a third of the cost of its landscaping with walks, pool, and bandstand. After the Queen's visit in 1887 it was renamed Victoria Park. The Corporation bought a sheepfold from Holliers Charity and opened it as Highgate Park in 1876. An open-air swimming pool was provided at the royal park, and the long-projected Baths building at Green Lanes was complete in 18 97, four years after the library alongside. Diamond Jubilee Year also saw the extension of Deritend Library and the opening of the Friends' Institute on Moseley Road.

The Young Christians' Institute on Jenkins Street was then two years old. Dispensaries were built about this time opposite Stratford House and on Coventry Road in brown and grey sandstone respectively. Land was bought for a Smallpox Hospital off Yardley Green Road, and the buildings became the City Sanatorium in 1910. A large allotment area east from its grounds to Newbridge Farm was opened in 1926. The Playing Fields Association cleared some slum property at the foot of Garrison Lane and made Callowfields Recreation Ground about 1908. Digby Park, 9½ acres, was given in 1906, being then at the urban limit, and opened five years later.

What remained of 'Farm' - a house and outbuildings, avenue and gardens, paddock, pool and ice-borne boulder, was given to the City by Alderman J.H. Lloyd in 1919. It was then on lease to the B.S.A. for social purposes, becoming a public park a few years later. Bordesley Palace Theatre was built in a populous district, on High Street at Clyde Street, at the turn of the century. By the First World War there were several billiard halls and picture houses in the wards.

Ornate pubs able to accommodate clubs and functions appeared on street corners, like The Sailor's Return, the Marlborough, and the rebuilt Custard House. Every church had its hall. Small shops proliferated along tram routes, usually in converted terraces, and corner shops abounded. From 1875 St. Andrew's football ground, a former claypit, was the home of Small Heath Alliance, which became Birmingham City Football Club in 1889.

Fire Stations were built on Bordesley Green and at Highgate, police stations on Moseley Street and Coventry Road, early this century. Between the wars picture palaces were built on strategic sites - Waldorf, Alhambra, Grange, Kingston - and the Palace turned to films. Chain store branches opened on the main shopping streets, conversions and rebuildings for shops continued.

When Haybarnes (37 acres) and Newbridge Farm Recreation Grounds were being readied for use following the farms' demolition, the Cole thereby was straightened and dredged: this and pollution ended its life as a fishing river, the last trout being caught - far downstream - in 1926. Two years later the infilled claypits of Haycocks were finally levelled and opened as Kingston Hill Recreation Ground.

Index