INDUSTRY

Wood-cutting, joinery, charcoal-burning, saddlery, and metal-working were the ancient trades of Deritend and west Bordesley. As the timber dwindled, clay took its place as building material. Small kilns on Bordesley farms gave way to large brick works in Victorian times, with huge pits near canals and railways. Small factories proliferated, engaged in light metalwork of all kinds, notably brassware: machine tools, brewing, baking, soap and chemical manufacturing, food processing, were larger concerns. Transport and services were considerable employers of labour. The B.S.A.'s move to Golden Hillock was well made. Materials and products could move on rail and water, there was ample room for expansion across fields where sheep still grazed, and the workers had no great distance to travel. From that start industry spread beside the Warwick Canal on Sampson Road North, Montgomery Street, and Sydenham Road. North of the marshalling yard, with access to it via Oakley Road, another factory group developed between Jenkins Street and Whitmore Road.

Between Garrison Lane and the great pits of south Saltley was a fringe of industry. In 1915 the B.S.A. was hugely extended along Armoury Road, and the rest of Little Hay was taken over for armament works and stores. Between the wars the Singer and B.S.A. Waverley Works spread across this area, bordering the great clinker banks of Tyseley Destructor. Bordesley Green factory estate grew during that time on a former claypit site. Most of the Deritend and Bordesley factories were small: only a dozen could be called large.

Adderley Street Gas Works was established in the 1970s, conveniently between canal and railway, and a power station was built beside it a half-century later. Since World War II Deritend has become almost wholly industrialised: streets and railway arches are walled in by factories and workshops. A rare Georgian porch survives from a residential past. Fisholow spread across the sites of Dowell's Retreat and the Palace, then moved out, as did Birds'. Many small concerns went in the clearance of west Bordesley On High Street long-empty sites await industry. The defunct B.S.A. is demolished.

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