BORDESLEY AND DERITEND IN 1977

Deritend river bridge was rebuilt twice as wide in 1937 preparatory to the widening of High Street, which due to the war was not carried out until the 1950s. All the south side's mean shops and dingy dwellings were then swept away. Plaques on Haddon & Stokes's factory wall commemorate St. John's Chapel and John Rogers the Deritend martyr. High Street's north side retains some interesting structures - Devonshire Works of 1903, Lloyds Bank, Deritend Library (closed) round the corner, the Old Crown, the Byzantine campanile, chapel, and priest's house, two tall town houses of about 1850, and a few late Georgian houses towards the junction. Shallow steps thereabout leading down to the highway used to be a reminder of the great gorge: they were removed when in 1961 a steel flyover moved the traffic jam from the junction to Camp Hill.

The Middleway is not even a name across Bordesley. Belgrave and Moseley Roads are fully, Stratford Place and Camp Hill partly, cleared ready for widening, but north therefrom the route (Sandy and Watery Lanes, Lawley Street) is unchanged. The Expressway planned in 1962 to start from an interchange at Camp Hill and join the present Coventry Road near Green Lanes junction had the difficult and expensive problem of the embanked railways to solve: it has been abandoned in favour of a road which will leave Coventry Road east of Hay Mill Bridge, and run between the railway and Byron/Bolton Roads, under Small Heath Bridge and the two embankments, to an interchange east of Bordesley Station. Some demolition will be required across Little Hay and at Waverley Road's south end.

The Inner Circle 'bus route is as narrow as ever. A decade ago Highgate Road was extended to a direct crossing with Walford Road, but Golden Hillock Road/Muntz Street is still a traffic-slowing dogleg. The main roads have three incompatible uses, as highways, shopping lines, and accesses to and from far too many side-streets. Coventry Road is specially inadequate as the route to the airport, National Exhibition Centre, and the Ml. Railway activity has dwindled drastically. Camp Hill Station and goods depot are gone, as is Bordesley depot. The great yard from Golden Hillock to Bordesley Junction is largely deserted. Except for occasional pleasure craft the canals are unused: new and old factories and warehouses about Camp Hill Top Lock make no use of it. Loading ports everywhere are bricked up.

St. John's Chapel was demolished after bomb damage. Some churches survive only as factories or warehouses. Methodist and Congregationalist chapels have gone from Coventry Road, and the Baptist Church is to lose its frontage. St. Andrew's is reprieved and under repair, but long-abandoned Holy Trinity must soon follow its vicarage into oblivion. The former Presbyterian church nearby flourishes with West Indian membership, as does Miles Street Gospel Hall. Beside Waverley Road Unitarian Church is the Ramgarhia Gurdwara Hall.

St. Anne's, St. Aidan's, and St. Alban's stand undaunted by the wholesale demolition around them: the first is flanked by its community centre and youth club, the latter has absorbed St. Patrick's parish. On Jenkins Street the Sal-vation Army has a new Citadel. St. Martin's old rectory is now Christ Church Memorial Centre. The damaged wing of Lench's Trust Almshouses was rebuilt in 1949, and Dowell's Retreat is at Moseley. Since the virtual disappearance of tuberculosis, Yardley Green Sanatorium is part of East Birmingham Hospital. The allotments have become leisure gardens. Bradford Street's last Georgian residence has been restored, as has Stratford House (twice): the attractive late-Regency/early Victorian villas nearby are still in fair condition, unlike the row on Ladypool Road.

The Angel's name may be seen in moulded letters on its recently exposed side. 'Farm', in sad disrepair, has been saved by a religious body which is to restore and use it. The house would have made a better home for the Sparkbrook Association, which is trying to make a proud community out of three races in a run-down district, than the gloomy structure built for it. There are community centres at Highgate, Allcock Street School, and at Small Heath, where the Institute and the new school complex serve two areas. Highgate Dispensary is a nightclub. The entertainment area on Walford Road comprises a Bingo hail, an Indian cinema, a billiard hall and an Irish club.

The Grange and Alhambra have gone, and the Kingston survives only on Bingo. Small Heath Dispensary is a health centre, Greencoat House on Stratford Road a local government office, and at Bradford Street/Moseley Road corner are a police station and hostel with a Social Services office alongside. Moseley Street police station and Highgate Fire Station stand empty, the latter superseded by a new one along-side: the firemen's flats behind are still in use.

On Coventry Road east from The Gate new stores and super-markets, those on the south side set back, contrast with the dereliction down to Cattell Road. South from Camp Hill Stratford Road's east side also awaits demolition. Moribund shopping rows in several districts have been revived by Asiatic enterprise. The Ship has gone, and the closed Sailor's Return will soon go: like the churches they lost their customers through clearance. Except for Coventry Road and Green Lane, all the old amenity centres are dead.

Highgate Redevelopment Area, one of the five original ones, stretches from Moseley Road down to and across the Rea between the Birmingham/ Bordesley boundary and Belgrave Road, the future Middleway. It is now complete, from Horton Square to the Park. Towers and terraces are landscaped about St. Martin's Estate. The Peacock (a 1930s copy of a Regency inn), Parkview House (formerly Highgate Hotel, originally Rowton House), St. Alban's Church and St. Patrick's School survive from the slummy past, as do the factories of Leopold Street and thereabouts.

Two shop precincts, three new schools, new pubs, church, community, and education centres have been provided. Between the proposed line of the Middleway (Moseley Road) and Stratford Road the area whose centre is Attwood Gardens is partly developed: once-rural villas, century-old streets, cleared spaces, refurbished and new terraces, show every stage of the process. The Reception Centre in Main Street caters for the many immigrant Asiatic children of Sparkbrook and Small Heath. Renewal, which means repair and modernisation, is being undertaken south from Farm Park, and in the area bounded by Golden Hillock, Charles, Grange, and Whitmore Roads.

The latter separates St. Andrew's Redevelopment area to the west from a General Improvement Area to the east, wherein little major work is planned at present. Two precincts are being built in St. Andrew's, north and south of Coventry Road: the former will have Small Heath and Wyndcliffe Schools as its focus, and the latter will centre on St. Aidan's, the Institute, and Regent Park School. Bolton Road, extended uphill roughly on the line of Bordesley Park Road, will be the bounding road for that precinct, with the Coventry Expressway alongside.

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