LITTLE BROMWICH URBANISATION

There was little suburban building in Little Bromwich until the later 1890s. Along the two main roads, on Blake Lane and Blakeland Street, and about Ward End Hall, there were villas and a few rows.

The City Council's early activities were confined to some road improvement, the acquisition of Sycamores (Howlets) Farm (at the city's farthest extremity, be it noted) for an Isolation Hospital in 1893, whose building began two years later, and the opening of Ward End Park in 1904. 54 acres of the former Slade Field were laid out, and Ward End House was acquired, a pool was made in the slade, and Wash Brook diverted to run beside it. The Park was intended more for the thousands of Saltleians then the Ward Enders, though these were multiplying fast in the first years of the C20th. Electric trams on both highways made commuting to 'town' relatively fast and comfortable, so that the long rows of tunnelbacks being quickly erected by building societies found tenants just as quickly. The uniformity and speed of this development contrasts with the sporadic building of earlier decades.

By 1914 Ward End suburb extended to the tram terminus on the south side and beyond it to Southern Road on the north. Between the London and Loop lines there was development only between Alum Rock Road and Sladefield Road. From Blakeland Street to Belchers Lane the Ideal Benefit Society began during the Edwardian decade its so-called Ideal Village of five wide streets curving about a small park.

In 1913 was published the East Birmingham Town Planning Scheme, covering 1673 acres (all of Little Bromwich and part of Small Heath). The Plan was re-issued in 1918 with some additions: it provided for open spaces - allotments, playing fields, recreation grounds, riverside parks, improved roads and public transport, dwelling areas at fixed densities, and strictly zoned industry. Main roads were to be dual carriageways where possible, and building lines were set back to prevent future encroachment.

Tram tracks were to be placed on central reservations. Thus we see Washwood Heath Road suddenly widening at Foley Road, with a grass strip between the ways, and the same on Bordesley Green East, while on other highways the wide gap between housing rows has only one of the long-planned two roads running along one side. Bromford/Stechford Lane was to be made part of the proposed Outer Circular Road, originally intended as a tram route, and a narrow part of the former was to be bypassed. Bordesley Green was to be extended as a dual carriageway across the Cole to provide a new highway towards Coleshill. (This project was not carried out until the 1950s, via the Mead-way). The notably lacking riverside road was to be made from Coventry Road north to Cotterills Lane (Heybarnes, Newbridge, Little Bromwich and Eastfield Roads).

Communication was one major feature of the Plan: the other was municipal housing. The first council houses, square cottages in the style pioneered by the Cadburys, built in pairs and fours, were a marked contrast to pre-1914 tunnelbacks: they went up on the new extension of Cotterills Lane. After this 1920 start, Moat House and Brookhill Roads, Dorlcote and Banford Road, the Treeford farmland and the quadrilateral between the London line and Bordesley Green East, were to be laid out with new streets - those on the last-listed estate apparently inspired by a six-branched candlestick.

Though some contractors made their houses drearily plain, others produced groups of dwellings which at first glance seemed to be Tudor or Stuart mansions with wings and great gables - though whether plain or fancy externally, the houses were much alike within. Apart from lines of semi-detached houses along the main roads, the largest area of private 'tween-wars building was east of Ward End Hall, most of it going up in the 1930s. A municipal estate in the mid-thirties style (vaguely Georgian in brown brick) was built between the hospital and the Sycamores recreation ground.