THE MANORS 1N 1977

Part of Lawley Street Goods Yards is now occupied by the Birmingham Terminal of Freightliners: the Inland Port off Landor Street is dominated by the container transporter, which is overlooked by the great bank of the electrified London line. Rover Co., G.K.N., Landor Cartons, scrap-metal firms, and Morris Commercial, share south Saltley. Nearly all the engine sheds and sidings south of Duddeston Mill Road have been cleared, leaving only the Area Management H.Q. buildings of British Rail. Of the gas works south of Saltley Viaduct, which were first established there over a century ago to make use of the canal, little survives: the giant travelling crane has gone, and only the south end of the weedy tarmac site is in use as the W.M. Gas Board Transport Maintenance Depot.

Saltley Station is no more, and the canal wharf beside the Viaduct is unused even by the P.W.D. Depot alongside it. The ramp to the canalside is blocked by industrial refuse. Some buildings of Saltley Works survive, but more have been replaced: the firms on this large site are flow largely engaged in construction, light engineering, warehousing, and services. The canal is still usable but little used. Bordering factories have bricked up their loading ports and even their windows. The reservoir, no longer linked to the canal, is dwindling: green with reeds and bright orange with iron oxide, it is straddled by giant pylons.

A disused power station and two empty gasholders occupy the Rea meadows north of Aston Church Road. On the other side of the lines is the scrap metal and car dump of Henry Taroni, backed by the huge expanse of Metro-Cammell, where the Midland Carriage Works used to be. Across Common Lane is the British Leyland complex, once Wolseley and Morris Tractors, which extends to Drews Lane, the M6 and the Tame. Small factories occupy the infilled site of the City Brickfield off Anthony Road. The Post Office Stores and Works have spread down Fordrough Lane, enclosing and absorbing the buildings of the former Norton Boys' Home.

The oldest parts of the Norton Estate, now sold, are being cleared - north end of Adderley Road, Crawford and Granby Streets. Very little survives of earlier date than those terraces. The oldest complete buildings in the manors are early C19th, the well-tended Ward End House and the shabby Shaw Hill. Part of the Moat House may well be early C18th. New Bridge (1810), the College and the church and chapel, Clyde and Albert Cottages, and a few plain rows from the 1860s, are the only reminders of the rural past. The loss must be recorded of the following, largely in the earlier years of this century: Ward End Hall and Saltley Hall, Hall Farm and Alum Rock Farm, Treeford Hall, Turners and Howlets (Sycamores) Farms, Old Farm off Arley Road, Balsall Cottage, the old inns and watermills, the Cottage Hospital on Watson Road, and the mansions - Bennetts Hill, The Grange on St. Margaret's Road, The Poplars off Drews Lane, The Towers off Belchers Lane, and Fern Bank on Alum Rock Road.

Most of Saltley is terrace territory, Middle Ring category. Long lines of tunnel-backs stretch from end to end of thirty-odd streets. Artisans' dwellings of the 1860s are flat-fronted rows opening onto the street with entries at intervals leading to small backyards: narrow bay windows appear in the 1870s, and tiny front gardens in the next decade, the houses becoming taller and more ornate.

After 1900 the houses and the bays are wider and lower, there is more woodwork, and the gardens are larger. In the 1920s the short row and the pair appear, the private semis trying to look different from their neighbours to show that they are not council houses. Few streets in Saltley postdate World War One, but the Hutton municipal estate was built in the 1950s on a brick-yard site north of Phillimore Road. There are no towers in our manors, the tallest blocks being those built in the grounds of Ward End Hall in the late 1960s. Building since World War Two has been largely infilling, e.g. Broadway Drive and Gumbleberrys.

The main roads are the usual bewildering mixtures of periods and styles, for continual replacements destroy the chronological sequence of west-to-east development. Converted villas and terraces with shopfronts, churches and filling stations, old markets and new supermarkets, betting shops and launderettes, bingo-halls which used to be cinemas, Asiatic stores, new pubs and old inns, islands of residence and gaps awaiting development, defy generalisation. Road works since 1945 have been few: minor improvements now at the Fox & Goose contrast with the magnitude of the M6, to which there is no access nearer than Salford. The last of the scheduled open spaces are in use, and the 1924 allotments east of Churchill Road are being converted to leisure gardens.

Looking to the immediate future, we can expect to see the demolition of all the terraces built before 1880: but since the aim is now urban renewal rather than replacement, to prevent that destruction of communities which has occurred in the 'new towns' of the Inner Ring, Saltley will continue to be a terrace town. Internal appointments of the houses will be improved, some attempt will be made to supplement the amenities, notably in the provision of adventure playgrounds and 'greenways' - like those planned beside the Loop Line and along Reaside. It will be long ere the main roads become throughways, but we can expect many of the side-streets to be blocked off and grouped into modified precincts denied to through traffic. Saltley and Little Bromwich have experienced several decades of drastic change after long stasis. Nothing so sweeping will ever happen to them again - if they are spared both natural and man-made catastrophe.