Bill Smith of Sheldon ....Your grandfather ???

I am just an ordinary working man living in Sheldon, which is now just a small part of the huge city of Birmingham, and I don't own any of the land myself. But Birmingham owns a lot of it, and as a citizen I share in it - with a million other people ! The city officials who keep all the services going are our servants, and the Councillors who manage them are elected by our votes. I could be a Councillor myself if enough people wanted me to act as their representative.

I well remember Sheldon as it was 20 years ago, still a country district of big farmhouses and small fields, high hedges and narrow lanes. Since the Second World War it has been built up very quickly, with wide roads, estates of council houses and very tall blocks of flats, shopping centres and parks. We live in a fine new council house with a good garden, but we haven't room to put a garage for my car.

I use it to go to work in a factory near the city centre, not far from the old district where we used to live : that has been cleared of houses ready for rebuilding. My wife works part-time at Kunzle's Cake factory, one of the new ones in the district and very different from the dirty old building where I work in the middle of town. Our children go to Blakenhale Junior School, where they are learning about Sheldon as it used to be. They are taken out for walks to see what remains today from the old days.

St. Giles's Church and the old school and Rectory nearby, Sheldon Hall with part of its moat and an ancient oak tree that may have been a sapling when the first Saxon settlers came, Babbs Mill near the river - these are still standing. Kents Moat is not yet built on, and recently the site has been dug out to see what could be learnt about it : part of sandy Elder Field is still open, but perhaps not for long, and Radley Moor is only now being developed.

All the farmhouses have been knocked down, but their names are still in use - Garretts Green, Outmore, Elms Farm, and others, as well as field-names like Holifaste - not always in the right place though. There are flats and prefabs on Rye-Eddish Field and the site of the first village of Mackadown.

Sheldon has never had a railway station, though the great embankment of the London line has spanned the Platt Brook valley for over 130 years : diesel trains speed past the places that were recorded in the Domesday Book. Corporation buses link us with the city centre six miles away, and overhead jet-planes fly to all parts of the world from Elmdon airport which is close by.

There are 50,000 people living in Sheldon today : until 40 years ago there were never more than 500. Once everybody had land to farm, and worked within the manor : now hardly anyone has more than a garden, and most work away from the district. Before long there won't be any open land left except the parks and playing fields.