Duddeston And Nechells In 1976

Dartmouth Street is part of the Middle Ring Road, the Middleway. It is not yet the planned dual carriageway, nor does it fly over Dartmouth Circus and Aston Expressway : the Ashted Circus is comp1ete at ground level, linking Parkway and the approach road to the city centre, but the Middleway does not yet under pass it. Wastelands about the circuses await new industry in happier times. N. House's two blocks are used more for storage than for manufacture. The deserted Fazeley Canal is lined with blank walls and infilled arms. So is the Digbeth Branch.

All of D. west of Windsor Street is industrial : factories of the '80's and '90's, some of them showy in terra-cotta, survive among plainer, later, and larger ones. Some terraces await demolition between Chester Street and the Expressway. The Gas Works off Windsor Street is outwardly unchanged : the rail wharf now calls itself a Freight and Steel Terminal, Aston Goods Depot survives and British Road Services occupy the triangle off Walter Street/Thimble Mill Lane. The R. C. Cemetery has been closed for a century but the church remains open, as, in dual use, does the large nonconformist chapel on Long Acre.

A Ford vehicle store has replaced the engine sheds off Holborn Hill. Factories and services line Long Acre, Cuckoo Road, and the streets to west and north thereof. Between Mount Street and the Junction Canal there is wholesale clearance of former industry. A large basin near the shallow lock is still water-filled but blocked, and coal is no longer unloaded for the power station. A few terraces survive in north N., but soon the Baths, the James almshouses, and St. Clement's School may be the only pre-redevelopment buildings, other than the small council-house group in Needham Street. Nechells J.I. School must soon go, with the two large Victorian Tudor mansions on N. Park Road. It is to be hoped that the two neat little houses next to them will remain as reminders of the rural past.

The branch railway from St. Clement's Road has been taken up, and the dwell-ings have been taken down. After a century of overbuilding Nechells Green has reappeared : High Park Corner is surrounded distantly by gas works, towers, and GKN. Some of the green areas may yet be developed, Hyde Park Corner went with the removal of south Bloomsbury Street. Vauxhall Road/Great Francis Street/Melvina Road is N. G.'s east-side highway. D. Manor Precinct has its shops, pubs, community centres, churches, schools, and open spaces : Ashted Hamlet adjoins it with similar amenities and a high green where St. James's once stood.

Duddeston Library and St. Matthew's Church give maturity to the ultra-modern Parkway. Artificial mounds and banks throughout the area contrast with gentle natural slopes. North of the Parkway there are two centres, on Bloomsbury Street and Bradburne Way : the latter was built early and is surrounded by multi-storey development, while the terraces about the former reflect the later policy.

D. Station is still open, with a new frontage. Hardly a building is left on D. demesne : tinkers' caravans are the only signs of life on tarmac strips amid vegetation and rubbish. The Rea trickles along its brick gorge, and the shrunken sidings beyond are dwarfed by a Container Port. Oldest structures left in D. and N. are the canalside cottage in Belmont Row, the Sack of Potatoes and General Wolfe taverns of Love Lane and Gosta Green, the Grand Junc-tion bridges off Vauxhall Road, the sandstone wall beside Melvina Road, and the two houses on N. Park Road. The Dog and Partridge on the remnant of Ashted Row is a decade or so younger than all these, being built in the 1850's.

Subject to economic recovery, we shall see the completion of St. Clement's and its borders of new industry. With further railway decline it is not impossible that one day the Reaside meadows will again be places 'where lovers dreamt and children played, in green fields on a summer's day'.