Communications

For nearly all of Hall Green Man's history he has had few choices of modes of travel on land. He could walk, ride an animal, bump along in a litter, cart or wagon. He would have had a long wait - until 1731 in fact - for the first stage-coach to London via Stratford; the journey took 2.5 days. As a smoother alternative to land travel, he could from 1795 onwards board a flyboat on the Stratford Canal at Yardley Wood Wharf and go to Birmingham, Worcester or the Avon Navigation. Turnpike improvements from the 1770's brought lighter and faster coaches : now our man could reach the capital in 14 hours, boarding during the quick horse change at the Bull's Head.

After the removal of the tollgates in 1872, horse-drawn buses began to ply from Birmingham to surrounding villages and hamlets, such as Hall Green, which then had no railway line. Our traveller did not grumble at having to walk 3 miles to Kings Heath Station on the Bristol Line (after 1840) or two miles to Acocks Green on the Oxford Line (after 1852), when he wanted to catch a train to Birmingham or other foreign parts.

By 1885 tramlines had been laid along Stratford Road as far as Sparkhill : the Cole was reached by the turn of the century, but no extension was possible because of two narrow humped bridges across the old millraces and river channels. In the year of its acquisition of Yardley, the Birmingham City Council bought the Company lines, and in 1914 a new bridge was completed with an imposing stone balustrade. Within a year tramcars were going as far as the Bull's Head - not the hated steamers, which Hall Green was spared, but clean and fast electric cars powered by overhead cables. The highway had to be considerably widened to accommodate two parallel tracks in granite setts and a 'horse-road' on each side. Ancient hedges and ditches vanished. When work was resumed after World War I, the road from Four Ways to Shirley was made into a dual carriageway, sleeper tracks being laid on a central reservation to the boundary by 1928.

Meanwhile the North Warwickshire line had brought rail services to Hall Green (1907). Branching off the Great Western main line at Tyseley, it came in a cutting beneath Stratford and Highfield Roads, with stations at both. There were frequent services to Snow Hill at first then from 1909 to the unfinished terminus at Moor Street.

The first regular petrol-bus service for our people who had been alarmed to learn that they were now Commuters ran between 'the town' and Acocks Green via Moseley : it was started after Shaftmoor Lane had been widened, remade, drained and gas-lit (1920). The Outer Circle route was in operation four years later, by which time Swanshurst Lane, Colebank Road and School Road were already partly lined with houses : but Fox Hollies Road had been designed as a dual highway (120 feet wide) in the Town Plan along with Highfield Road and Robin Hood Lane, and unemployed men were used in the '30's to carry out this work. The city's largest traffic island was made at Six Ways.

New suburbs required public transport services, and these were provided between the wars by petrol and later diesel buses. There were no new tram routes. The 29 and 29A buses went to Yardley Wood Station and Baldwins Lane, but strangers never knew whether they were going north or south : and the 31, 31A and 32 routes served Pool Farm, Severne, Gospel Farm and Pitmaston Estates. In 1937 the rams were taken off.

Who, like Hall Green Man, can remember the Jubilee and Coronation tramcars which trundled along in a glory of coloured light, warming the onlookers with the heat of coloured bulbs in hundreds ? For some years the tracks were only ashphalted over, so that the granite setts of their beds remained as hazards for the many cyclists who crossed them. Beyond Four Ways the removal of lines has left the central reservation as pleasant green strips bordered by trees.

The huge increase in road traffic since the Second World War has shown the foresight of those who planned dual carriageways and new north-south routes. By '39 Highfield/Fox Hollies Road had been doubled from the Cole to Fox Green, Cateswell/Tynedale Road had been made as a new direct link between Hall Green and Tyseley, and the riverside highway was complete from Highfield Road to Foremans Road (Cole Valley/Sarehole/ Bromyard Roads). It has never been continued to Warwick Road. Olton Boulevard - designed to bypass the narrow and built-up part of Warwick Road - is still unable to serve its intended purpose because so little of it has been completed.

There has been no resumption of work on Robin Hood Lane west since the War : one carriageway and a narrow rail bridge still cause traffic bottlenecks. A service road has been made for houses on the north side. The only other road works of note have been the alignment of Colebank Road's east end with School Road and the service road for Hall Green Library. Already 37 years old, the grassed approach ramps for the new Highfield Road Bridge in the Dingle are likely to be listed as ancient earthworks before the bridge is built !

For several years the North Warwickshire line had been under sentence of closure, at least for passengers who are too few in number. Yardley Wood Station, which began as a platform, is now only a halt. Looking to the future, shall we see the central reservations on our highways become cycle-tracks, and will the roads again be full of cycle clubs tearing along in close formation as in pre-war days ?