URBANISATION

Summer Hill with 15 houses and Islington, built on the former glebe, were fashionable detached suburbs of the town. 26 acres of land had been sold for building south of Broad Street in 1773 : four crossing streets of town houses were built and given the London suburb's name. Development of the Calthorpe Estate, following the family's removal to the Norfolk property from which the Goughs' barony took its name, began with three streets south from Islington Row - Calthorpe, Frederick, and George Roads, from 1810. Other roads laid out in following decades were similarly named after members of the family : on them town houses and villas that were country mansions in all but location were built in late Classical styles. Similar residences for wealthy townsfolk proliferated along Monument Lane / Icknield Street and the turnpikes.

Hagley Row at Five Ways provided the later name for the Halesowen Road. Ladywood House was the house of Col. Vyse and Hockley Abbey that of G.F. Muntz MP Lower Edgbaston Reservoir (1834) made fresh water available to the whole area, while the prevailing south-westerly winds kept Birmingham's smoke and smells away. Not that even Edgbaston was too fragrant : drains from Hagley Road mansions flowed directly into roadside ditches ! Spring Hill College for Congregational minister, opened in a house in 1838 (hence College Street), moved to Wake Green in '53.

When in '38 Birmingham and Edgbaston joined with other manors in a corporate borough, development was spreading over a large area of allotments north and west of the town : it was customary all round Birmingham for farms to be marked out in 'Guinea Garden' plots which provided income until they were sold or leased for building. The Gooch, Vyse, and Colmore Estates, and parts of Edgbaston, were disposed of in this way, but only the Calthorpes by restrictive covenants ensured that industry and commerce would not spoil their leafy suburb.

The new Borough put first things first, building police stations, a Gaol, and an Asylum, the last two on cheap land of the former Heath (11849-50). A walled farm of some 25 acres was provided to give healthful work alongside the Asylum. In '52 Birmingham Guardians of the Poor built their Workhouse off Dudley Road, demolishing the old windmill. Later a gaunt Infirmary was built beside it, and this grew into the huge complex that became Dudley Road Hospitals, taken over by the City in 1931. A small fever hospital on Lodge Road, and another across the canal, had been acquired and rebuilt in the '90's.

By the 1850' s the main thoroughfares of the area had been marked out and macadamised if not built up. Vyse Street formed a boundary to a network of streets that had been growing east from Great Hampton Street and north from the Dudley Turnpike for three decades. Two cemeteries had been walled between it and Icknield Street. Key Hill (early 1830's) was a former sandpit into the rear face of which vaults were tunnelled. The bank and viaduct of the B.W. & D. Railway separated it from Pitsford Street and the CE Cemetery, originally St. Michael's churchyard.

Icknield Port Road, a new highway to Winson Green, cut across the Ladywood Loop and took its name from the wharves thereon. In '59 Lench's Trust built its Almshouses on Ladywood Lane. A plan for leafy squares and avenues on the Gooch Estate was rejected : the mansion was demolished by mid-century, and five streets met at its site. A path beside Soho Pool leading to Gibb Heath and Nineveh became Park Road. Soho Park was also being overbuilt from the later '50's. Soho Works' hollow squares of building were demolished in '62, the coining machines going to Heaton's new-built Mint on Icknield Street.

A century ago the long straight streets east of Ladywood Lane were fully walled with flat brick terraces, behind which a large population dwelt in dismal courts. The wedge between the old boundary lane and Hagley Road was partially filled with villas and mansions in stucco or brick with baro-que stonework. The rebuilt Plough & Harrow, Edgbaston Assembly Rooms, and shops at the Ivy Bush, catered for their prosperous residents.

Brookfields' allotments dwindled as new streets multiplied and filled. Earlier villas were absorbed or demolished. Industry was spreading steadily northward from St. Paul's. 0nce-fashionable streets declined as villas became factories, and the well-to-do gave place to artisan families. Canals and railways attracted industry, notably brass-founding, tube and tinplate manufacture : later came bicycles, machine tools, and gas and electrical wares. Light engineering and all branches of metal-working led to an eventual concentration of the jewellery trades, scores of small firms in converted houses and yard workshops, about Vyse Street and Warstone Lane.

Urbanisation was complete before the 19th century's end. The Borough had been too late in amenity provision. Summerfield Park was opened in '76, but Chamberlain Gardens and a recreation ground off Musgrave Road were made on cleared sites much later. Swim-ming baths were built on Monument Road (1883, replaced 1940) with a. Dispensary alongside; washing baths on Bacchus Road, and Spring Hill Library - one of our finest terracotta buildings - opened in 1891. The Children's Hospital was begun in 1913. Two world wars brought great expansion of industry at housing's expense, and many streets became wholly factoried. Churches, chapels, church halls, schools, shop rows, closed : pubs, well-preserved, usually continued to thrive.

Since the second war Rotton Park Reservoir and its green border have been acquired by the City, and the Ladywood Redevelopment Area Plan has been implemented. The transformation from decayed gentility and industrial slumdom was achieved by wholesale clearance, even the street pattern being changed.

The Calthorpe Estate's 40-year plan for redevelopment started in '58 and is halfway to completion. Brookfields and All Saints, Gibb Heath and Hockley, are undergoing rebuilding/ restoration as part of the Boulton Area, west Ladywood and Summerfield are enjoying 'urban renewal'.

Reconstruction of St. Paul's will involve most of the Jewellery Quarter. In contrast to the earlier ideal of 'towers in the green', which created more problems than it solved, the favoured units now are the short terrace new or renewed, and the brown-brick block as at Five Ways and beside the canal / rail bridge on the Middleway.

Brookfields' truncated streets of new short rows surround a large green in which the Methodist Church (1893) stands alone. St. Edmund's R. C. and Brookfields Schools are peripheral, Camden has gone. Icknield School is used as an annexe by St. Chad's R. C. All Saints' School houses the BAY Centre. Three stuccoed rows from the 1840's gleam white on George Street West / Camden Street.

A new Baptist Church Centre and shop pre-cinct occupy the south-east corner, where the newly-cleaned library prevents Middleway widening. The wedge between Lodge and Park Roads, bisected by the great weedy trench of the removed B. W. & D. line, is part-cleared, part-rebuilt with a park to the west of a factory cluster. 'The Flat' continues to survive somehow as a shopping street amid desolation.

Hockley Port is an adventure playground for which there are imaginative development plans. Key Hill's great trees form a green oasis beside the wasteland once covered by railway lines and buildings, now hopefully labelled Hockley Industrial Estate. Through the arch of the dilapidated gatehouse the Warstone may be seen on its plinth in the CE Cemetery. The Mint's 1862 building is a small part of a complex of diverse manufacturing that spreads across the old Brewery site into Warstone Lane.

At the cross-roads where the 1903 clocktower stands is Hockley Centre, now being extended, which combines shops, a jewellery and horology school, and quarters for displaced small firms. From Vyse Street to A41 the former villas and their replacements are still wholly devoted to precious metal-working and jewellery. Between Warstone Lane and A457 is a fully industrialised area in which a few classical facades and doorways survive. In Frederick Street an elegant pilastered mansion is neighboured by other houses a decade or so younger. The bright-painted Sikh temple in Graham Street and a new Elim Pentecostal Church nearby are islanded amid factories.

South of Dudley Road the Harborne Line is a walkway, Steward Street School is an immigrant reception centre. The new Nelson School looks out over a green backed by short terraces. Beyond canal and railway, Ladywood R..A. is well-advanced : the Middleway, completed here but elsewhere only a name, sweeps through, with a part-new street pattern on the east side flanked by industry.

Towers loom over amenity buildings and long residential blocks. Clearance continues south of St. John's Schools and west of Monument Road : a long-cleared patch lingers north of the church. On Grosvenor Street West is a new Unitarian Meeting House. Landscaping has been particularly well done in the wedge west of Five Ways. From Chamberlain Gardens south to the Calthorpe Estate's tall office blocks and converted mansions, the residential towers stand amid green mounds and mature trees.

The Calthorpe commercial quarter extends from Duchess Road to Harborne Lane and Calthorpe Road : beyond are flat blocks and cul-de-sacs of town houses in the grounds of departed mansion. Five Ways is a spectacular display of thirty years of change in architectural fashion - from the neo-Georgian of TI House to Glass Mountain, Mirror Monster, and Modular Monumental, the office blocks loom over the sunken island and the refurbished residences of Hagley Road.

Despite the magnitude of recent change, some reminders of the past survive to tell their story of other ways of life, the C17th. farmhouse on Gibb Heath, the Observatory, the Georgian mansion off Summer Hill Terrace now Crumps' Dormie Works, the Brindley and Telford Canals, Boulton's Soho Hall (1764-89), Kingston Row restored at the end of the Brindley Walk, Lee Bridge, Reservoir House, the gates and vaults of Key Hill Cemetery, the Old Windmill inn and nearby terraces, one late row of Islington opposite Broadway, mansions and rows of Hagley Road and Ladywood, All Saints' School, Highbury Chapel, the restored Albion House by Hockley Flyover, the George Street rows, the Tudorish Workhouse, St. John's Church, and the Oratory.