Victorian Maps

By 1855 a line drawn between Winson Green and Chad Hill would separate the rapidly-developing districts from the pastoral Gillott Estate and the rural half of the Calthorpe Estate. The street-pattern in Edgbaston was complete as far west as Vicarage Road. Therefrom the norm was to be ever-larger houses in still-larger grounds. North of Hagley Road the terrace still reigned, declining from Regency and early Victorian elegance about the Turnpike to slum courts off back streets. Middle-class rows were to be found close to artisans' dwellings at high densities in Ladywood.

Heath Street and Icknield Port Road were made as new ac-cess routes across abandoned pastures : the latter cut across Brindley's Lady-wood Loop, the tollhouse and wharfage at the bend providing the name. Had the Streets Commissioners' Surveyor's plan for Brookfields and All Saints' been fol-lowed when those properties were for sale, they would have had quiet leafy squa-res as focal points instead of graceless close-packed streets.

Early work on the Gillott Estate is shown on Till's map of 1873. In addition to Poplar Avenue West, now called Willow Avenue, these roads - Portland, Stanmore, Holly, Manor, and Melville - had been delineated. Both ends of Gillott Road were mark-ed, but not the bend in the middle. Clarendon, York, and Montagu Roads and both ends of Rotton Park Road were lined with villas, as was Hagley Road as far as Bear Lane.

Mansions in bad eclectic styles were spreading along Augustus Road. North of Dudley Road urbanisation was not complete but its nature was firmly established : on wide straight streets long terraces of artisans' dwellings gave a false impression of spaciousness, for entries all along led to narrow courts of back-to-backs. Front-room shops, embedded factories, chapels, pubs, and coalyards, punctuated the endless rows. By 1885 'Portland Pool' had been drained, Gillott, Holly, Cavendish, Rutland, Albany, and Dorset Roads were sur-faced, and Handsworth New Road had been made to improve access to Soho Road. Bellefield House still occupied its grounds opposite Heath Farm.