URBANISATION

The hamlet of Greet never developed; due in part to poor water supply in earlier times and poor communications later. It was in fact to disappear completely, but not before a last burst of activity as a centre of extractive industry.

The Greet Brickworks removed a large part of the hillside above Greet House in later Victorian times, and the Burbury Brickworks acquired Greet Farm's Riddings west of Cole; with clay from its enormous excavation most of Sparkhill and Springfield were built.

Meanwhile a new settlement, called here for convenience West Greet, had developed apace. Hermon Row, Albion and Bertha Roads were built on Greet Farm's Petty Fields in the '70's, comprising humble terrace rows for artisans. This settlement was clearly associated with the Small Arms factory on Golden Hillock and with a Fog Signal Works fittingly sited near the railway bank in Stock Moor Meadows.

Another development south from Spark Brook was however a suburban overspill from built-up Bordesley. Farms were being bought up, streets laid out, and terraces built. There were large well-capitalised estates like the Barber Trust, and small blocks, with piecemeal completion. See 'Urbanisation of Yardley'.

The streets between the highways, with their variety of buildings from the '70's to the '90's. still have something of the look of a country town, though the insertion of workshops and small factories, and haphazard demolition, are destroying this. Later streets, ringing The Hill with their long and uniform tunnel-back terraces, are clearly suburban.

The Lloyds' house 'The Chains' was only a few decades old when the family moved out; it was razed and Old Grange Road (an unhistorical name) was built over its site.

Between the 1870's and 1900 Gravel Field, between Stratford Road and the riverside meadows, was fully if sporadically built up from north to south. On Percy Road and Saddler Street (now Lea Road) were the earliest terraces; on and near Stratford Road were large three-storey villas, with smaller ones in continuous rows down the slopes.

The personal-name roads on both sides of the highway commemorate members of the Smith-Ryland family which owned the land. When building stopped during World War I, Sparkhill and Greet were fully developed; Showell Green was still semi-rural south of Adria Road, but Springfield had been uniformly laid out between the Park and the river.

Green Bank and Tyseley had compact estates among the fields. The demolition of Manor Farm and nearby buildings by 1930 ended the existence of the ancient hamlet; since then 'Greet' is west of Cole, and across it Tyseley begins.