LATE VICTORIAN MOSELEY

If we could visit the Moseley of 1900, we should recognise it without difficulty. The quietness and lack of traffic would be a welcome surprise. We should find the green shrunk towards its present dimensions, but still a piece of uncluttered worn grass. Victoria Parade had just been completed, removing the lodges and gates of Moseley Hall. Salisbury Road had been cut and named after the Prime Minister. A pond along its line had been drained - part of its overgrown bed can still be seen in the dip. In place of the cottage row stood a line of four-storey houses with shop-fronts, the Bull's Head had been rebuilt, and the Fighting Cocks was about to be. There were gas-lamps with the new mantles, and young trees stood on the paved footpaths. Moseley Village looked what it was, the centre of a prosperous community, second in status only to Edgbaston.

Moseley Hall was no longer a private residence. When Richard Cadbury of the chocolate firm moved thence to Uffculme, he gave the newly-bought Hall to the adjacent City for use as a children's hospital. That was in 1891. Much of the Park was to be sold and the larger pool also drained. Local businessmen formed a company to buy it, built new houses about it, and so created Moseley Park and Pool, still in private ownership.

Though we cannot intrude there unasked, we can visit the finest public park in the Midlands. Louisa Ann Ryland gave Cannon Hill Fields to the then Borough of Birmingham (which did not extend so far until 1912), having had the area laid out with paths and amenities in 1873.

Pools had been excavated along an old meander course of the Rea, and two erratic boulders left over from the last Ice Age were dug out. Later additions to the Park given by Lord Calthorpe and Sir John Holder had effect beyond mere enlargement. The former demanded that the river be improved between his grant on the Edgbaston side and the old Park, so we have a fine stone-lined channel thereabout; while the Holder piece lacks the restrictions placed on the use of the Ryland bequest.

The Park Road - Mary Street tram would take us part-way to Cannon Hill. But if we wished to go to 'town' we would board the open-topped trailer of a steam-car at the depot in the Village, and trundle down to Balsall Heath along the main road, passing examples of domestic architecture - all well be-sooted - of every decade from the 1830's. Not one farmhouse remained, and already there had been some of the demolition and replacement which in our time has ruined a once-fascinating journey. Opposite the Local Board Offices, a concerted villa whose functions had been taken over by the City nine years earlier, and the brand-new School of Art, we should see those expensive advertisements or Birmingham, the completed Library and the unfinished Baths, held up be delay in finding water by deep boring on site. These flamboyant buildings in terra-cotta and glazed brick, prominently displaying the City arms, were meant to show Mosleians and Nortonians and Yardleians what they too could have if they agreed to join Greater Birmingham.
Certainly Balsall Heath had profited by entering the newly-created City in 1891. Better roads and drains, lights and refuse collection, fire service, even a park, had been provided. The opening of Balsall Heath Park, on the site of a pool and quarry, had been a lively affair : the Mayor's speech had been cheerfully barracked - 'Let's have some music !' - but there was no doubt that the park was much appreciated.

A walk down Balsall Heath Road, or Ladypool Road on a Saturday night, with shops open late and stalls in the gutters, with oil-lamps and naphtha flares illuminating the horse-drawn carts and ill-clad crowds, was an experience to contrast with Sunday morning in the genteel roads of villas and mansions in Moseley, where church-going families walked sedately while servants laboured for their continued stuffy comfort.

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