A Century (or more) of Birmingham geographical history on one thread

[dave.woodhall]

How did I come to live next to a schoolteacher before I was born?

[brian green]

Mr Lewis lived in the house next door to the home of our very own Mr Woodhall.

Hmmmm

Mr Lewis lived in the house next door to the one in which you now live.   That would be 1947 - 51.   You now live in the house which is next door to the house where I used to watch Mr Lewis dig his front garden as I hid quite possibly behind what was then the hedge of the front garden which is now yours.

I can only be wrong if

a)   Mr Lewis's house has been demolished since 1951 or

b)   If Mr Woodhall has moved

I find it quite interesting that two people sixty years apart who have both made my life very much richer by the work they do should live in neighbouring houses.

[peter w]

When I was a boy we were taken round Aston Hall and I recall a big lump of brickwork blown out of one of the walls.   Mr Lewis our teacher who actually lived in the house next door to the home of our very own Mr Woodhall, said it was the only evidence remaining of the Civil War in the Manor of Aston.

Presumably that would have been made by the same cannon ball that took a chunk out of the balustrade on the staircase that is still evident today. (Along with a small selection of cannon balls)

Also along with the ghost alarms that have been fitted there. Further proving the existence without any doubt of, oh hold on, wrong thread.

[Villa'Zawg]

We were also Birmingham Base Ball Club?

An excerpt from the preface that is provided below explains how I came to write What about the Villa? and what is referred to within the title:

    There were four ingredients that led me to turn the surviving material on Britain’s pro league of 1890 into a full history. The first was my passion for British baseball’s past and the second was my desire to write a book. The third was my supporting of Aston Villa Football Club, which had strong links with one of the four teams in the 1890 league. And the fourth was the relative wealth, by British baseball standards, of source material. Despite being the first season of formal domestic competition, 1890 remains the season to have been recorded most systematically in the British press. It feels like the book was almost waiting patiently for someone with my unusual combination of interests to write it. Although the focus is on the Villa (playing baseball under the official title of Birmingham Base Ball Club), I hope that the work can serve as a history of the league as a whole since their story is intertwined with that of the other three teams.

    The 1890 season represents not just the first formal domestic baseball competition in Britain, but also the start of the only professional league to date with a national scope as its remit. The pro league’s victors in 1890 are not, however, recognized in the official list of national champions held by the governing body of baseball in Britain. The 1890 entry in the list includes just Preston North End, recognizing the triumph of Preston’s amateur baseball team in a much smaller-scale, knock-out competition. While other modern publications do exist that refer to the professional circuit in 1890, the season is rarely described in more than a page or two. This explains why the book’s subtitle is Forgotten figures from Britain’s pro baseball league of 1890. In the title, “figures” refers to both the participants and the numerical record.

    The book’s primary title – What about the Villa? – is taken from a sketch by the Birmingham-born comedian Jasper Carrott on the typical inane calls from fans of Aston Villa Football Club taken by local radio broadcaster Tony Butler during his Saturday afternoon sports phone-in. I hope that the questions I am asking as a Villa fan are not deemed to be quite as inane.

Baseball GB - Clicky

[brian green]

Sorry Villa dawg but your interesting post about baseball seems to have stunned an excellent and enjoyable thread.

There are a number of Birmingham expressions which relate to local geography.   One is to have a face as long as Livery Street.   Another is if you fell off Lewis's you would fall into a new suit and to end up in Steelhouse Lane was a reference to promiscuous sex because that was where the VD clinic was located.   The clinic was advertised on indestructible black and white enamel plates riveted to the inside of very one of those cast iron pissoirs a wonderful example of which used to stand near the junction of Trinity Road and Witton Lane.

[RunRickyRun]

I once saw an old map that had the boundary of Aston extending as far as Small Heath

That's correct.

Simon Inglis mentions it in Villa Park 100 Years

Also mentioned here.

[Bald Eagle]

Sorry Villa dawg but your interesting post about baseball seems to have stunned an excellent and enjoyable thread.

There are a number of Birmingham expressions which relate to local geography.   One is to have a face as long as Livery Street.   Another is if you fell off Lewis's you would fall into a new suit and to end up in Steelhouse Lane was a reference to promiscuous sex because that was where the VD clinic was located.   The clinic was advertised on indestructible black and white enamel plates riveted to the inside of very one of those cast iron pissoirs a wonderful example of which used to stand near the junction of Trinity Road and Witton Lane.

I remember getting a bad school report in my 1st year at St. Phillips grammar school. My mother said she should have sent me to Gem street. If memory serves it was in Gosta green .

[pauliewalnuts]

Last year I got really involved in tracing the Family tree.

Now being from Castle Broom in the fifties we were a mixed bunch of Villeins and surfs. Or being Blue "smurfs". Few Baggies too. For some reason I chose the Villa, wore my V neck claret and blue shirt every time we went to the park. Like all day every day.

Turns out that the Family moved to Aston in the seventeen hundreds with the Father being a Blacksmith. They lived as a Family in Aston until my Dad moved to Castle Brom in the forties. Then still considered part of Aston according to my old man. All Villa Fans since the beginning. As Dave W said the big change of boundary came in 1912. ( I think he said 1911)

Imagine discovering that if I was a nose. In the blood obviously.

I did my family history (in fact, still am, five years on), and the core thing in all branches of my family was moving from the countryside (Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire) to the Birmingham area in the mid 19th century as industry started to grow. I suspect many of us on here have exactly the same background.

Aston was where all mine ended up, it was certainly a hip and happening place about that time. Well, if you see "hip and happening" as being "a death trap slum, where you work in factories which will almost certainly see you easing into a very early grave".

Villa fans all the way back in my family, which I kind of knew anyway, and my gt gt gt grandfather worked on the Aston Lower Grounds.

One of the things that makes me think I could never give it (it being Villa) up properly is the fact that I know the club is in my family since the very early days, and that no matter how annoyed, disheartened, disappointed and wound up I might get, sat there watching us toil every other week, I'm staring at the same rectangle of grass all my ancestors did, and probably going through exactly the same things they did (as are a dozen or so of my family at the same time).

To give it up would be a bit like letting them down.

[pauliewalnuts]

There are a number of Birmingham expressions which relate to local geography.   One is to have a face as long as Livery Street.   Another is if you fell off Lewis's you would fall into a new suit and to end up in Steelhouse Lane was a reference to promiscuous sex because that was where the VD clinic was located.

The one I still like to slip into conversation with non Brummies, just to confuse them, is "round the back of Rackhams".

[Greg N'Ash]

never was sure of that one as a kid. there seemed to some confusion if it was prossies, rent boys or it was cosmetic girls earning some extra dosh

[Bald Eagle]

never was sure of that one as a kid. there seemed to some confusion if it was prossies, rent boys or it was cosmetic girls earning some extra dosh

Definitely Prossies Greg. The Mrs. earnt a fortune in her earlier days.

[Greg N'Ash]

never was sure of that one as a kid. there seemed to some confusion if it was prossies, rent boys or it was cosmetic girls earning some extra dosh

Definitely Prossies Greg. The Mrs. earnt a fortune in her earlier days.

the thing is, its probably the least red lightish place ever. i reckon its an urban myth

[Bald Eagle]

never was sure of that one as a kid. there seemed to some confusion if it was prossies, rent boys or it was cosmetic girls earning some extra dosh

Definitely Prossies Greg. The Mrs. earnt a fortune in her earlier days.

the thing is, its probably the least red lightish place ever. i reckon its an urban myth

I think it was a pick-up place. The dastardly deeds were done somewhere else.

[Greg N'Ash]

yeah but you'd have to at least recognise them as working girls so they'd have to be dressed erm.... a certain way. It's just why would you choose the back of the main store in one of the busiest main roads in Birmingham??

[pauliewalnuts]

yeah but you'd have to at least recognise them as working girls so they'd have to be dressed erm.... a certain way. It's just why would you choose the back of the main store in one of the busiest main roads in Birmingham??

The back of Rackhams is pretty quiet during the night.

In fact, it would have been even more quiet back then, I imagine.