Harborne: My Part of Birmingham (UK)
Harborne, the suburb of Birmingham, UK, where I live has existed as a village since before the Domesday Book.
Harborne's unique appeal lies in the fact that it still has a 'village' feel even though it is less than three miles from the centre of Birmingham.
Small enough to feel like an urban village, yet important enough to attract some of Britain's most coveted trading names into its High Street such as Marks & Spencer and Waitrose.
Like much of 21st century Britain, the High St has changed, with former office blocks becoming apartment blocks & former shops becoming multi-occupancy accommodation. However, there are still places to buy ingredients for home cooking interwoven with restaurants & bars, making it the vibrant centre of "village" life.
History
The area now known as Harborne consisted of a number of smaller places/areas including Harborne Heath, Harts Green & Camomile Green.
Entering Harborne from the city end, you first climb Harborne Hill (officially Harborne Rd) from Edgbaston, the original boundary being the property line between the present-day properties 423 & 421 Harborne Road. You then encounter the crossroads of what is now High St dissected by Nursery Rd & Metchley Lane by the Green Man pub.
Originally this area was called Harborne Heath and was an agricultural area known for its Gooseberries - at one time the Gooseberry Growers Association used to meet at the Green Man public house, of course the present building is a 20th Century creation however, there has been a public house on the same site for over 150 years.
The above Ordinance Survey map (section) of 1888, shows the area of Harborne Heath with its junction of the main road from Edgbaston. As can be seen, the once agricultural land has been built on with a mixture of small cottages, terraced houses and larger detached dwellings.
I have added some notations to this map and explanations are given below.
ONE: This indicates the junction of North Road & Grays Road and the entrance to St. Johns Terrace (which today remains as a gap between blocks of terraced housing in North Road.) Near to the bottom of Grays Road was a public house called the Fish Inn, it was adjacent to the entrance to Fish Lane Terraces. The section of North Road from its junction with Grays Road was at one time called Fish Lane - hence the name of the Terraces behind the cottages that lined it. It is claimed that the first Baptists used to meet at the Fish Inn and that the pub used to accept tokens given by Nail Masters (like Mr Gray) to his workers in lieu of monetary payment.
FISH LANE TERRACES: These were 2 blocks of tenements. sharing a common yard. They were demolished in the late 1960s and the residents spread around Birmingham.
ST JOHNS TERRACE: This was a single block of tenements, with a common yard accessed off North Road. This block was on land owned by St Johns church and they backed onto the church grounds. St Johns church frontage was in St Johns Road. The church was bombed in World War Two and is now the site of the dwellings in Harts Close. Like Fish Lane Terraces, St Johns Terrace was demolished in the late 1960s.
TWO: This indicates the site once occupied by Mr Grays house. Mr Gray (after whom the road is named) was a local Iron Master/Nail Master. The iron Master was (originally) the keeper of the secret for the production of iron & the Nail Master was the overseer for the production of iron nails. Iron to make the nails came from the iron fields of the Black Country and the finished nails were most probably sold to the factories in Birmingham. A row of cottages once occupied by nail makers still exists in Grays Road, the houses, of course, have been much modernised since nails were made in the garden workshops.
If you went up Grays Road from its Fish Lane/North Rd junction in 1888 there were terraced houses & cottages on the right but no dwellings on the left until the Plough public house gardens. Where Grays Road met the main road (High St) the properties fronting the main road (opposite to the Green Man public house) were from the corner, a small cottage with a front room converted to a local shop selling grocery & household essentials. This later became a Barbers Shop and eventually storage for Vickers bakery. Next to that cottage was a row of smaller, hovel-like cottages that stretched along the main road to its junction with Nursery Road. Part of this row was demolished in the mid-late Victorian era and a block containing 2 x 3-storey houses was built, each with ground-floor shops (my family post-WW1 had the first of these shops at 17 High St, next door being Vickers bakery cake shop). At the rear of these Victorian shops, the Vickers family built their bakery on land once occupied by Mr Grays house & gardens.
THREE: In 1888, where North Road met the main road (now called the High St) there were "big" detached houses on the left & right. The house on the left occupied the space now occupied by the block of shops from the corner and stretching toward the Plough. Next to that were a group of (remaining) terraced cottages, each with front gardens - the first after the "big" house was later converted into a shop and had its front garden paved over to form the frontage (currently, that is how it remains). The terraced cottages each had a nail making workshop, along with washhouse at the rear, served by a common yard.
The big house once had a carriage drive beside the main road and its land stretched down the side of North Road and into Grays Road. Post WW 1, after that big house had been demolished, the block of terraced houses were built in North Road on the site of the "big" house gardens.
Harborne Town/Village
Over the centuries the area at the western end of the present High Street became the centre of the village, and was known as Harborne Town. Here the roads from Smethwick, Northfield and outlying districts converged. This was probably the site of a village green, and certainly the location of old inns, the smithy, and for a short time the village lock-up where local miscreants were swiftly dealt with.
The road leaving this area eastwards towards the city followed the high ground to the top of Harborne Hill, where the cottages and tenements of Harborne Heath were found. The transformation of this road into the busy High Street did not begin until the middle of the 19th century.
To the west of Harborne Town, downhill, along the present day War Lane, and at the junction of several lanes, a cluster of cottages grew up amongst the fields and farm buildings at Harts Green.
A little further on, having climbed the hill up today's Tennal Road to where it met Turks Lane, (now Queen's Park Road) where there was the picturesquely named hamlet of Camomile Green, one of the numerous centres of nailmaking.
Timeline
11th Century
In 1086 when the new Norman landlord tax collectors came round, it was described as fifty-two acres of meadow and a mill. The mill was on the Bourne (brook) somehwere near the site of Water Mill Close, off Reservoir Road (off Harborne Lane - near Selly Oak Park).
13th Century
It is believed that St Peter's Church was founded during the 13th century, and the land close to it would have been an early area of settlement. Later some of the larger houses in Harborne were built close by.
16th Century
Since Harborne had ceased to be church property in the 16th century it had passed through the ownership of the Dudley, Cornwallis, Foley and Birch families.
The imposing Tennal Hall, a half-timbered residence of considerable size, in Tennal Road at the rear of Queens Park was the location of a legendary visit from Queen Elizabeth I.
17th Century
Nailmakers are first recorded in Harborne in a legal document of 1600, but it had been an established occupation in these parts for many years before. Often it would be an alternative employment to agricultural labouring when the weather prevented working on the land. The whole family might be involved, helping at the small forge built to the side or rear of the cottage. Iron was supplied by the nail masters, a few of whom were among the wealthier residents of Harborne. A finished load of nails might have to be carried into Birmingham to be exchanged for the raw material to fashion the next load.
18th Century
Around 1780 Thomas Green, then Lord of the Manor built Harborne House. Thomas Green's house still stands and is known as Bishops Croft. It is now the residence of the Bishop of Birmingham. The diocese of Birmingham came into being in 1905. Harborne was previous to this within the Diocese of Lichfield (Staffordshire) and although part of Birmingham since 1891, was geographically part of Staffordshire until 1911.
19th Century
The Grove, on neighbouring land to Harborne House, was the home of Birmingham M.P. Thomas Attwood from 1823. Although the house has been demolished much of the land was incorporated into Grove Park.
By the mid-19th century, the development of the village was accelerating. At first, housing appeared on the land to the south of Harborne Heath Road. Bull Street, South Street and York Street were built by developer Josiah Bull York in the 1850s.
Others followed, encroaching on the fields and gardens that had provided a pleasant rural outlook for the artist David Cox when he lived in Greenfield House. Harborne historically was located in the county of Staffordshire.
Increased housing and improved transport (the first omnibus service into Birmingham having commenced in the 1840s) encouraged the growth of a thriving High Street.
An 1845 directory of the county includes a description of the village:
"The chief agricultural productions are corn and potatoes, with market gardening carried on to a considerable extent, particularly for strawberries. There is a blacking manufactory and a steel mill. The labouring population are chiefly nailers, working in their own cottages."
And for some reason, Harborne had a reputation for laundresses. Perhaps the proximity of wealthier Edgbaston guaranteed demand for such work. Certainly, the Census of 1851 provides plenty of evidence of both nail makers and laundresses, and of the young age at which schooling might be abandoned to take a place at the forge. However, by this time, nail making on this small scale was in a decline, and would soon have disappeared completely.
The opening of the railway line in 1874 signalled the start of more development to the north of the High Street. Although the trains still passed the fields of Hill Top Farm as they left the village, the importance of agriculture to its economy was waning. Small businesses and light industry were on the increase.
Social life in the village was rich and varied. The Harborne and Edgbaston Institute was opened by Sir Henry Irving in 1878, providing a centre of culture and entertainment for the next twenty-five years.
Harborne Cricket Club was founded in 1868, and Harborne Golf Club in 1893, both are thriving today.
In 1888 The Greater Birmingham Scheme was drawn up, including the annexation of Harborne. Harborne ratepayers voted to oppose this. Most issues of local government were the responsibility of the Local Board, and the rate levied on the residents was favourable.
The following year a further attempt was also rejected. But in 1890, after a rise in local rates, the promise of increased policing, improved pavements and street lighting, and the provision of a free library, a resolution in favour of annexation was passed. This occurred the following year, heralding a new phase in Harborne's development as it made ready to enter the twentieth century.
20th Century
In the early years of the twentieth century, the Chad Valley Toy Company was to build a new factory close to the railway, continuing an association with Harborne that had begun years before as Johnson Brothers and would continue until the 1960s. In 1938 Chad Valley was appointed Toymaker to her Majesty the Queen.
During the Second World War, a bomb demolished old St John’s church, situated off St John’s Road, and incendiaries fell in several places, but since there were no large factories except Chad Valley, comparatively little attention was paid by the Germans to Harborne.
1981 and the disused Harborne Railway trackbed is opened as Harborne Walkway, a two-and-a-half-mile linear park from Summerfield Park to Park Hill Road. It forms an important wildlife corridor for a wide variety of bird species and flora including some rare mosses.
Alongside the walkway off Pereira Road is Harborne Nature Reserve, created from 3.5 hectares of disused allotments in the Chad valley. Managed by the West Midland Bird Club the reserve has been planted with a wide variety of native woodland plants, shrubs and trees to provide a variety of habitats. The western end has reverted to wetland.
The success of Harborne Carnival - revived in 1998 and becoming bigger and more successful every year, has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for local charities while stamping Harborne's identity on the rest of Birmingham. Covid seems to have stopped the Carnival, hopefully, it can be revived (for a 3rd time).
STOP PRESS: The Carnival did reappear in June 2022 and the new event, the Harborne Fete, was staged in early September 2022.
21st Century
The monthly Farmers' Markets have thrived as hundreds of good food hunters flock to the High Street for locally grown produce - I get a lot of food and particularly my plants and hanging baskets from the Farmers Market. I also have picked up a customer for my Priday Design Studio business from the regular stall holders. The company that staged the Farmers Markets went out of business in late 2021, so the regular Farmers Market is no more (sadly).
There is support for a plan to bring a statue of Birmingham's first MP Thomas Attwood to the High Street. The graffiti-riddled statue is currently in storage awaiting a major makeover having been removed from Highgate Park in Sparkbrook. Attwood spent many years of his well-chronicled life in Harborne at The Grove. This did not happen, he has been restored to Chamberlain Place, next to the Town Hall in the city centre.
Construction is underway on the new swimming pool to replace the former Lordswood Road baths. With a new pool, learner pool, fitness suites and community room. The opening ceremony is already being planned for late 2011.
And with the recent completion of Birmingham's new 'super hospital' on the Queen Elizabeth Hospital site less than a mile away, Harborne should be more in demand than ever for homes, shopping and quality places to eat.