Brave new world of the Sixties high rise housing estate: part two
The Lion Farm Estate
MANY families that were to become the flats’ first residents had not moved far, some recounting stories how they had moved not through simple choice but by necessity. In nearby Rounds Green some of the housing had already been condemned and those that continued to stand lacked the most rudimentary of amenities we all take for granted today.
New residents at the time described how the ground floor had not been entirely completed and the roads outside standing in a similar condition; it seemed however, that the move – of their own volition or not – was favourably met, the previously alluded to underfloor heating a no doubt stark contrast to those pre-war premises in which some found it hard to endure the daily routine of family life. It transpires that within two months the blocks were full, no doubt to the relief of the engineers, architects, builders, and others who had so speedily laboured under the supervision perhaps of those who were duly taking note of the Borough’s budget!
Community
With the completion of both Wallace and Harry Price House in 1962 a new community was developing and the demand for ever more services steeply rising. The local shops and other facilities that were to follow were expected, however, in a culture where humanism and secularism were relatively unknown or at least considered somewhat niche concepts, established religious ideas still held firm with social and historical roots going back generations.
It had already been announced in January of 1962 that work on a new £50,000 church for Lion Farm was to begin in the following summer. The then Vicar of St James Church at Rounds Green, the Reverend John Martin, had confirmed plans had been approved by the Diocesan Committee and Oldbury Council. It had been estimated that the current stock of homes and flats – and future developments – would mean the new church potentially catering for over 12,000 people. The cost of the new building would be met partly from a grant from the Bishop of Birmingham’s Appeal Fund, and proceeds from the sale of the Church of the Good Shepherd at Churchbridge; it was said that this would ‘leave a few thousand’ to be raised from the congregation. Rev Martin explained that the intended style of the church would be a “blend of traditional and modern.”
Other than the three completed tower blocks, the building work of the church took place surrounded by a landscape very much devoid of any real structure and characterised by a wasteland made up of undeveloped mud and earth. The incumbent minister at Rounds Green certainly did not idle away any of his time in preparation for the church’s completion. As early as February, 1962, he had proposed an activity designed to ease the pressure the local parish had been subject to due to its rising congregation numbers and the spread of its parishioners across both sides of the Wolverhampton Road.
Settled
With Hackwood House completed and its occupants safely settled, Rev Martin set out to expand a network of Sunday Schools which would operate within peoples’ homes. Several of these “schools at home” were quickly established, the minister hoping to double the number over twoyears, by which time the new St James at Lion Farm would be completed. So it was that Hackwood House was recruited into the scheme and two schools operating there.
By June of 1963, it was reported that 120 people from 10 churches in the Smethwick diocese were recruited to help canvass the Rounds Green area in order to attract local residents to attend a stone laying ceremony for the new Lion Farm church. The ceremony was to be conducted by the Right Rev C.A. Martin, the Bishop of Liverpool, and who was also the father of John Martin, the Vicar of Rounds Green. At the stone laying ceremony, on Friday, June 28, 1963, the Bishop of Liverpool told a large, assembled crowd that the parish had performed “a great act of courage” in transferring its church to a newly developed housing estate.
Invigorated
At this point it is worth noting a report from August 1963, indicating that 450 new homes had already been built on the now invigorated estate with a further 400 under construction; such frenetic zeal and commitment bore witness to the regeneration from the surrounding emptiness that was grimly portrayed by a formerly flat, sterile, urban desert. The development was part of an ongoing £1.8 million scheme which was to also incorporate another 350 properties and shops; indeed, a very short time after the completion of the tower blocks five three-storey maisonettes were constructed around the half horseshoe shaped swirl of Badsey Road, which fronted two of the tower blocks; these were all named after waters in the Lake District, the reasoning behind this curious geographical attribution yet to be established. Some of the street names on the estate share a more obvious provenance, as they are mostly linked by towns in Worcestershire, albeit of a more pleasantly pastoral setting; Oldbury of course at this time was still part of Worcestershire until its much-reviled change in 1974. These streets and avenues and the homes erected on them were all constructed in phases from the early 1960s through to the latter part of the decade, once more covering those expanses
of land which had for so long lay idle and abandoned.
Winding back the hands on the clock a little more, it would be a dereliction of duty to omit reference to one building that had been standing since 1961. The Phoenix Public House, unlike many other similar establishments, still stands; a cynic may suggest that the completion of Hackwood House in the same year in which the Phoenix first welcomed its imbibing guests was not a co-incidence. A tower block of 13 floors, 70 flats and its residents would have been a ready-made customer base, the potential clientele being drawn, magnet-like, to this newly established premises. Sixty
years on, the building has experienced little external change, only a short seven years ago was the façade markedly changed.
When the church was to open three years later, I wonder how many residents preferred the ‘spirits’ proclaimed by the newly built St James as opposed to those proffered behind the pumps at the Phoenix!
The estate’s local hostelry wasn’t always destined to be. As early as October, 1958, a meeting of Oldbury’s Borough Council was held at which a decision to lease land to W. Butler and Co. Ltd for the purposes of erecting a public house was discussed. At this
contentious meeting, Councillor Edith Gunn said:
“As usual we are looking after the men, providing them with beer, but what about some shops for the women?” She continued by saying, “It is a disgrace that we have not built shops at the same time as the houses on this estate.”
Rebutted
The objections were ironically rebutted by her husband and Housing Committee Chairman, Alderman Alfred Gunn, who told the meeting that:
“…shop development had not been forgotten. The council’s housing position would be
improved by permission to build a further 120 houses, 110 of which would be at Lion Farm.”
The rest, as is said, is history, Edith Gunn’s objections evidently insufficient to obstruct the construction of the premises that have now stood for six decades.
Before the final touches had been applied to the church and prior to the new building’s dedication (scheduled to take place in the autumn) many local residents will recall that Lion Farm received a Royal visit on May 29th, 1964; the Duke of Edinburgh landed in a red helicopter on the nearby fields after he had been in Birmingham opening the new Bull Ring complex and then moving on to a bowling venue in Warley.
The visit was brief with time only allotted to inspect the building and have tea in the church hall before the short walk back where the helicopter blades were rotating in readiness to whisk him away from the assembled dignitaries and
residents of Lion Farm.
By Sunday, September 13th, 1964, the consecration of the new church was underway (a service to mark the consecration had taken place on the previous day); the ceremony was undertaken by the Bishop of Birmingham, Dr J.L. Wilson; the preacher at the service was the Bishop of Bradford, the Right Rev Michael Parker. The construction costs had, perhaps not unexpectedly, exceeded the original estimate of £50,000, an additional £10-15,000 (the final figures vary) finding its way onto to the costing documents and invoices forwarded to a no doubt frowning local authority accountant.
Demographic
The consecration documents unusually referenced the demographic if not itinerant nature pertaining to the reason for constructing a new St James Church at Lion Farm. The expanding parish from one side of the Wolverhampton Road (Rounds Green) to the
other was simply noted in the documents as the “movement of population.”
The church, which took a comparatively brief 19 months to complete, was designed (originally) to seat 400 worshippers. A 30-foot spire and cross of stainless tubular steel had been nervously placed into position on Thursday, April 23, 1964, Rev John Martin saying at the time that he believed it to be, “the only one of its kind in Britain.” The spire was the gift of the long-established Oldbury concern of Accles and Pollock and was presented to the church in memory of Walter Hackett, the company President who had died on April 12. In total, nearly 400 feet of steel tubing had been incorporated into this cage like structure and which weighed approaching 7 hundredweight. Keen eyed local history aficionados will be aware of an online video showing the spire being placed atop the church, and something I urge all readers to seek out!