The life and death of Birmingham's suburbs

Bournville, when Birmingham was booming and Cadbury was philanthropic

Bournville, still an example of 'good' suburbs

Birmingham suburbs today - fuzzy cartopia

Halesowen shopping centre

Smethwick town hall

Amber Tavern in Quinton

I made a rare visit to the West Midlands to visit my father's brother who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It made me reflect on people and places and how lifestyles have changed dramatically since the war. I managed four long conversations with my uncle over 2 days and we covered everything from childhood in the war years, the importance of apprenticeships, inventive engineering, families and photography. In between visits to the newly opened and well functioning NHS palliative care centre, the remainder of the two days I used to explore the tapestry of urban growth and decay in the West Birmingham suburbs of Dudley, Smethwick, Halesowen and Quinton. They are not places that I know well, they are a black hole in my knowledge of the geography of England.

I had attended conferences in Birmingham and Warwick Universities and seen the odd football match at the Hawthorns. But the West Midlands has been mainly a region to pass by on the M6 or pass through on the train at New Street station. Birmingham city centre has benefitted from densification and some higher quality residential and commercial developments but Birmingham's once salubrious suburbs seem to be in decline. New flats and commercial developments less a tribute to architecture and more a dirge to the ascendency of land surveyors and accountants as the scourge of design. Planners have ceded the control of the built environment to the road engineers and the commercial pressures that are dictated more by the price and availability of land than any attempt to safeguard or enhance the functioning of the urban morphology.

The aspirational suburbs of the inter war years: solid brick built semi detached houses with gardens and splendid tree lined roads have faded as gardens have been converted to parking lots, roads have been widened, trees removed whilst incongruous commercial developments have disturbed the synergy of urban design. Large hypermarkets are dotted about served by vast roundabouts. The M5 cuts an ugly swathe of noise and pollution as it strides through the suburbs on stilts. In these circumstances it is perhaps no surprise that pedestrians and cyclists are notable for their absence.

People don't seem to live in the urban environment, they pass through it clad in vehicles or buses. The high car ownership and crowded roads suggest that there is some wealth but the shopping centres tell you otherwise. The skilled workers from the manufacturing sector are a diminishing breed and the warehousing, retail and third sector jobs that sustain the social care sector do not provide the same level of salary or work benefits or, just as importantly, the self esteem that comes with a skilled occupation.

I visited the centre of Halesowen, it epitomised the worst combination of a new shopping mall bolted onto a pedestrianised high street. The high street was occupied primarily by charity shops, many advertising their January sales. The new shopping centre was occupied by low end retailers, when Greggs and Savers occupy prime space in a centre you know that its rental rates are in sharp decline. Getting to the centre from the nearby car park was an exercise in dodging the traffic and avoiding the puddles. No wonder the majority of the population go to the drive-in soulless large supermarkets that are the epicentres for suburban life. Their monopolised tedium excludes the spirit of community and adventure and offers little scope for retail therapy.

In the evening I did find a splendid 1930's pub on Hagley road that provided a locally brewed beer and fillet steak dinner for £6.90 in an attractive clean lounge with the league cup semi final showing on 3 large flat screen TVs. It was quite full for a Wednesday evening despite the competition from dozens of ethnic restaurants in the vicinity. I walked back to my rather faded hotel in the pouring rain and passed dozens of small restaurants, all appearing empty of customers suggesting that the local economy was not as strong or buoyant as the car ownership implied.

These suburbs were not thriving and the occasional block of new flats gave no indication that housing conditions were improving. The highest common factor was a parking space; any distinctive or sympathetic urban design was absent. Unlike the splendid garden city developments at Bournville by Cadbury that have been preserved by a trust, the pride and confidence that epitomised the 1930's suburbs had been eradicated as gardens were converted to parking spaces and the successive trends in house improvement created a motley collection of sub prime properties.

The West Midlands is not alone in this respect, most of our conurbations and cities have suffered from similar shoddy new commercial developments, poor quality new housing and an over enthusiasm to cater for the car. We have lost the sense of the built environment being for people. Walking and enjoying the high streets, the parks, the gardens and maintaining places to meet in a convivial urban environment seems to be a casualty as our urban areas have been retro fitted to keep the traffic moving. Jane Jacobs had it right about the decline of American cities in the 1960's and her diagnosis is just as apposite when looking at the decline of our city suburbs today.

Running Frozen in Time

Along the Duchray Water

Round to  Lochan a' Ghleannain

A frozen Lochan a' Ghleannain 

Loch Ard

Looking across Loch Ard from Rob Roy's Cave

Running Nirvana

Ben Lomond in the distance

At last a day to celebrate winter. The snow of yesterday evening had been welded to the ground by an overnight frost and whilst at first light the mists concealed the winter snowscape, by late morning the panorama of sculpted white mountains was magnified by the still crisp air. I had an impulsive urge to get out and run.

It was still below freezing and the thin cover of snow on the hard frozen ground had a crunch that made it ideal for running. I decided to take the track up by the Duchray Water and beyond the newly converted cottage the trail was virgin snow apart from the deer, squirrel and fox prints. Despite the early afternoon sun it was still freezing and it was hard to generate any speed but this was a day to absorb the surroundings and to hell with the time. I rounded Lochan a' Gheannain and came across three people and a dog enjoying a picnic on a table overlooking the lochan, they hollered me a greeting to the effect that aren't we the lucky ones. The uphill section that follows had deeper snow and was followed by a longer downhill section to the shores of Loch Ard. I followed the recently opened loop to Rob Roy's cave, a narrow undulating path with views that make you intensely happy, it is running nirvana.

And then just three kilometres running alongside the loch feeling the sun dip and the temperature drop even further. I had covered 12 kilometres and it had taken well over an hour but time is a meaningless measure on days like this. I had the photographs to remember that winter days are the very best for running, walking and enjoying the great outdoors. The memory of this run is now frozen in time online. 

M6, my life on the tarmac

That's me leaning on the post as PM Harold MacMillan drives past

PM cortege on the return trip on the opening of Preston By-pass

Driving north on the M6 in the post-Christmas traffic congestion prompted me to reflect on the thousand hours and more that I have spent on this seductive but damnable 230-mile long tarmac strip. The first section of motorway in Britain, the Preston By-pass, opened on 5 December 1958 and became the M6 as the tarmac spread north to Gretna and south to Rugby.

The M6 passed within a mile of where I lived and two classes from our primary school were frog marched to the nearby park to witness the opening of the Preston By-pass. It was opened by the Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, who drove past in what looked like a funeral cortege. Mr Wilson, our headteacher (waving his hat in the photograph), thought it would be something we would always remember. He was right, it was a cold damp day and Brian Nixon had got to stand next to Valerie Lee. It also meant that I could no longer cycle down the unopened motorway to go fishing in the River Ribble at Samlesbury. Freewheeling down the pristine, well-graded tarmac slope to the river carrying a fishing rod and tackle on a bike with dodgy brakes was dangerously exciting and we once reached 39mph, according to the odometer on my friend's bike.

An alternative activity over the next few months was to watch the traffic on the new motorway in the hope of spotting rare cars. There was no speed limit on the motorway and, as it was then the longest stretch of dual carriageway in the country, it was used as a test track for new models. The highlight one evening was watching a shortly to be launched E type Jaguar in British Racing Green speeding past at well over 120mph on the near-empty road. The following spring the by-pass became a mecca for open-top car enthusiasts - Austin Healeys, Triumph TR3s and MG Midgets speeding at full throttle along the motorway with scarves flailing from the passenger seats Isadora Duncan style. There were many breakdowns, usually involving lots of steam and waving of arms, the hard shoulders were yet to be introduced so the broken down sports cars were colourful hazards (all sports cars seemed to red, green or blue) on the carriageway.

My first journeys on the M6 were trips to the Lake District when the family including grandparents and favourite Aunts crowded into a hire car at weekends. I was mesmerised by the bridge at Scorton that had been designed and engineered in sympathy with the rolling landscapes on the edge of the Forest of Bowland. It was in stark contrast to most of the bridges on the M6, which looked as if they had been bought as a job lot from a catalogue. Trips north on the M6 became more frequent as a teenager when friends acquired cars and we went walking and climbing to the Lake District during school and university holidays.

When I left school the M6 had been opened up between Birmingham and the Lake District and I began to take advantage of the Samlesbury intersection to make hitchhiking trips around the country. It was the quickest and cheapest way to travel and it opened up my knowledge of distant places as well as the cast of characters that inhabited Britain. I was bought meals and drinks by friendly drivers, delivered to my final destinations and even taken home by one lorry driver to meet his daughter. Most of my journeys were south to North Wales, London and South Wales to go climbing, visit friends or university field trips.

Oxford became my next regular destination when I lived there for a year or so. By this time I was the owner of two Morris Minors, don't ask, bought for £40 and £30 respectively. I travelled over 40,000 miles in them and much of it on M6 journeys to the Lake District, Liverpool, the Cotswolds and then Oxford. On moving to Oxford, I broke down near Stone and was towed off to a local garage to have a new distributor fitted. Hurtling along behind the breakdown truck at 60mph separated by a 15-foot chain and with brakes that were barely any better than those on my bike was one of those truly life-threatening events. Each time the truck slowed down the tow chain slackened and I feared a mighty crash. I pumped the brakes and was relieved to have a proper steel bumper. Surprisingly the car and driver survived although I was berated by my girlfriend on arrival at our rented accommodation 4 hours later than promised. I would not have arrived at all had I not used the M6 and a night in Staffordshire has never really appealed to me.

On another occasion travelling back from Oxford I picked up a hitchhiker at Birmingham only to discover after a few minutes conversation that it was my best friend from when we were 3 and 4 years old. He lived across the street from my grandparents, where we lived at the time. I had not seen him for a dozen years and he was now an accountant at a London Bank. We reminisced about our early years and both remembered that on a rare hot day we had sat in the cobbled street, there was no traffic other than the milk float in the morning, and popped the tar bubbles that miraculously appeared between the cobbles in the heat of the day. It was presumably my first brush with tar and both of us had to be scrubbed clean with substances that would be banned today. We were forbidden to play together or to touch the tar ever again. Thank goodness for bubble wrap, the clean alternative to tar bubbles for today's children and, ahem, adults.

Although my Morris Minors could barely reach 60mph, it was a quicker journey up the M6 from Birmingham in the 1970s than in the Christmas rush of 2015 and there was no M6 toll road to avoid Spaghetti junction in those days.

My relationship with the M6 changed after 1973 since when it has been the journey south from Gretna five or six times a year as I visited my family, the Lake District or occasionally drove south for holidays in Cornwall. Journeys to London and the south stopped in the 1980s when train times and then flights became a quicker and often cheaper way to travel south. Only recently have I taken to travelling down the M6 to London a couple of times a year to visit family and grandchildren in London. The only reasons are that we can deliver spare furniture and other items, visit interesting places and call in on old friends en route.

The M6 had made such a difference to journeys when it opened, no queues for the swing bridge at Runcorn when travelling south (although it was a lot more fun and occasionally quicker than crossing the Thelwall viaduct) or mile-long traffic jams on the A6 to the Lakes. The changes have been remarkable to the M6 as well: hard shoulders, crash barriers, speed distance chevrons, from 2 lanes to 4 lanes, from empty roads to nose to tail jams. Lane closures are now an everyday feature and accidents cause major blockages that prevent ambulances and rescue vehicles from reaching the incidents. The only thing that has remained the same is the detestable service stations. The quality of food and prices still generate angst and frustration by encapsulating all that's worst about Britain's obsessive overdependence on franchised retail and service operators.

Scorton Bridge

As it is today, forever and ever

The M6 junction at Birmingham

Isadora Duncan style