Acocks Green History Society
Deakins Road to Holder Road
We are only going as far as Holder Road at this stage, although the first part of the Oaklands Recreation Ground was originally known as the Hay Mills Recreation Ground. After the Oaklands estate was purchased by the City Council in 1923, the original recreation ground became part of a much larger space, which is part of South Yardley rather than Hay Mills.
The names of some of the roads originate with families again. Here Kathleen, Geraldine, Flora and Gladys are daughters of Sir John Holder, brewer, who has another road named after the family surname. Sir John Holder lived at Pitmaston, Moor Green, in Moseley.
New blocks, replacing what was there before, are numbers 1152-4 (Hobart Manufacturing) which replaced the bombed-out shops 1150-4. The office block at number 1270 replaced Burgess and Garfields' premises from c. 1920.
The corner was occupied by a group of buildings in the middle of the 19th century, and this triangular space was not initially built on. By the 1905 map the first six buildings were shown, all businesses. These are numbers 1170-80. More soon followed by 1906 leading from the previously unoccupied corner. A Wesleyan Hall, a tin tabernacle, is listed in 1908. it was further along the road, after number 1196. It remained there until 1929, after which the plot was used by various business. Number 1200 appeared around this time. However wartime damage took out the beginning of the row from Deakins Road, and this stretch was built on by the Hobart Manufacturing Company in the early 1960s.
The Birmingham Municipal Bank joined together numbers 1176-8 when they moved here in 1925 from number 1087 across the Coventry Road. There is excellent information about the Hay Mills branches here.
Number 1200, possibly in the early 1930s, was built on part of the old Methodist church frontage. A builder's yard appeared at the back, and the subdivided house became flats 1200a, b and c. The next house, probably a remodelling of the Victorian Redhill House, is now flats numbered 1202-8.
Number 1210 was known as Kingsbury House, and was occupied by a florist in 1908, but was usually residential. Numbers 1212-18 were known as A.B. Villas 1-4, and number 1220 as A.B. House. 1212-1220 date from c. 1898.
Number 1224, originally a private house from c. 1900, became a Corporation maternity and child welfare clinic after World War One until it was replaced by five small houses in the 1970s.
Numbers 1240-54 are in the 1903 directory. Number 1264 is earlier, probably 1890s, and was a private house until being taken over as a doctor's surgery by 1908. After it was knocked down, it was replaced by a yard for cars, used by BSG International. Numbers 1256-60 appeared just after 1930, and have always been businesses. On the other side of Geraldine Road, Burgess and Garfield were in business by 1911 and by 1915 as a Ford garage and dealership. A rectangular plot up to the main road was not built on when Geraldine and Kathleen Roads were first developed. There had been a malthouse there, still shown on the 1888 O.S. map.
Burgess and Garfield also operated from Coventry Road, Sheldon, Warwick Road Solihull and from the ground floor of the former cinema at Stechford in the 1960s. A new company, Burgess and Garfield (1968) was formed, and a year later financial trouble was in evidence, and liquidators were called in in 1970. At some stage they had been absorbed into BSG International, a holding company which also included Bristol Street Motors. BSG built a rather severe office block called Burgess House on the site, and this opened in 1975 as a group headquarters, but in 2008 they applied to have it converted to a hotel with metal cladding to improve the building's appearance. At this time, Hay Mills Car Centre was next door on the right, which later was a hand car wash, but from late 2014 the rather more upmarket Platinum Executive Travel occupied the site. They claim to be the largest supercar and luxury car hirers in the U.K.
In 1978 an application was made to turn the police station into an Islamic study centre. At the same time of year there was another application to turn it into a private hotel.
