From 15th July 2023 until 14th September 2023, the Heritage Gallery at The Core hosted an exhibition about Elmdon Park, curated by Solihull Young Archaeologists’ Club (YAC).
Solihull YAC members, mostly aged 8-13, have been working on a project with library staff and volunteers to discover more about Elmdon Park through landscape features, pottery finds and historical research.
For the Council for British Archaeology’s Festival of Archaeology 2023, the children created an exhibition to explain what they found out.
The exhibition looked at how the park has developed from being the estate park for Elmdon Hall, which was built for the Spooner family and completed in 1795. It was bought by William Charles Alston in 1840 and then sold to Walter Waters of Olton in 1931. Mr Waters never lived in the hall and it had become uninhabitable by the time he sold the estate to Solihull Council in 1944. The Council bought it with the intention of it becoming a public park.
The hall was demolished around 1948.
The focus of the children’s studies has been the site of Elmdon Terrace, a row of cottages which included the village school. The school was in use from at least 1818 until its closure in December 1943. The cottages were occupied until around 1958 when they were declared unfit for human habitation. Elmdon Terrace, including the school, was demolished around 1965.
The children were helped with their research by Elmdon Park’s local historian, Stephen Carr, who took YAC members on a guided walk to discover landscape features such as marks showing ridge and furrow farming, a dried-up stream bed, and ancient cart tracks.
Badger activity has brought lots of pottery to the surface and the children looked for identifiable fragments of pottery and building materials. Some of these items are on display in the Heritage Gallery exhibition.
Solihull YAC closed in 2025 but the main YAC website has a list of Young Archaeologists’ Clubs.
Tracey
Library Specialist: Heritage & Local Studies
email: heritage@solihull.gov.uk
Solihull Life 
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