sharing Solihull's local history
Parish councils came into existence as a result of the Local Government Act 1894, which was also known as the Parish Councils Act. Civil Parishes are the smallest areas of local government administration. The 1894 act allowed for the election of parish councils in rural areas and required the entire area of a parish to be within the same administrative county.
Continue reading “Parish Councils”
The Metropolitan Borough of Solihull came into existence on 1st April 1974. The new Metropolitan Borough comprised the former County Borough of Solihull, 10 parishes from the former Meriden Rural District and the parish of Hockley Heath from Stratford-upon-Avon Rural District.
Continue reading “Metropolitan Borough of Solihull”
Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, made six official visits to the Solihull Borough during her 70-year reign. There were other visits when she passed through the Borough, e.g. arriving at or leaving from Birmingham Airport, but there were only these six official visits, as far as we are aware.
Continue reading “Royal Visits: Queen Elizabeth II”
On Wednesday 7th April 1971 Her Majesty The Queen and H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh paid a Royal Visit to the new shopping centre at Chelmsley Wood, which was described as having space for around 70 shops, six stores and a number of boutiques.
Most of Chelmsley’s 40,000 population turned out for the Royal visit. Large crowds gathered along Bosworth Drive and the precinct itself to watch as the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh toured the centre and unveiled a commemorative plaque on the clock tower in Greenwood Square. Building firm Bryants, co-developers of the shopping centre with Samuel Properties, had provided local schools with six gross (864) of flags.
Continue reading “Chelmsley Wood Shopping Centre 1971”
Until Solihull became a County Borough Council on 1st April 1964, the provision of state education in the area was the responsibility of Warwickshire County Council. We’re aware of five special schools in the Solihull urban/metropolitan district, catering for children with physical or learning disabilities:
In addition, there was also a special school at nearby Packwood Haugh, Warwickshire.
Albert Herbert Farrow, who seems to have been known as Herbert, was born in Roughton, Norfolk on 25th August 1885 to parents Jonathan and Sarah Farrow. He enlisted as a regular soldier with the Coldstream Guards on 10th January 1905 and served five years with the colours, including two years in Egypt. He then joined the Reserve, when he became a gamekeeper. On the 1911 census he is shown as living at Marston Green and his occupation is recorded as under gamekeeper.
Solihull was the only former Rural District Council to become a Metropolitan Borough Council in its own right under the 1972 Local Government Act, which came into effect on 1st April 1974. A little more than 40 years before, workers were taking up the cobbles in Solihull’s High Street – a graphic illustration of the incredibly rapid growth of the Borough. The population had more than doubled in 7 years, from just over 25,000 in 1932 to 52,610 by 1939.
I love this story from someone who moved to Kingshurst in 1972.
Every Friday my friends and I piled all the kids into big old-fashioned prams and walked over to the new shopping centre at Chelmsley Wood. We’d do our grocery shopping and then buy a big bag of chips, a loaf of bread and a tub of margarine and walk down to the river by the police station. We’d take off the kids’ shoes and socks and let them paddle while we made a mountain of chip butties. We’d sit them all down with a chip butty and pass a big bottle of cheap fizzy pop around and sit on the river bank. Our kids loved it and thought they’d had a super day out!
Solihull Life 