IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Turves Green, BIRMINGHAM, B31 4BL

Northfield, Birmingham

An OS cutmark on the wall of what appears to be a substation house, last levelled in 1965 at 167.347m above Ordnance Datum Newlyn.

Official name Turves Green Girls' School and Technology College, Birmingham. There is a primary school separating the girls and boys high schools.

The blue plaque on this side of the pedestal reads: "Birmingham Civic Society 2002 The Austin Village Built by Herbert Austin in 1917 to house his workforce for the Austin Motor Company, at that time engaged in the manufacture of vehicles, aircraft, ammunition and equipment to support this country's forces in the Great War." The pedestal stands on the central reservation of Central Avenue, a miniature dual carriageway in the heart of the village. Behind it can be seen four of the cedarwood bungalows imported by Austin from the USA. For the blue plaque on the other side of the pedestal see Image

The blue plaque on this side of the pedestal reads: "This plaque was erected in 2002 by members of the Austin Village Preservation Society to commemorate the life of Herbert Austin 1866-1941 The unique cedar wood bungalows were transported from Bay City, U.S.A. Conservation status granted by Birmingham City Council in 1997. This project was funded by Phoenix Venture Holdings." For the blue plaque on the other side of the pedestal, see Image

These are three of the two hundred cedarwood houses of the 'Chester' type imported from the USA by Herbert Austin and erected in Longbridge, Birmingham in 1917 to house wartime workers at his factory. Six or seven women munitions workers would typically live in each three-bedroomed bungalow. They were well-appointed by British standards of the time, with an indoor toilet, and central heating powered by a coke-fired boiler. The houses have survived, in private ownership and in various stages of modernisation. The middle house of the three shown here is probably the best-preserved and is a grade A locally-listed building (see the Birmingham list https://www.birmingham.gov.uk/downloads/download/273/locally_listed_buildings ). It appears to have retained its original wooden clapboarding, used at Austin Village in place of the wooden shingles of the North American house. The American open porch was glazed over in the Austin Village version, supposedly because of the inclement British weather, but also perhaps because sitting on your porch or in your front garden is a very un-British thing to do. Wooden houses require regular maintenance, and over time they have been modernised by their owners, as the houses to either side illustrate, giving the area a varied appearance, very like that of suburbs in the USA and Canada, but disapproved of by conservationists. The village was declared a conservation area in 1997 but now risks losing this status, which would in turn increase the risk of developers buying up plots and replacing the historic bungalows with higher-density housing. One such developer is apparently known to local people as 'The Eye of Mordor'. On the Chester house see the Austin Village stories site https://www.theaustinvillage.com/new-page . On the conservation debate, see Image

View from crossroads with The Mill Walk.

From The Mill Walk to Hawkesley Crescent there is a way to avois walking on the road but it is a steep climb. Turves Green, Northfield, Birmingham

Built in 1917 by Herbert Austin for war workers at his Longbridge factory, Austin Village was surrounded by fields. Its road link to Longbridge and Birmingham was a steep, narrow track called the Mill Walk. It crossed the River Rea by a ford, passed under the railway through a single-track tunnel and climbed the slope to the village, forking into a path, seen in the foreground here, and a road that passed the Conservative Club in converted buildings of Hawkesley Farm, off to the left of this picture. The route was apparently later known to the villagers by the ironic name of 'the motorway'. The village has no shops, nor did it ever have many, though there was apparently a Co-op store for some time. In the early years, local farmers delivered food door to door, presumably approaching the village up this track, or perhaps from a farm track to the southeast. After the Second World War, the expanding suburbs and housing estates of Birmingham gradually reached the village, which is now better connected to the road system. See Wikipedia on Austin Village, particularly the detail of a 1936 OS map reproduced there https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_Village .