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Briddsland Road, BIRMINGHAM, B33 0BH

The style of housing on Craneberry Road appears to indicate that it is the westernmost extremity of the enormous Chelmsley Wood housing development that is now largely located in Solihull borough. However, this end of Craneberry Road is still just in the City of Birmingham.

The timber-framed heart of this Grade II listed https://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101211523-the-white-hart-public-house-shard-end-ward#.WyTUiadKiM8 public house is thought to be early 18th century, but it's been much altered over the years.

This relatively small turning circle was once used by buses from Birmingham city centre via Bordesley Green and Meadway. However, since the construction of the vast Chelmsley Wood housing estate immediately east of here, most buses serving this end of Tile Cross Road (in front of the shops) have extended there. In the early 1980s there were still buses timetabled to turn here, but nothing has been scheduled to for many years, and the bus stop pole that I remember being here about ten years ago has disappeared. Shirestone Road appears to be a dual carriageway; however, the road in the foreground is in fact a service road for some blocks of flats, and runs parallel to Shirestone Road proper (just visible on the left).

Shirestone Road is a street of 1950s Birmingham council housing. On the left can be seen the six blocks of 6-storey flats with their distinctive Y-shaped plan that were built in 1951 and named after country towns. Redditch House is in the foreground.

These six Y-shaped housing blocks were built in 1951, a time of acute housing shortage, for Birmingham County Borough Council (according to Lynsey Hanley in 'Estates', they were the first high-rise council housing in Birmingham). Each block is of 6 storeys with 30 dwellings, so, 180 homes in total. They were built by Wimpey to their 'no-fines' method (concrete made from clinker with no fine aggregates). They were named after Midlands country towns: Banbury, Ledbury, Leominster, Monmouth (now in Wales), Redditch and Stafford. Ledbury House can be seen in the foreground. See https://www.towerblock.eca.ed.ac.uk/development/tile-cross

Sign by junction of East Meadway (behind the photographer, as is Big Johns itself), Cooks Lane (ahead) and Chelmsley Road (to right)

This used to be a Manor House but now it's a bar and restaurant. A history of its descent from Tudor mansion to the present day can be found at http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/GenerateContent?CONTENT_ITEM_ID=122953&CONTENT_ITEM_TYPE=0&MENU_ID=260 .

Just off Gressel Lane in Tile Cross.