IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Park Road, SOLIHULL, B91 3SU

Leading from Malvern Park towards the town centre. The view is dominated by St Alphege Church.

A mid 18th century, red brick adaptation of an earlier (17th century?) building. It was the town's grammar school until the 1880s, and is now a Grade II* listed https://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101076728-the-old-grammar-school-st-alphege-ward#.WmBK2vll-M8 office, granted as long ago as 1949.

Difficult to photograph because of its confined site, this Georgianised Tudor building in Park Road was originally the Old Grammar School, founded in 1560 under the headmastership of Edward Pole. For a wider view and more information, see Image

The historic 16th-century building with later additions, glimpsed through the trees from the site of the former Cedarhurst School in Park Road, well illustrates Solihull's civic motto "Urbs in rure" - the town in the country. It was the original home of the Old Grammar School (founded in 1560). Dr Samuel Johnson, the great lexicographer, applied for the Headmastership here in 1735 but was rejected as "a very haughty, ill-natured gent" with a disconcerting habit of "distorting his fface [sic]". After the main school relocated to Warwick Road in 1882, the building continued in use as the Lower School (Gaywood House) for several decades. See also Image and for a view from the other side, with a link to the Grade II* listing, see Richard Law's Image

Formerly the lodge building at the entrance to Malvern Park, and built in the mid 19th century. It was Grade II listed https://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101281721-22-park-road-st-alphege-ward#.WmBMsvll-M8 in 1976.

Malvern Park was laid out by the then Urban District Council in 1926 on land partly forming part of the estate of Malvern Hall and partly purchased from local farmers (Malvern Park Farm). The gateposts date from that year; the gates, like so much municipal ironwork, were requisitioned for scrap in the 1939-45 war and never replaced. In the background can be seen Joseph Boehm's fine equestrian group of the Image This postcard from the late 1940s shows the gateway as it used to be, surrounded by a luxuriant herbaceous border http://pics.livejournal.com/jy100/pic/000eydbx

A development of mainly semi-detached houses, centred round an attractive green with its ancient oak, and built by Biddle and Homer in the 1930s on part of the glebe lands of St Alphege. For a pre-war view from the builders' promotional postcard see http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/jy100/8671696/90690/90690_original.jpg (the iron chains that originally demarcated the front gardens were removed for scrap during the war and never replaced) and for a modern view see Image

A view of this inter-war development round a green, showing three of the semi-detached pairs of houses and the single detached house, 64 years on from Image The properties have been well maintained and modernised by their occupiers while retaining much of their original charm and variety, and the ancient Arden oak still stands sentinel over the green, though it now has a somewhat incongruous No Waiting sign to keep it company.

Semi-detached houses 6-13 of this inter-war development are seen in this view. The spire of St Alphege's church, Solihull's most distinctive landmark, looms above the roof of no 8 where a loft conversion is in progress.

An ancient footpath leads from Solihull town centre to the River Blythe by Warwick Road, passing through Malvern Park, once the deerpark of the Malvern Hall estate, now partly built over with suburbia, partly preserved as a civic park with a nature reserve beyond. Here the path enters the park.