IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bickenhill Park Road, SOLIHULL, B92 7JP

Araucaria araucana

Note the clock tower on the left.

At junction with Warwick Road in Olton.

Looking down Warwick Road towards Solihull / Birmingham boundary. Clock tower Image] on left is at junction with Old Warwick Road. The flats on the right are a recent replacement for old houses demolished.

Known as "The Church among the Trees", this was built as a Congregational church on the corner of Kineton Green and Brookvale Roads. The architect was John Osborne (an earlier design by W.H. Bidlake having been rejected as too costly) and the builder was Thomas Turton. The building was opened on the first day of the twentieth century, 1 January 1901. The nonconformist Holden family worshipped here from 1905-1911 when they lived opposite at Image Congregationalists had been active in Olton since 1820, when the Revd Thomas Hood preached in Kineton Green and probably at the Image (not the present public house, but its eponymous tree at the meeting of the bounds of Bickenhill, Solihull and Yardley parishes and on the county march between Warwickshire and Worcestershire, where a station with a Gospel reading would traditionally have been made during the annual Rogationtide processions). From 1879 they had worshipped in the old chapel converted from a butcher's shop and blacksmith's premises, which later became the workshop of the organ builder Tom Sheffield and subsequently Image I am indebted to the researches of Margaret Jordan published in "Olton Heritage" (1986) for much of this history.

This house at 15 Kineton Green Road was built by the local firm of Bragg in 1905 and was rented by Arthur Holden and his family who lived there until 1911. Gowan is a Scots word for a daisy (used by Burns in "Auld Lang Syne") and the name must have had a special significance for the family as they had also used it for one of their earlier residences near Lapworth (then called Kingswood) Station, in Image Edith Holden was living here in Olton when she compiled her nature notes, posthumously published as "The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady". For more information on her life and her various residences in this area, see Ina Taylor's biography "The Edwardian Lady" www.inataylor.co.uk/page/edwardianLady

Until the later 19th century the small settlement of Olton was a detached and remote part of the parish of Image, centred on the Image By the early 13th century its market had moved to the new town of Solihull and "Old Town" became a sleepy hamlet. The coming of the Great Western Railway led to expansion of the village and it acquired its own small parish church in 1880 (the present chancel, designed by J.G. Bland and built by Bromwich & Foster of Rugby); nave and transepts were added in 1896 to the design of Benjamin Corser, who also designed many of the interior furnishings including choir stalls, reredos and font. Pevsner considered the whole church devoid of architectural merit, but conceded that the floral capitals to the round piers of the interior were well carved. The church has neither tower nor spire and the walls are faced with local red sandstone. It now stands isolated between the old and new courses of the A41 Warwick Road. Its chief treasure is a recusant chalice of 1640.