IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Mount Pleasant, REDDITCH, B97 4JJ

Junction of Parsons Road with Mt Pleasant. The Woodland Cottage pub is on the western side of the road at the end of an elegant row of uniform brick-built houses.

Sometimes a word is only correct in a foreign language. In this case Mount Pleasant is what is known in Yiddish as a 'mise meshinah', literally an early death, but in practice anything which ends far too soon for no good reason. It looks really useful like a proper main road but goes nowhere and to boot there is barely any room when you suddenly hit the end (which appears to have been wilfully blocked, which is why it still pretends to be a major road) to turn round. https://jel.jewish-languages.org/words/1815

A public house on Mount Pleasant.

Looking south along Laurel Close from the hilly Parsons Road.

The view is from the top of the drive to the extended Southcrest Manor Hotel. To the right is the steep wooded slope down from the ridge on which Headless Cross stands.

View ENE down Parsons Road from the junction with Laurel Close. It was a very wet November day.

The hotel looks quiet on this occasion. It appears as a hotel and venue in page after page of a Google search. Southcrest was never a manor. It was built by Charles Terry of Herbert Terry & Sons, spring manufacturers, in 1921. Charles was a strong Methodist, a businessman and an Alderman. John Terry recalled: "I used to go [to Southcrest] and drink ginger beer. Charles would turn in his grave if he knew it was now a hotel, especially as he preached against the demon drink. The Terrys were teetotal and they insisted that other people didn't drink. You see photographs of salesmen at sales conferences – they were held at temperance hotels. All the salesmen would stand around drinking orange juice, then when the Terry family had gone home they would sneak off to the local pub." Southcrest was acquired by the Redditch Development Corporation, who looked for someone to rent or buy it. The Sentry Insurance Company, who had a small office in Redditch, were looking for somewhere to establish their European headquarters. Negotiations had been almost finalised when an angry debate arose at a local Council meeting. Councillors objected to the fact that some trees could be felled from the Southcrest woods. Sentry Insurance took this as a loss of confidence and immediately withdrew. Consequently 400 white-collar jobs were lost. from 'Old Redditch Voices' by Anne Bradford, Redditch: Hunt End Books, 2005, ISBN 0-9519481-4-8