Carnegie Libraries Exhibition for Birmingham Heritage Week

October 1, 2025

As part of Birmingham Heritage Week 2025, Stirchley Library hosted a special exhibition celebrating the city’s Carnegie libraries.

The display explored the history, architecture, and community role of Birmingham’s Carnegie buildings, which were funded in the early 20th century by Scottish-American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Through research, photographs, and interpretation boards, visitors could learn about the enduring features of these much-loved libraries – from their light-filled reading rooms and junior sections to their distinctive architectural details.

Highlights included the story of Northfield Library, rebuilt after an arson attack in 1914, and boards focusing on how design choices – skylights, windows, …

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More Tales from Stirchley Story Garden

August 21, 2025

As part of this year’s Story Garden summer reading challenge, children at Stirchley Library stepped outside into the garden behind the library and turned plants, trees, and wildlife into inspiration for new tales.

Armed with pencils, paper, and plenty of imagination, they gave the garden voices, secrets, and adventures – from magical nests and hidden treasures to talking plants and mysterious pathways. Some chose to write stories, while others sketched and coloured their ideas, filling the garden with characters and colour.

Before we finished, everyone painted stones with garden characters and story sparks. Some of these have now been hidden …

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Local Green Spaces: Stocks Wood

July 8, 2025
The pool at the foot of Stocks Wood. Stocks Drive can be seen just in the background. Taken in 1879. Held by Birmingham Archive.

On the site where Selly Manor now stands, there was once a pool of water – it lay at the foot of Stock’s Wood. Selly Manor, along with its nearby companion Minworth Greaves, is a timber-framed building saved from destruction by George Cadbury. Both were carefully dismantled, moved from their original locations, and rebuilt near Bournville Green. Their histories are fascinating (you can find out more [here]), but the land …

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Local Green Spaces: The Robin Garden

July 1, 2025

This summer, the library’s reading challenge is “Story Garden” — and we’ll be sharing a series of posts about local green spaces: some tucked out of sight, others hiding their secrets in plain view.

We begin just behind the library itself, in what’s sometimes called the Robin Garden, named for the painted robin perched on a wooden stump. This space is cared for by the Fruit & Nut Village, who’ve transformed it into a vibrant patchwork of fruit trees, vegetables, herbs, and other useful plants.

Plum (Prunus domestica).

This tucked-away green space is full of surprises. While many …

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The Secret(ish) Garden Behind the Library

June 17, 2025

Tucked behind the library, past the last row of books and beyond the back wall, is a quiet garden. It might seem small at first glance, but a few of weekends ago, it opened into something much bigger — a world of whispered secrets, talking plants, buried treasure, and magical names like Moonlit Hollow and Caterpillar Bloom.

As part of our storytelling activity for families and children, we invited library visitors to step into this space, slow down, and really look at what was growing. Lavender, brambles, elder, strawberries, and more — each plant had a story to tell, …

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