The library is home to several oral histories which were recorded in the 1980s, and are still kept on cassette tape. Thankfully, the histories were transcribed, because tape players are a rare thing to find now!
One local history was given by George Phillips about the Umberslade Road area of Stirchley:
“I’m 76 years old and I’m George Phillips. I’ve lived in Umberslade Road all my life. We live about half way down in a block of ten houses. At first there were just these houses surrounded by fields on either side of the road. At the bottom of the road was the dairy. I remember helping with the milking of the cows from the farm which stood on the site of the Cine Bowl.
In the twenties they used to drive cattle to the slaughter house at the bottom of Bond Street, near the corner of Ribblesdale Road. The building is still there, right beside the brook.
Is that the building behind the houses just by Ribblesdale Road?
Yes, it’s a red brick building. I know because we had a dog who used to escape and go there and come back smelling to high heaven.
Another thing I remember on Sunday afternoons in the summer you’d get boys in their teens coming up from Selly Oak and Stirchley to swim in the canal. I can remember on one occasion the police caught a whole batch of them with one leg in their trousers!
Another event in my boyhood was taking the horses to be shoed at the blacksmiths which stood where the Three Horseshoes pub is now. The old pub was a little white building and the smith was just by the side under the chestnut tree.”
What happened to the old pub?
The old pub was pulled down when they built the new one.
When was that?
About 1925 or 6, something like that. The same time they pulled down the old pub on the other side of the road [British Oak].
Why was there so much interest in rebuilding the pubs?
Well, the idea was bigger and better pubs. The old pubs were really country inns.
Can you remember much about the Umberslade Road before the river [River Bourne] was put in the culvert?
Oh yes, I can remember it flooding . I remember it was around 1926, a hot summer’s day and tipping down with rain and afterwards the sun came out again. I went out and fount the middle of Umberslade Road was under water. Eventually, we found out that the dam had burst up at Coughton and the feeder reservoir burst there and rushed down through Kings Norton and flooded. The Midland Red [a bus] got stuck in the flood. When people came out of the picture house at the end of the evening to find that boys were carrying girls through the floods. They quite enjoyed that!
Was the flooding deep?
Quite deep, in fact further down as it swept through the back of the Avenues in Selly Park, there was a wooden bridge there, a pal of mine was stood there. A few seconds after his friend pulled him off it, a few seconds later it was swept down the stream. It also swept out the bridge in Lifford Lane. The road there, that complete section of road was swept away. It was quite some flood. We had boats out from Cannon Hill Park rescuing people”.