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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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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A Peek at Bournbrook/Barnbrook Hall

October 28, 2024
The disused lily pond, once the cellars of Bournbrook Hall.

If you go exploring around the Bournville area in the grounds near the old Cadbury Club, you find an old remnants of George Cadbury’s original village design. It’s an old lily pool situated at the far end of the old Girls’ Recreation Ground off Bournville Lane.

It was originally a quite retreat for female employees at Cadbury’s, framed by the rural landscape of the early 1900s.

Near to the pool you can also see traces of a walled-garden, which gives the sense that the area was once the grounds of …

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Stirchley Oral Histories: Three Sisters (Part Two)

August 8, 2024

This is an undated interview of three sisters. Similar interviews were taken in the 1980s.

Miss. Brettle: What other shops were there?

Mrs. Porter: Well there was a chemist. He was a bit of a doctor, he used to help the women out in Stirchley didn’t he, Mr. Churchill.

Mrs. Langley: Oh yes the chemist. He’d take teeth out as well.

Mrs. Porter: Our mom used to say he was ever so good with all the mothers in Stirchley. They used to go to him for a bit of help hadn’t they, if they couldn’t afford the doctor.

Mrs. Langley: …

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Stirchley Oral Histories: Three Sisters (Part One)

August 7, 2024
G. J. Croome, drapers, on the corner of Hazelwell Lane – known to the sisters as the “haberdashery”.

This is an undated interview of three sisters. Similar interviews were taken in the 1980s.

Interviewer: Where did you live in Stirchley?

Miss. Brettle: We lived in Ivy Road and we lived at the bottom and I mean if you walk down there now it’s nothing like it was. Well I mean Marge [Mrs Langley] can remember cows opposite you see.

Mrs. Langley: Well when we lived down there we lived in a yard with four houses.

Mrs. Porter: With a pump …

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