Highfield House Memories
On this page we will post reflections on Highfield House, its history and the people who lived there. There are now three items. The first and third contributions are from John Worthy and the second a poem by JP.
HIGHFIELD HOUSE
Highfield House has been a silent sentinel that oversaw the transition of Hall Green from sleepy hamlet to the outermost suburb on the edge of a great city. There were times when its people were not quite sure where they belonged as between 1849 and 1899 it was policed by Warwickshire yet it paid rates to Birmingham but it was still part of Worcestershire. Between 1899 and 1910 its inhabitants were asked where they wanted to be, they chose to become “Brummies” and they have remained so to this day.
Highfield House is 137 years old. It stands upon an ancient tithe called Johnny Green’s Meadow. It was numbered 1738 but there were two other tithes that bore the same name, little Johnny Green and Large Johnny Green all three were called Johnny Greens Pieces. Johnny Green was reputed to be an 18th century tailor who took the land in lieu of debt.
On the tithe map of 1847 the meadow is vacant and remained so on the 1857 map by Henry Blood of “Birmingham and its Environs” but by 1871 building work had begun on the land and in 1872 the Post Office Directory shows Richard Franklin living there. [Believed to be distant cousin of Ben Franklin] The next reference in the directory is in 1875 for James Whilde a gentleman. The tithe map of 1884 retains the 1738 number but marks Highfield House as the landmark it was to remain for the next 125 years on all maps. By 1881 the census records Richard Gold as the head of household and the Gold family continued to live there into the 1920’s. Mabel Gold was appointed as an apprenticed Pupil Teacher at Hall Green School in 1893. The Gold family are recorded on the censuses of 1881, 1891 and 1901. Whilst they were essentially involved in the burgeoning metal trades of Greet many of their siblings were scholarly. In the closing years of the 19th century rooms in the house were let to itinerant workers servicing the farms and larger houses of Hall Green.
By 1923 the Gold family was waning and the Ingram family arrived. The Ingram family occupation started with father Alfred, mother Alice their twelve year old daughter Marie [Madge] and five year old Joy. The family grew to include a son Alfred Edward who everyone called “Chum”. Madge and Joy both emigrated to Canada in 1953.
Chum remained in England and married Eileen in 1947. They had a daughter in 1951 called Janet and three years later a son called Robert. Alfred died in 1965 and Alice having lived to 100 years old [1983] received the fabled telegram from the Queen survived a few months more but did not see her 101st birthday. Chum died in 1989 in Selly Oak Hospital and Eileen was found dead in Highfield house in 2006. Their surviving children now live in Wythall/Hollywood. Alfred [of 1923 tenure] was reputed to have built the cottages at the end of the garden that now occupy the terrace along Highfield Road and Alice claimed that they lived in each of them at some time prior to moving into Highfield House. Thought to have been built between 1908 and the First World War the terraced cottages are still there today numbered from 151 to 165 Highfield Road.
Highfield House was one of the few houses that said, “This is Hall Green” If Hall Green had a logo on headed notepaper it would have been that house. It had a character of tranquillity that will be lost forever; destroyed in the same myopic frenzy that has claimed so many reminders of Hall Green’s past history. In the campaign to save the house the preservation order came just one month too late. Petitions numbering 750 names of local residents went unheeded and publicity was the only avenue left. Coverage by Local Radio [WM] and press stories in the Birmingham Post and Mail were stalwart but in the endgame it was money that swayed the verdict despite five city councillors supporting the fight to save it. The Achilles heel of the house was its huge garden. Though planners had to admit that the house was structurally sound they maintained their hands were tied by legislation and approved the demolition of the “House that stood on Johnny Green’s Meadow”. Three councillors voted against and were of the opinion that it was immoral to demolish it. The timeless cedar outside however has a preservation order and will survive.
A Poem
THE HOUSE
No one lives there any more
Behind the heavy oaken door
No footfall on the winding stair
Silence betrays no presence there
No kettle boils upon the hearth
Gone is the sound of that shrill laugh
And in the stillness now quite sure
That no one lives there any more
Outside the traffic rushes by
Past screening poplars as they sigh
And in the gardens long time sown
The overgrowth no one to own
Upon the blue brick laid courtyard
Grass claws its way through every chard
The birds still come to table now
From eaves and gutters from bush and bough
The house is silent nothing stirs
Hid deep amongst the planted firs
And in the pearlised dancing mist
A ghost upon the housing list
Dressed in white to glide not walk
Still forming words but does not talk
A presence left that none can see
The ether of a spirit free
No, no one lives there any more
Though they once did for years four score
Ingrained in brick and fabric fold
Remembered passing moments scold
Yet still I see her standing there
Above the rise of winding stair
As I turn the key in that oak door
For no one lives there any more
JP
A LANDMARK (by John Worthy)
A landmark is a signature edifice that identifies immediately with its surroundings. It is an image that triggers a recollection in the psyche and opens the appropriate memory file. A picture of the Big Ben clock tower or Buckingham Palace selects London and The Eiffel Tower Paris. The mere mention of a place name may well contour the picture of a familiar landmark associated with any given place.
In Hall Green in Birmingham there are few landmarks but amongst those rapidly decreasing few is Highfield House. It stands on Highfield Road overlooking a roundabout where Robin Hood Lane crosses an ancient Ridgeway that ran between two of the Manors which were the contributors of most of the land that became the southern suburbs of Birmingham. One of those suburbs is now Hall Green.
Though neither Manor survived the passage of time their Landmarks that marked the way from Kings Norton to Yardley did and one of those landmarks was Highfield House. It was built by Richard Franklin in 1856 upon land sold by Edmund Dolphin from Hillclose farm. It did not become a landmark immediately. A map of the area in 1857 did not show Highfield House although it was there, yet a later map of 1884 clearly regarded the house as the landmark it was to remain for the next 125 years.
Richard Franklin named Highfield House in 1870 when it became obvious that a postal address of “Richard Franklin of Hall Green was no longer sufficient to ensure the delivery of post. By 1873 the house was being let to multiple tenants who all gave their address of “Highfield House”. The first recorded tenant was James Whilde in 1873.
Locally the name of the House frequently crossed the lips of anyone giving directions or seeking “Rooms to let” and the house became one of note in Hall Green. At the time Highfield House was built Queen Victoria awaited her 38th birthday and she had been The Queen for just 19 years. It was the year that the Victoria cross was inaugurated, the American Civil War was still five years into the future and the bells for the clock tower we now call “Big Ben” would not be struck for another two years.
Though the tranquillity of Highfield House has borne silent witness to the passage of 152 years the image of its cedar tree shading the house has not. Whilst the house can lay claim to more than one and a half centuries the tree can only own one hundred years or so. Its growth has been rapid and the top of the tree has been taken out on at least two occasions. The dating of the tree is not accurate but a measurement of its girth around the trunk puts its age at 108 years. It was planted or it was seeded in 1900. Yet the longevity of either the tree or the house is not taken separately in 2008 but together.
The image of Highfield House beneath the dark green cedar is the landmark that opens the memory file marked Hall Green. After it is demolished the epicentre of Hall Green will shift or disappear.
