Civic Society Plan for Northfield in 1920's

 THE BIRMINGHAM CIVIC SOCIETY PLAN FOR NORTHFIELD IN THE NINETEEN TWENTIES 

ALAN  F WILLIAMS

No 5   IN A SERIES  OF OCCASIONAL    PAPERS   BY   THE   NORTHFIELD   CONSERVATION   GROUP

This account is in a series of Occasional Papers on Northfield.  The idea pf producing historical notes was first mooted early in 1972. Later it was agreed to extend the coverage to include contributions on topography and conservation, these to come forward in no set order.  All the authors will be members or friends of the Northfield Conservation Group.  The invitation is extended to anyone who can contribute a special item to the series, correct any factual errors, or help in any other way.  (Please contact the Series Editor:  Dr. A.F. Williams, 54 Norman Road, Northfield, Birmingham 31; 475 4498).

The Northfield Conservation Group was founded at a public meeting in November 1971.  The group's main function is to liaise with the civic and regional authorities for the conservation of Old Northfield.  Further aims are to look after the amenities of Northfield and to make Northfield people aware of their local history.  The older-established Northfield Survey Group is incorporated. Membership is open to all.  The group holds regular meetings with invited speakers which not only focus on Northfield, its past, present and future, but also embrace wider topics in conservation.  Field meetings, walks and visits to historic sites in town and countryside are also held (Please contact the Hon. Secretary, Mr. E.J. Kestle, 164 Middlemore Road, Northfield 31; 475 33OO, for programme and details.)

Chairman:   Mr. M.B. Stedman, M.A. 

Secretary:  Mr. E.J. Kestle, F.R.G.S. 

Treasurer:  Mr. P. Richards

INTRODUCTION
The village core of the Old Northfield is now a Conservation Area, with its oldest buildings protected under modern legislation (described in Northfield Occasional Paper No, 3).  Hemmed in today by pre- and postwar housing, the Church, Village Pound, the Great Stone Inn and nailer's cottages form the core, together with the old Schools building which -alas - is at the present time protected but unused. (by 2015, converted into flats without changing the outside lay-out)

Many will agree that the ensemble of buildings at the top of Church Hill should remain as it is, a living monument linking present and future generations to the old rurality.  But preservation from mindless development, which might otherwise leave the area stripped of all but its medieval Church, is not the only concern in an urban conservation area of this kind.

It would be in the true spirit of conservation not only to safeguard such an amenity but also to propose positive plans for its further enhancement.  There are, in the present time, plans for the modification of the Rectory and the erection of a Pastoral Centre which includes a handsome meeting room-cum-theatre.  Snugly tucked within the walls of the Rectory garden, this scheme will be warmly welcomed by many local groups, societies and other potential beneficiaries, besides the Parishioners for whom the Centre is primarily intended.

We may wonder if further changes in the character of the Conservation Area are desirable: the Northfield Conservation Group has in recent time successfully petitioned for the flowering trees which now adorn the Green, it has attempted to clean-up the lanes, it has sounded out local residents by questionnaire regarding the feasibility of one-way or otherwise-restricted traffic schemes, and it is hoped that help can be given with the restoration of churchyard fencing.

An underlying purpose of this paper is simply to ask the question -Is there not more that can be done to enhance our Conservation Area? The way in which it pursues this theme is to look back upon an imaginative scheme proposed over fifty years ago by the Birmingham Civic Society.

A PLAN FOR NORTHFIELD

In January 1919, when the Town Planning Committee of Birmingham was setting about post-war duties, the Birmingham Civic Society offered its collaboration and in a subsequent report it laid stress on the danger of leaving the urban landscape to emerge haphazardly from unplanned developments.

A prime concern appeared to be to ensure that the Town Planning Committee valued well-planned residential and shopping centres in new suburban areas.  But when the Civic Society considered Northfield it also had in mind the preservation of the historical and natural features of an old village, knowing that these could be swamped by piecemeal housing developments.  The rapid extension of Birmingham's suburbs consequent upon the operation of the Town Planning Acts threatened encroachment upon rural amenity and time-honoured historical associations, and the Society considered that "many charming old houses, farms and villages, and scenes of natural beauty have already been lost to our City, simply because no organised effort was made to save them".

As with so many other philanthropic schemes of the times, the story began with a Cadbury.  Eight of the family were Civic Society members in 1918; two of these were members of its distinguished Council, which included Alderman Neville Chamberlain, M.P., the composer Professor (later Sir) Granville Bantock, the poet/playwright John Drinkwater and Sir Gilbert Barling (Vice-Chancellor of the University).  It was City Councillor George Cadbury, Jnr., who donated a sufficient sum for the Civic Society to direct its attention to the old village of Northfield.

A PUBLIC COMPETITION FOR ENHANCEMENT

As a preliminary, a public competition was held for a plan to preserve the village within the proposed road plans of the South-western Birmingham Town Planning Scheme.  This competition was conducted with the approval and support of the City Council, but it did not produce a scheme "sufficiently practical to justify its adoption".  After consulting with the City Engineer, Herbert H. Humphries, the Technical Committee of the Civic Society then produced its own scheme, the outlines of which were produced in a coloured plan.

To appreciate the scheme now, one must sort out anew what existed from what was planned.  The Ordnance Survey (six inch to the mile) shows the village and surroundings of Northfield as they were at the time of World War I.  On the west side of Woodland Road there were then only twenty Edwardian houses, and from the cottages and Schools on Church Hill there was an uninterrupted view from the sloping fields of Beech Tree Farm towards Quarry Farm and over the railway to Turves Green.

Beech Tree Farm, whose land stretched from Northfield Station to Bristol Road, was an all-stone seventeenth century structure, whose last tenant Thomas Withers cased in the old stonework with brick.  Above this farm, from the still-familiar S--bend around the churchyard wall, Church Road led to the very attractive row of cottages with their steep-pitched roofs and tall chimneys on The Street - the old name for this part of Church Lane.  Opposite these cottages (where the Y.M.C.A. Hostel now stands) was Street Farm, from where the still-discernible ancient ridge and furrow stretched through the fields by Victoria Common.  Everywhere, it seems, was connected to everywhere else by footpaths, while the old sunken lanes, Bell Holloway and Hole Lane, were completely rural from end to end.

The second map shows the modifications proposed by the Civic Society. The first point to note is that then, as now, a bye-pass to the Bristol Road in Northfield had been incorporated in the City's post-Great War traffic plans.  But this bye-pass was to cross the open land just to the north of the Parish Church and approximately along the line of the entirely modern Heath Rd. South and Great Stone Road.

The movement of traffic was in the minds of the Civic Society, too; indeed, the bye-pass plan was probably the spur to the whole of its own scheme.  Their proposal was that Church Hill be driven straight through the old school buildings and the (still-existing) nailors cottages behind the Great Stone Inn, to meet the proposed new bye-pass in a five-way crossing.

In making this proposal, the Society attempted to justify demolition which today this author would believe unthinkable: "The combination of extensive traffic, sharp bends, and tortuous roads (in the old village) tends to create a dangerous situation. It can best be relieved by widening the road from the station to the church corner, and by constructing thence a new road which heads direct for the Bristol Road.  The only buildings affected by this new route are the schools and a few cottages; and none of them is of great importance.  The schools, indeed, are already out-of-date, and must in any case be rebuilt by the time that the new road-project matures; obviously, they will be better placed in the position indicated on the plan, with access from two wide roads, than they are at present, on the dangerous bend of a narrow lane."

THE TWO-FOLD ASPECT OF THE CIVIC SOCIETY SCHEME
Demolition and road-widening would thus have radically altered a sector of the old village which still remains.  What would have been the benefits?
As the Civic Society conceived it, they would have been two-fold: new developments concentrated near Street Farm, and the provision of a band of public open space almost encompassing the old village.

Firstly, the new building and road-works.  The plan called for a five-way road crossing at what is now the junction of Church Road and Great Stone Road, where a residential and shopping centre would have been developed as the week-day focus of village life.  This new concourse, or Northfield's 'Place1 as it might have become known, was replete with two ranks of shops and two public buildings, one reserved as 'The Institute', the other as a 'New Neighbourhood Centre'.  Facing a central green, these buildings were to be flanked by new schools, the existing nursery garden and the public library up the hill.

It is unlikely that the new centre would have been served by an extension of the Bristol Road tramway, but one might wonder how the virtues of access would have stood the test of time as the infill of new housing proceeded and the Austin 7's and Ford 8's of the 1930's made their appearance alongside the buses.  Undoubtedly, the most radical aspect of this part of the scheme was the straightening and widening of Church Hill, and it is not difficult to see why at that time the destruction involved was so lightly contemplated.  But we have come to learn since that time that such road "improvement inevitably leads to more use and higher speeds.  It is probable that few local residents then, and far fewer now, would welcome the widening and straightening of Church Hill.

It was part of the plan that provision be made for even further widening, so that from the Station to Bristol Road, Church Hill could form part of the then proposed Birmingham new outer ring road.  When the plan was placed before the Town Planning Sub-Committee, however, they tentatively approved of all but the straightening of Church Hill. This was because the proposed new bye-pass to Northfield had been deleted from the draft Town Planning Scheme.

A PICTURE MAP OF THE VILLAGE
The second aspect of the Civic Society scheme was related to the enhancement of as yet unencroached land surrounding the Church and the Rectory on the eastern side.  In the early post-Great War period, a series of small fields and leafy lanes lay between the burial grounds and The Street, a central feature of which was the Tithe Barn and the still discernible features of the tree-covered Moat.

The idea was to link these fields as public grounds, from 'The Glen" in what children still call "The Darkie", through Moat Farm - with an ornamental garden tilled from the square within the Moat - to a recreation ground, bowling green and pavilion established where the houses of Old Moat Drive now stand, to tennis courts close to Rathvilly and a green space with a fish pool between the Rectory and The Street.

"Here with a treble soft the red breast whistles from a garden croft And swallows twitter in the skies": the Picture Map reproduced opposite was one of many such 'bird's-eye view' drawings undertaken by Bernard Sleigh with lettering by Ivy A. Ellis.

In Haywood's volume (see Reading List) are other familiar places in similar style: A Map of the Lickey Hills "with suggestions for the future"; Aston Hall "with the new gardens"; and The Park of Sutton Coldfield - "Here is Heath and barren Moorland".  These maps were first printed in Guidebooks published by the Birmingham Civic Society.

In the case of Northfield, the Sleigh/Ellis partnership successfully blended what existed with what might be, suggesting how imaginative landscaping would lead to enhanced amenity.

Over all view of project

This part of the scheme is testimony to the extraordinary practicality and energy of the Birmingham Civic Society, linked to its aims and ideals. Had it been adopted by the City, there is but little doubt that the Northfield Conservation Area as later designated would have included a wider area than it does, and that within it we would be preserving for posterity not only the medieval Tithe Barn - a rare feature in this part of the Midlands - but also the ancient Moat.

An important aspect of the proposal was that recreational facilities were intended to give new life to an old area.  The final result might never have quite matched the quaint, sanctuary-like charm of Bernard Sleigh's 'Picture Map of the Village of Northfield' with its passe "Here doe they play bowls' and its 'Trees old and young sprouting a shady boon for simple sheep', but we would be party to the management of an unquestionably valuable area of public amenity.

Most important of all, the Civic Society's scheme was an attempt to restore and renew the sense of local community developed through the centuries, and it was put forward at a time when members of the Society were fully conscious that Northfield would see the greatest changes in its long history in the years that we now know as the period between the Great Wars.  The 'Northfield Village' booklet (see Reading List) made it clear that steps were being taken to raise a fund among local residents for the purchase of the Moat and paddocks to the east of the church. Also that should the work of forming the Neighbourhood Centre be undertaken "within reasonable time", the Birmingham Civic Society would allocate £1000 towards the cost of laying it out.

THE INITIATIVE SLIPS AWAY

In the event, this period was to witness the further destruction of assets.  In 1928 a dilapidations survey by the Diocesan Surveyor reported unfavourably on the state of the old Rectory and, in view of developments in very recent time, it is interesting to note that a suggestion was then made to take down the old building, sell off part of the site, and build a new and smaller Rectory with the proceeds.  The Church Council opposed this and sought the aid of the Civic Society.  The Society made a full survey to see whether the existing building could be modified to satisfy parochial needs, while preserving the interest and general amenity of the Rectory and its neighbourhood.  The scheme for reconditioning is fully recorded in William Haywood's 'Work of the Birmingham Civic Society' together with interesting correspondence which was concluded in The Birmingham Post with the comment by Haywood that "... the removal of this old building will be a very grave loss to the amenities of Northfield".

This was in May 1930, when the Tithe Barn, much dilapidated, was still in use at Moat Farm.  But in this year the Moat itself disappeared, Haywood's account being that "the Rector allowed the Public Works Department to use it as a dump for road waste".  To this it is fair to add that the local resident Mr. G.A. Hemus (whose booklet The Story of Northfield was published in the nineteen-fifties) suggested that the Moat was filled in "because of its danger to children who, often being too venturesome, would fall in and get a wetting".

Subsequent years.witnessed the final extension of the burial grounds and houses covered the fields of Beech Farm (Beech Farm Croft).  This is not the place to chronicle the spread of housing in Northfield; it suffices to say that in the post-World War II period, the need for housing became paramount.  Regrettably little attention was paid to conservation and the Birmingham Civic Society's earlier initiative was forgotten.

The Street cottages disappeared under road widening and flat building. The Tithe Barn, used for a time as an H.Q. for Boy Scouts and during the Second World War by the Home Guard, became a tumble-down ruin.  Its life was renewed when it was converted as a secluded garden home after the war. This restoration, carried out by a Chairman of the Northfield Survey Group, might have been the turning of the tide.  It was featured in "Ideal Home" Magazine (August 1954) and the local newspaper (in 1964) waxed eloquently on what had been achieved:

"The huge doorway through which the laden carts once trundled now form the front entrance to the house - the hinges on which the great doors hung are still in place. The terraced approach to the door is over stone slabs which formerly were the internal flooring of the barn.

The most striking feature of the house is the magnificent hallway and its Elizabethan oakbeam stairway.  This room ... is as stately, yet far more homely, as a manor house of the time when the barn was erected.  It is a tribute to Elizabethan workmen - then and now."

Unfortunately, only another five years were to pass before the Tithe Barn, too, was demolished to make room for no less than 29 houses on the two and a half acre site occupied by the Barn and two adjacent houses in Woodland Road.  These last were of no architectural merit, but what of the Tithe Barn itself? Planning permission was delayed for a time while the Birmingham City Council investigated to see if it was of historical interest:again the local newspaper covered events, reporting the developer: "I understand that research was done and council officials even visited the Tithe Barn, but apparently it was agreed that the building was not of sufficient historical interest to save" (The Bromsgrove Advertiser June 6, 1969).

Pine Walk now covers this site: why not 'Tithe Barn Gardens', or was such a name too ironic? Old Moat Drive recalls the past, but will the new flats proposed for the one remaining green space close to the church recall the pointed-style windows of the 'Curate's House' (demolished 1973)? And can we still preserve the old Schools building intact and in use, together with the still-lived-in 'Stone' cottages where once rang the sound of the hammers of Northfield's nailers?

SHRINKING OPPORTUNITIES: A CHALLENGE

Sometimes it may seem as if our local amenity concern is piecemeal: just what the Birmingham Civic Society once feared was the case in the whole of Birmingham.  In Northfield today, a concern is intermittently expressed for the condition of roads, footways, trees, wastepaper bins and buildings.  Considered independently of each other, these matters have little import.  But as a Conservation Group we hold the firm conviction, expressed elsewhere in print, that the ensemble of buildings which remain within the old village core is a classic example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.  We believe this is an important illustration of the fundamental philosophy behind the designation of conservation areas.  To remove bit by bit any more of the old village core will considerably lessen the significance of the local character and weaken the argument for preserving the remaining buildings.

Today's challenge is the result of the neglect of yesteryear.  One is reminded of the emotive words which the late Ethel Adair Impey - an early member of the Birmingham Civic Society - wrote in conclusion to her Northfield Survey Group Paper read at Tinkers Farm School in 1952:

"Perhaps something not yet thought of is wanted for the moral nourishment and cohesion of our overspill population such as Northfield seems to be.  The more that can be done to foster regional interest and loyalty "to recover some local soul', the better."

She believed that the Northfield Survey Group, of which she was Chairman, might be an effective instrument to this end.

                                                                                                                                                                   

Is there more that the Survey Group's inheritor, the Northfield Conservation Group can do currently to take up the challenge? The Civic Society's scheme of the 1920's was bold and imaginative.  There was more time and more space in those far-off years: both have been almost used up. Is there enough still left for the City planners, the Conservation Group and the local community to propose an equally imaginative plan for the enhancement of the officially-designated Conservation Area - 'to recover some local soul' within the built environment? A new plan for the conservation of the old Northfield that still remains?

Acknowledgements and Reading List

I would like to thank Mr. F.N.H. Barwell, Hon. Sec., Birmingham Civic Society, for permission to reproduce Bernard Sleigh's 'Picture Map of Northfield' from William Haywood's The Work of the Birmingham Civic Society June 1918 to June 1946 (N.D. 1947?).  The Northfield scheme is more fully described in Northfield Village and Its Preservation Within the Birmingham S.W. Town Planning Scheme, The Birmingham Civic Society, a booklet which also contains eight pages of Historical Notes on Northfield by Alderman J.S. Pritchett and photographs of the Great Stone Inn, Moat Farm, The Rectory and the Church Porch.  The area as it is today is described by M.B. Stedman and A.F. Williams in 'Conservation Areas I: Northfield, Birmingham, Architecture West Midlands No. 16  February 1974

A SERIES OF OCCASIONAL PAPERS ISSUED BY NORTHFIELD CONSERVATION GROUP

No. 1    Northfield's Turnpike Roads  Peter Richards

No. 2    Notes on a Passage from a Monumental Inscription in the Chancel of Northfield Church  L. G. Day

No. 3    A Background to Urban Conservation in the West Midlands Michael Dillon

No. 4    Manor and Vestry in Northfield   R.H. Hall

No. 5    The Preservation of Old Northfield: The Birmingham Civic Society Plan of the 1920's A.F. Williams

No. 6    Parish Government in Northfield  R.H. Hall

The Occasional Papers may be obtained on application to the Literature Secretary,  Mrs N. Hopkins, 15 Woodland Road, Northfield, Birmingham B31 2HU