Description:Just outside the boundaries of the Edgbaston Calthorpe Estate lay Sir John Holder’s estate at Pitmaston, close to Joseph Chamberlain’s home at Highbury. The Holders were brewers – a magnificent tiled livery for Holders Ales & Stout can still be seen on the Craven Arms in Upper Gough Street, and an advertisement for Holders Ales appeared on the front cover of the Edgbastonia magazine in 1891. Sir John is claimed as a former Edgbaston resident by Edgbastonia, which enumerated his many philanthropic activities. These include Chairmanship of the New General Hospital Committee and the Jaffray Hospital Committee, and patronage of the arts.<small><sup>1</sup></small> Some of the Museum and Art Gallery’s most popular works of art, including ‘Dominicans in Feathers’ by H. Stacey Marks, ‘Melody’ by Kate Bunce and ‘The Piazza of St Mark’s, Venice’ by Logsdail were gifts to the city from Holder in the late 1890s.
John Holder and his sons also had a passion for new technology, and from 1898 they created a 10.25 inch gauge miniature railway capable of carrying visitors around their estate, which boasted a lake and a stream with cascades. The railway gained national acclaim, being featured in ‘The Model Engineer and Amateur Electrician’ for January 1902, along with a photograph showing a total of fifteen people riding in the miniature carriages, some carrying their tennis rackets to or from Pitmaston’s tennis lawn.
The model railway was a prodigious achievement, and effectively transformed the Pitmaston estate into a miniature rural landscape. Like the residents of Edgbaston, the Holders wanted to benefit from close proximity to the city and the amenities it afforded, while at the same time preserving the illusion of country life, in this case physically creating that illusion around them.
Holder’s interest in technology led him to embrace motor cars with enthusiasm, and in 1902 ‘The Car’ featured Pitmaston, bemoaning the encroachment of development upon such rural retreats:
‘It is hard to believe that this quiet and delightful retreat is so close to the suburbs of a large manufacturing city like Birmingham…’Pitmaston’ is one of those large estates which have preserved to Moor Green its picturesque aspect…saving them from being devoured by the onward march of the growing city, and the ubiquitous minions of the builder, who swallows up land in the near suburbs by the acre’.<small><sup>2</sup></small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Edgbastonia, July 1897
<sup>2</sup> The Car, July 1902, p.341</small></font>