Description:This account by Margaret Smith provides a fascinating story of the journey of a working-class family from Selly Oak to various new homes across south-west Birmingham. She was born on 23 December 1927. Her father, Francis Cox, had grown up in terrible poverty in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter, and the sacrifices of his mother, who brought up five children on her own, left a lasting impression on him.
At first Margaret’s parents rented two rooms in a terraced house in <a href="http://www.surburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1466">Heeley Road, Selly Oak</a>, and she remembered its cramped rooms, no bathroom and a single cold water tap in the back scullery. Later the family moved to a council house on Borrowdale Road, Northfield, but her father was often unemployed. Smith recounted that the weekly rent was fifteen shillings and their weekly dole money was 25 shillings, leaving only ten to support Margaret, her brother and her parents. She describes a visit by Means Test officials inspecting the house for ‘luxury’ items. People were encouraged to sell any possessions surplus to the bare minimum before they were eligible for the full allowance. Margaret’s mother did occasional home work, made her own clothes, even collecting thistledown on Gannow Green to stuff the children’s pillows.<small><sup>1</sup></small>
Between 1932 and 1938 her father settled into regular employment at a brass foundry at Hockley Hill, and the family moved to more rural surroundings, before relocating back to Birmingham.<small><sup>2</sup></small> They settled at Stonehouse, a new estate of 600 houses largely completed by 1937 adjacent to Weoley Castle.<small><sup>3</sup></small> Here, Margaret describes vividly her first impressions of this ‘raw, new estate’, with the half-built infrastructure, the roads ‘just churned up mud.’ Having been used to the freedom of real country living, Margaret found the atmosphere of the estate oppressive and ‘impersonal’, particularly resenting the visits of <a href="http://www.surburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1405">municipal inspectors</a>.
No two experiences were the same, and others moved from slum clearance areas as children described their homes in more glowing terms. Margaret’s aunt had moved to nearby Weoley Castle from a terrace in Selly Oak, ‘entranced’ by the views afforded of the ‘green fields of the Woodgate Valley and Tom Knocker’s Wood’.<small><sup>4</sup></small> Margaret lived in a ‘totally a socialist household, as were most of the others in the area.’ Their beliefs echoed the ethos encouraged by the Community Association movement, and it would appear that there would be a lot of potential interest in the work of these groups [link to Mike: Essay]. Her parents were now reasonably well-off, and able to devote leisure time to advancing community work, were instrumental in setting up the Stonehouse Family Centre for recreation and educational activities, where Margaret observed whole families from the estate spent time putting on plays and concerts.<small><sup>5</sup></small>
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> 'Some memories of a Northfield woman by Margaret Smith', Carl Chinn Archive [BA&H: MS 1902/7/10] pp.1-4
<sup>2</sup> Ibid., pp.4-8
<sup>3</sup> Joseph McKenna, Birmingham. The Building of a City (Stroud: Tempus Publishing Ltd., 2005), p.103
<sup>4</sup> 'Some memories of a Northfield woman by Margaret Smith', Carl Chinn Archive [BA&H: MS 1902/7/10] p.4
5. Ibid., pp.10, 14</small></font>