Highbury Park Sketch Plan

Description:This sketch plan of the grounds and gardens of Highbury Hall was drawn by Hilda Chamberlain in 1894. It accompanied a <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1759">letter</a> written to her brother, Neville, who was managing the short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful family sisal plantation on Andros, in the Bahamas.^{<small>1</small>} Highbury had been built for Joseph Chamberlain in 1879, and became the centre of the family’s life in Birmingham, both for political entertaining, and for private relaxation. Joseph’s children shared his interest in gardening, and Neville’s sisters Beatrice, Ida, Hilda, and Ethel all had areas of the gardens and grounds that they cultivated. Ida also helped Austen to manage the miniature farm there. In 1894, Joseph Chamberlain purchased additional land surrounding the estate, and was in the process of having this land landscaped.

The gardens and grounds at Highbury are a major theme of the correspondence between Neville Chamberlain and his sisters during the 1890s, and Hilda’s letter and plan clearly show that she wanted to make sure that her brother felt part of events at home, and could imagine how the new developments would look. It seems from the Chamberlain family correspondence that it was important for Hilda and her siblings to strengthen their attachment to each other through their shared experiences at Highbury, the family home. Their father’s marriage to his third wife, Mary Endicott, in 1888, meant that he began to spend more time at home and, in a series of <a href="http://www.search.suburbanbirmingham.org.uk/engine/resource/default.asp?resource=1758">photographs</a>, Mary documented aspects of domestic life in the house and grounds.^{<small>2</small>}

This private space regularly became a public space while the family still lived there. The Kings Heath Show was held at Highbury from 1898 to 1902 and again from 1908.^{<small>3</small>} Austen Chamberlain often allowed groups of constituents from his East Worcestershire seat to visit. The family also used the grounds for garden parties for Birmingham society. After Joseph Chamberlain’s death in 1914, Highbury was used as a hospital annex and home for soldiers with disabilities, and later as a residence for older women, while the gardens and grounds were gradually acquired by Birmingham Civic Society and Birmingham City Council during the 1920s and 1930s to serve as a public park, together with land from Richard Cadbury’s former estate at Uffculme, next door.

Highbury Park was used for rallies and fetes during the post 1945 period, particularly by the Birmingham Conservative and Unionist Association.^{<small>4</small>} The Birmingham and District Bee Keepers Association moved its demonstration apiary from Kings Heath Park to Highbury Park in 1948 because of noise from the railway and damage to hives by children looking for honey.^{<small>5</small>} Parts of the Italian garden and rock garden are the only visible remains of Joseph Chamberlain’s formal gardens that survive at Highbury Park today.


<font color="#666633"><small>¹ Sisal is a plant that produces a stiff fibre that can be used to make twine and rope.
² Joseph Chamberlain had previously married Harriet Kenrick, who died giving birth to Austen in 1983. His second wife was Harriet’s first cousin, Florence Kenrick, mother of Neville, Ida, Hilda, and Ethel. She died in 1875.
³ Barrie Greens, From Kings Heath to the Country: A View from the Past
(Barrie Greens & KRM Publishing, 2006), p.106
⁴ BCC Parks Committee Minutes [BA&H: BCC1 BO/1/1/28-BO/1/1/37]
⁵ BCC Parks Committee Minutes, 3 May 1948 [BA&H: BCC1 BO/1/1/25]</small></font>