Tag: new development

September 8th – I’ve been a bit disappointed with the new housing development on the site of former tower block Bayley House in Brownhills, between Lindon Drive and Catshill Junction.

Unlike much of local housing development by Walsall Housing Group, it’s very boxy, plain and red brick, and aesthetically mediocre, at best. Secondly, the overgrown canal bank, trees and hidden, overgrown sculpture – which could have been made a feature – have been ignored. Lower floor dwellings in that building must be horridly dark.

I’ve heard it said a local canal group are planning to tend the sculpture, but that isn’t the point: if you pump a few million into developments, a few finishing touches and nods to decent aesthetics cost next to nothing.

Unusually for WHG, this is very poor.

January 20th – Pottering around Brownhills, getting some shopping in and running errands on a wet Friday night, I wanted some night pictures, and oddly, headed for the canal. These flats near Cooper’s Bridge on the Watermead, looked warm and homely in the blackness. I’ve always been fascinated by the chutzpah of the developers of the Watermead. Built on what was a meadow around a decade ago, all the roads are named after varieties of birdlife eradicated from the area by its construction. Heron Close. Curlew Drive. Moorhen Close my bloody arse…