Tag: newbuild

#365daysofbiking Waiting for renewal

December 31st – New Years Eve is not a great time for me. I loathe the enforced jollity, the fake optimism for a time beyond an arbitrary boundary and the excess it engenders. I much prefer the days after, when everything settles and normality returns, with the opening out of the days and the promise of good times to come.

Stuck doing bike maintenance all day to keep busy, a test ride around the canal was fun after tea – the towpaths are starting to dry out a bit and the riding was fast and fun.

Brownhills looked festive but somnambulant and was actually very quiet apart from the odd burst of fireworks.

An unexpectedly fun ride.

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#365daysofbiking No place like home

August 2nd – One of the more surprising developments happening locally at the moment is the new care home being built on the Chester Road at Stonnall, on the site of a former concrete block factory and quarry.

The home – which is a large, impressive and has the appearance of being very well built has risen over winter and the preceding spring and seems to be nearing completion.

This doesn’t look to be your average granny farm, but rather a specialist care facility for older folk with particular challenging needs and I think it’s the kind of thing that is needed here with our raging population – and the jobs it provides will be welcome, too.

Part of the development includes road safety improvements here on the Chester Road, which is good to see.

I wish the proprietors and future residents well in this new venture.

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March 3rd – One thing it has been nice to see of late is the new house at Highfield, south of Chasewater. Once an active farm, the site fell into decline and most of the original farm was demolished. Permission was applied for a replacement house several years ago and has now been build, and it’s a handsome, four-square place. I wish the new residents well.

In the field nest door, the coos remain as nosy and inscrutable as cows always are. I’m not sure if they’re connected with the house, or just there to manage the heath nearby, but they are lovely. They don’t seem to mind the cold.

February 10th – I’m liking the look of the houses going up on the old Brownhills market site right now. Hopefully, when complete they’ll bring lightness and a more populated feel to this once very open, wind-swept area of town, and hopefully also much needed footfall for the High Street.

Since the new houses became occupied on nearby recent developments, there has been a notable increase in people on the High Street, which can’t be a bad thing.

January 15th – One thing did impress, though: The new housing estate on the old market site in Silver Street is coming on apace.

I’m so glad to see this – it’s been so barren, so open here for an awful long time. To see life here at night will be wonderful, and hopefully, the nearby High Street will see more trade.

For once, I’m not pessimistic about the future of my town. We might, just might, break even.

August 5th – Looping back, still with a heavy heart, I stopped on the Pier Street bridge and noticed that more exploratory groundworks had been taking place on the old market site off Silver Street, clearly in preparation for new housing given permission there.

I’m all for that and hope work starts soon – anything that makes this area look less open and bleak is welcome to me.

That thought, at least, made me somewhat brighter.

May 26th – Around the corner, the new housing development at Streets Corner is looking very nice. Replacing homes that had been derelict for a decade or more, this new build project has been a long time coming, but I like this modern townhouses a lot. I like the materials used, and the pleasant, traditional approach.

So much better than what was here before, and much more aesthetically pleasing than I expected.

February 28th – Meanwhile, back in Brownhills, Silver Court Gardens, the site of the tenement estate that was razed to the ground a decade ago is seeing the start of operations to construct new housing.

This is a large project, and will be good for the local economy, without doubt. But more than that, it’s great to see so much lost, wasted land come back into use.

This is great for Brownhills.

December 31st – I’m concerned about the fate of the sculpture at Catshill Junction in Brownhills. Since the new housing development started, due to lack of access, it has become increasingly overgrown. I’m worried it might be lost completely, and fear that Walsall Housing Group have made no provision for it in the plans for the new build.

On the subject of which, it’s very early days yet but I’m finding the building flat and characterless at the moment. Any new homes here are good; the land has been dormant and unused for a decade – but I do hope this currently somewhat bland construction develops some character as it’s topped out…

May 15th – Today, I found myself in Droitwich, which is a place I used to go a lot, but rarely visit these days. A bright, sunny and warm day, it was a pleasure to be there.

There’s just one bit of Droitwich that really, really irritates me: just off the island at the top of Salwarpe Road, there’s a modern newbuild housing development. Some muppet in the design office decided they were going to make the new block of apartments look old, by building in false bricked up windows and bolting on very, very artificial architectural ironwork aping S brackets and circular tie plates. The effect fools nobody, and is visually and conceptually abhorrent.

Whoever designed and executed this dogs dinner really needs a crash course in good taste. It ruins an otherwise reasonable building.