Tag: regeneration

January 26th – Passing through Kings Hill in Darlaston whilst nipping into Wednesbury, I noted that the former Servis factory site – nothing but a pile of rubble for a few years now – was subject of a planning application for 250 homes. 

Which is good, really, because we need them. But…

Servis was a big employer in Darlaston for many years, and was originally part of Wilkins & Mitchell, who made power presses and other machines. Servis stuff wasn’t great quality, and they didn’t modernise, despite pioneering electronically controlled washing machines. In the 1990s the company ran into trouble, and was bought by Italian white-goods giant Merloni, themselves crashing in 2008. Since then, the brand has re-emerged under a Turkish badge-engineering parent company.

The factory was razed, and lay pulverised as a testament to the economic rough seas Darlaston was enduring; as the factory was carried to dust, Councillors and regeneration wonks pronounced this site would very soon see a retail and leisure renaissance. 

There was soon to be an election, and one must suspect this was the usual electorate-buttering bullshit; the rebirth never came, and like the Exidor factory up the road, it’ll now become homes. 

Kings Hill – once the beating industrial heart between Darlaston and Wednesbury – is slowly becoming reclaimed by housing.

January 26th – Had a wry laugh at this one. Noticed yesterday that the sign was still up trumpeting the new Pier Street footbridge, over the canal in central Brownhills. The bridge is a fine thing indeed, linking as it does Clayhanger and Brownhills in style, replacing a steep-stepped footbridge that was awful, frankly.

I was unaware of Walsall Council’s ‘Drive to regenerate Brownhills District Centre’ – wonder how that’s going?

Would the last business to leave the town please switch the lights off and feed the deer? Cheers.

June 7th – Birmingham New Street. This is Birmingham New Street. All regular travellers through Birmingham’s derided main station will recognise that tannoy jingle. I have a love-hate relationship with the place; dark, grubby, overcrowded, a nightmare on a bike or for the elderly or disabled. Yet, unlike so many stations, the layout is logical, compact and easy to grasp. It just carries way too much traffic and we need a new station – possibly on Eastside – to relieve it, then maybe the platforms could be reduced in number and widened, some natural light could be let in. 

There’s history, here, too, but not many realise. The arches at the end of platform 2 and 3 are a remnant of the original Victorian Station, as are many of the retaining cutting walls. The signal box – a remarkable Brutalist style structure designed by Bicknell & Hamilton to resemble an electrical component, is listed and a wonderful thing. As developers tear away at the upper levels, the ‘regeneration’ (how I hate that word) of this much misunderstood transport hub will not solve any of it’s functional problems, but I’m still rather fond of the old dump, if I’m honest.

August 10th – My dislike of the Walsall Wood pithead sculpture is well known and somewhat controversial. I actually think that it’s not only aesthetically dreadful, but badly engineered and ill thought out. In the construction, there’s a random mix of stainless steel fasteners and normal ones, which stands out; looking at the frame there are multiple sets of holes that appear to have been redrilled, but this may be intentional. The sign commemorating the pit seems to face the wrong way, and cannot be read from the road, whilst the construction is topped by a pennant bearing the initials NCB, for the National Coal Board. The NCB never actually operated the pit, but oversaw it’s closure, which shows a particular ignorance of history.

July 9th – after an hour or two of exploring the Black Cock and canal with a good mate, I came back to Brownhills along the canal. I reflected on the changes – how the wildlife had come out of the barren, vile pollution I knew here as a child. I watched dragonflies, admired oak, beech and sycamore saplings, smelled the heavenly scent of a carpet of honeysuckle. Crab apples ripened gently in the sun, a common tern hunted for incautious fish, grey wagtails expertly pecked at insects. I scrambled up on to the bank at Catshill Junction, where in my youth had been a ditch the size of a railway cutting filled with brackish, foul water. I remembered a solitary, 45 degree telegraph pole titling forlornly with it’s wires draped in the soup that would now be 20 metres below my feet. 

As I looked from the top, a group of teenagers – who probably weren’t old enough to remember the last century – were lazing on the grass in the centre of Clayhanger Common, basking in a patch of sunlight, completely unaware that had I done this at their age I’d be in the middle of a festering refuse dump.

That’s why I love this place, for all it’s faults.