1939 Trade Directory

Pages from Kelly's Directory for 1939 covering streets in Ladywood and the Edgbaston area which became Lee Bank and its environs.

A Number of Things to Do with a Dead Cat - by Chris Upton

If you’re reading this column with the family tabby curled up contendedly on your lap, I suggest that you send it away to watch television. I have ...

A tour round a public ARP shelter - sixty years on

During the Second World War air-raid shelters were located in people's gardens but there were also many public shelters too, capable of coping with...

Agreement between St Thomas's School and Harry Robert Birch

The agreement drawn up to appoint Harry Birch as headmaster of St Thomas's School. The document was amended on November 13th 1903 to account for ou...

Audio Files: Fred and Pat Meads remember

Author Jackie Gay (left) met up with local residents Pat and Fred Meads. Jackie interviewed the couple, talking about their lives in the area. The ...

Battle to commemorate our fallen soldiers by Chris Upton

The statistics show around 150,000 Birmingham men marched off to the battlefields of the First World War, and about 12,400 never marched back. The...

Belgians In Birmingham by Chris Upton

In the autumn of 1914, when thousands of British soldiers were learning a little French and setting off for Flanders, the Belgians were heading in ...

Blondin walks across The Reservoir by Chris Upton

Derwentwater, Windermere, Loch Lomond. When the names of Britain’s great lakes are mentioned, Rotton park reservoir can be forgiven for having som...

Chapman's Mill - by Chris Upton

Turn the clock back a little more than a century and there were genuine windmills to see in Birmingham and not a Dutchman in sight. Perhaps the mo...

Charles Wilcox, George Cross Hero - by Chris Sutton

Charles Wilcox (born on 11th May 1919 in Ladywood) was awarded the Edward Medal(later converted to a George Cross) for helping to rescue a colleagu...

Edgbaston B15 at War by Chris Sutton

Apart from a few Zeppelin raids the UK had been largely untroubled at home during the First World War. In World War Two the "homefront" became part...

First City Battalion: the Fourteenth Royal Warwickshire Regiment

On the Fourteenth September 1914 the Birmingham Post published a list of men accepted for the first "Pals" Battalion. This exhibition covers the en...