By Pete Try
Chester Road station opened in 1863 and the railway meant that Birmingham was now easily accessible and land was now available in little Boldmere for housing development. However, the change from a rural backwater into a suburb still took another 40 or so years. Plots were bought and larger houses began to be built along Boldmere Road and Chester Road by successful Birmingham people who wanted to live in the country.
Sutton Coldfield was not Birmingham. It was (and still is) a royal town with its own charter. There was the park, the air was cleaner, there was space. By the 1880s though, planning applications submitted to Sutton’s Borough Council show that speculative house building was taking hold.
Nevertheless the town’s planning rules were rigorously maintained. Some of those who were involved in building were existing residents who bought land as it became available and the engaged architects and builders. Others were Birmingham-based builders simply going about their trade.
As an example during the first part of the 1890s there were various planning applications for ‘4 houses’, ‘6 cottages’, ‘4 villas’, ‘5 houses’ and so on.
On 20 January 1893 there was an application for permission to build 13 houses in Sheffield Lane and on 7 February 1894 application was made by a Mr Dugdale for the building of a shop and 2 houses on the corner of Sheffield Road and Boldmere Road (what is now the Boldmere Tap pub and adjoining shops). By 1898 Mr Dugdale wanted his shops and houses to be connected to the Boldmere Road sewer which had recently been constructed.
There was still a semi-rural aspect to life though. In July 1891 a Mr Pywell sought permission for a cowshed to be built behind Laburnum House in Sheffield Lane. He was a grocer and dairyman, and he clearly thought that having his own cows in a field adjacent to his house (on what was probably once part of the Sheffields’ farm) was good business and not at odds with the neighbourhood that was developing around him.
By the 1890s though others wanted their privies and piggeries to be demolished and water closets to be built instead with the drains being connected to sewers instead ash pits.
It is difficult to be precise as to the exact property some of the hundred of planning applications refer because they almost never provide house numbers and plans do not often show the location where building is proposed. As an example, in June 1897 a Mr A. Bates applied for permission to build 10 cottages along a ‘new road off Boldmere Road’. (Sutton Borough Council planning application no. 538, Sutton Coldfield library collection)
Personal transport was changing too. Some residents still wanted stables and tack rooms built for their horse and trap, for instance in October 1899 Mr Pywell applied for a stable and coachhouse to be built in Sheffield Road.
Others though were applying for ‘cycle houses’ and eventually, in 1905 a Mr Gray wanted to build a ‘motor house’, perhaps Boldmere’s first.
The buildings that were going up and filling the vacant plots varied in shape and size but many, perhaps as indicators of prosperity and good taste, had at least hints of the arts and crafts movements of the 19th century. Gradually all of the landmarks of a prosperous community appeared: post office, churches, schools and shops alongside the diaries and bakeries needed for a growing population. The ideal of a semi-rural life in the district was important and a great source of pleasure for the new householders. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that many of those who moved from Birmingham to leafy Sutton felt that they had, in some way, stepped up in life.