Hagley Historical and Field Society

Our next meeting at St Saviour’s Church Hall is on Tuesday 3rd July 2018 at 8.00pm when we will have a presentation by David and Pam Humphries entitled “A Virtual Tour of the Outer Circle”. Every Brummie worth his (or her) salt knows the Outer Circle bus route and many of a certain age may have travelled the entire route. However could anyone know just how much history there is in that 150 minute bus journey? The talk will highlight some of the lost places and some of the people that are on or have been near to the number 11 bus. The Virtual Tour thankfully is not 150 minutes, but less than half of that and I hope it may tempt you to make the full journey yourself.

Visitors are most welcome at all our events – see home page for details and contacts.

The summer outing is to the Jewellery Quarter.

Our coach leaves Webbs Garden Centre at 9.55am and the village car park at 10.00am.

First stop is the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter for a tour of the Smith & Pepper Factory lasting about an hour.  A guide book is included, together with tea/coffee and biscuits.

We then move to the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery where there will be free time to visit the exhibits (including the Staffordshire Hoard) and the Edwardian Tea Rooms.  Afterwards we visit the Pen Museum for a tour lasting about an hour.  We return to Hagley for about 4.00pm.

The cost of the outing is £28 which includes coach, tour of the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter with guide book and refreshments, visit to Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, tour of the Pen Museum and tips.

Car parking has been arranged at Webbs Garden Centre at a cost of £1 per car, to be collected on the day.  Numbers are limited to 30.  Non-members welcome.  Please contact us if you want to join the visit.

The idea for this new publication was originally developed by the late Dr Peter Bloore, who lived in Middlefield Lane. He was a member of Hagley Historical and Field Society and also Hagley Parish Archivist. His widow offered the file to the Archive Group and they decided that they would continue his research and aim at publishing a summary of his work plus contributions from people, who lived or had lived in the Lane or had first hand knowledge of the residents. The results are now available as an illustrated book of fifty-two pages.

Middlefield Lane front

Middlefield Lane back

The book is priced at £4 and can be purchased from Happy Families or can be ordered online from Hagley History and Field Society.

The book “Hagley Miscellanea” by John-Homery Folkes, the architect of St.Saviour’s Hall, was first published in 1974. It was for private circulation and only 25 copies were printed. Forty years later it is considered sufficiently interesting to merit this reprint. The author (born 1906) has gathered a wide range of reminiscences that together give a picture of Hagley’s inhabitants, houses, industries, celebrations and entertainments in the century and more before the explosion of house-building in the 1960s.

The book includes: the early days of the railway station; the building of St. Saviour’s church and planning the cemetery; houses large and small; an attempt at encroachment in Church Street; the Rifle Corps and the Range; the nursemaid question!; Hagley celebrities; the Sunday postal delivery and church attendance and an eyewitness account of the fire at Hagley Hall on Christmas Eve 1925. The “Illustrations” section includes the programme for the Coronation Celebration of June 1911.

The book is priced at £5 and can be purchased from Happy Families or can be ordered online from Hagley History and Field Society.

The Society has now launched a new book entitled ‘Hagley: A Village at War 1914 – 1918’, researched and written by local author and member, Pat Dunn. It is based on the ‘Hagley Parish Magazines’ of the period and describes how the people of Hagley dealt with the problems presented by the Great War on the Home Front. The people and places featured on the front cover of June’s issue of the Hagley Village News feature in the book along with many others.

The book is priced at £4 and can be purchased at the Hagley Library or ordered online. Click on the book cover below to view the first few pages.