"30 years ago Acocks Green was but a small hamlet. At that time there were no houses on the left hand side of Station Road and only 5 in Yardley Road, which was but a country lane with irregular grass bordered footpaths and high hedges on either side. Arden Road was then known as Quality Lane, Westley Road as Well Lane and Hazelwood Road as Dog Lane. The village of Acocks Green, now so thickly covered with shops, then only had eight. The services of one postman at that time were amply sufficient for the requirements of the district. The late Mr Tom Harris carried out the combined duties of postmaster and librarian, in addition to carrying on a business as a newsagent and grocer."

In June, 1881, the Acocks Green Trustees at their meeting decided to accept plans for the new church submitted by Messrs Loxton and Newman, architects of Wednesbury. A month later Mr. C. Newman, one of the firm’s partners, was instructed to advertise for tenders for the building. In December of the same year the trustees resolved that the tender from Messrs Vardy and Winter amounting to £1230 10s 0d be accepted. This sum included as an optional extra a church spire at a sum of £67 10s 0d.

In the meantime, the Trustees had completed a form of application to the Wesleyan Chapel Committee for permission to erect a chapel. Under the section on the form headed 'necessity of the Case' the Trustees stated that the present chapel was too small to accommodate all who wished to attend. There were 40 society members and 120 regular hearers in a school chapel built to accommodate 120 plus an unspecified number of school children. The nearest Wesleyan chapel to that at Acocks Green was the one at Coventry Road, 3½ miles distant. "The site was situated in a village population of 2500 with a middle class population. All the present buildings would be retained and used as a Sunday school". The style of the proposed new chapel was described as 'modified Gothic' and would measure sixty-three feet by forty feet. The proposed number of sittings within the new building would be 320, comprising 270 for letting and 50 free seats. To pay for the chapel the Trustees hoped that a public appeal would raise £200, £530 was already promised in subscriptions with further annual subscriptions of £250 and that the Chapel Committee itself would grant £250, bringing the total to a neat £1230, just 10s. short of the accepted tender. Annual income and expenditure was estimated to be £90 which would include a surplus of £21 18s 0d. How near these figures quoted came to a realistic appraisal of the financial situation and how much was owed to the anxiety of the Trustees to present a good case is a matter for conjecture. Nevertheless, the Chapel Committee gave official sanction to erect a chapel at a cost of £1458 on 16th March, 1882.

The Acocks Green Trustees had decided a month earlier on a list of names of people who would be invited to lay memorial stones. They were Alderman Avery, the then Mayor of Birmingham, Miss Taylor of Knowle, and Messrs. R. Tangye and S. Jeavons. The Revs. J.H. James and J.W. Macdonald were to be requested to take part in the ceremony. The stone laying was first scheduled to take place on Tuesday, April 4th, but this was later altered to Monday, 1st May, 1882.

On March 25th there came disturbing news that one of the two bondsmen, or sureties, offered by the builders, a Mr Wootten of Park Street, had refused to sign the bond. The Trustees very properly resolved that the contractors should be required to provide another bondsman and that work should be suspended until a name was forthcoming. This was done.

After a very stormy weekend, when gale damage had left a trail of destruction across the country, May 1st, 1882, dawned tranquil if not sunny. The earlier plans by the Trustees for the ceremony had fallen through for reasons not stated. On Wednesday, May 3rd, 'Aris's Gazette', the forerunner of the 'Birmingham Post' gave this report:

"New Wesleyan Chapel, Acocks Green
The memorial stones of a new Wesleyan chapel were laid at Acocks Green on Monday afternoon. The chapel will occupy a prominent position adjoining the schools, now used as the chapel, and will be situated at the corner of Shirley Road and Bottville Road. The building is estimated to cost £1,300 and will seat 330 people. £900 has already been promised towards the cost. The memorial stones were laid by Mrs Hornby, Mrs Price, Mrs Gettings and Mrs. Mellor and after the ceremony the Rev. Dr. J.H. James delivered an address.

The following gentlemen were also present - Revs. R. Jones, J. Bainton, J. Hearnshaw, J.R. Berry, J. Hornby, E.J. Banham and G.E. Catting. The smaller stones were laid by ten ladies and gentlemen. A tea was afterwards provided in the schoolroom. to which over one hundred people sat down. In the evening a public meeting was held in the Public Hall, the Rev. J.R. Berry presiding. The Revs. A. Butler, R. Newton Young and Thomas Hill and Mr. J.D. Mullins took part in the proceedings as well as the Rev. gentlemen present in the afternoon."

The initialled stones can still be seen on the front wall of the church facing Shirley Road. It is thought that they stand for the following people:
J.L. Miss J. Letts.
E.D.W. Miss Effie Ward.
G.E.M. Miss G.E. Mellor.
.H.H. Miss H. Hornby.
C.J.M. Miss C.J. Mellor.
S.L.M. Miss S.L. Mellor.
Sunday School M.A.B. Miss M.A. Bradbury (for Sunday School).
T.W.B. Mr. T.W. Blantern.
W.T.P. Mr. W.T. Price.

In September, 1913, the 'Belmont Row' Home Messenger Circuit Magazine' states that those people whose names appeared on the stones placed sums of money on them. It also gives a list of over ninety names of people who subscribed to the new church. This list appears at the end of this church story.

The 'Watchman' magazine, a forerunner of the 'Methodist Recorder', gives more information about the stone laying. There were four large stones and ten smaller ones. Those laying the large stones each gave £25, the others £5 and £173 was collected altogether at the ceremony. Of the ministers taking part the Rev. R. Newton Young was Secretary of Conference, Dr Butler was vicar of St. Margarets, 0lton, the Rev. R. Jones vicar of Hall Green and the Rev. J. Bainton was Minister of the Congregational church, Acocks Green. The writer is indebted to the Rev. William Leary, Connexional Archivist, for the information from the 'Watchman'.

As was the case with the first church the builders forged ahead. The architects described the style of the building as "Continental Gothic in red brick with a slated roof and with nave, aisle, entrance lobbies, tower and spire. The interior woodwork was of best red deal". The nave was sixty ft. by 22½ ft, the aisle fifty ft. by nine ft., the tower and spire were sixty-four ft. in height and the nave from floor to ceiling was thirty-two ft. in height. The interior was lighted by gas. The architects continue: "The building, taken as a whole, presents a cheerful appearance, combined with elegance of design and convenience of arrangement. The accommodation afforded is for 425 sittings." As stated earlier the pulpit and communion rail from the old chapel were incorporated into the new one with the pulpit again placed centrally. There was no choir transept as we know it at that time. Externally the dressings were of Bath stone. There is in existence a line drawing of the church which was used as a heading for a subscription appeal in 1881. It depicts the church jutting out from the building line of the original chapel towards Shirley Road and shows an entry by a side porch on the west side as well as the door beneath the spire on the east side, but the flying buttresses, now seen on the Botteville Road side, are absent.

It was not until November, 1982, when this present history was being compiled, that the date of the opening of the new chapel was found in an uncompleted schedule, dated 12th April, 1883. This stated that the chapel was opened on Tuesday, October 17th, 1882, a fact previously unknown. None of the Birmingham newspapers carried a story of the ceremony so presumably the Trustees did not consider it to be worthy of a mention. The Belmont Row circuit plan for the September-December quarter, 1882, made no mention either of the opening service or of special preachers. On October 18th, 1882, it was decided that those persons occupying pews for the longest period in the old chapel should have priority of choice in their order over seat lettings in the new chapel. Although open for worship the chapel was still not complete. Mr. C. Newman, the architect, was invited to the Trustees Meeting of April, 1883, to give a progress report. The minutes give the reason for the delay: "The architects be instructed to write to the Official Receiver appointed under the liquidation of Vardy and Winters, giving him notice that certain work is necessary and unless this is executed within seven days they will take the work out of the contractor's hands and deduct accordingly." Mr. Wootten's earlier refusal to act as a bondsman for the builders is explained - he had doubts about the builders' financial situation. In their anxiety to get work and stave off a cash flow crisis Vardy and Winters may have submitted an uneconomical tender in the hopes that interim payments as work progressed would save them from financial disaster.

Fortunately, by October 1883, the final monies to both the architects and builders were paid by the Trustees, partly with the help of an overdraft for £478 168 6d at Lloyds Bank. It is interesting to see the costs involved in erecting the chapel and the following is a summary by the architects, dated 1883.

With payments for professional services the final bill came to £1447 17s 1d. The church was insured for £1300.

0n Wednesday, January 11th, 1893, an event occurred which could have put an end to the existence of the Wesleyan church in Acocks Green. The report in the 'Birmingham Daily Mail' for that same day explains:

"Fire at Acocks Green. A Church in Danger
Early this morning the Birmingham Fire Brigade was called upon to attend a fire at Acocks Green which, but for their intervention, might have assumed much larger proportions, as there was no other fire station within call. At five minutes to seven o'clock a telegram was received at the Central Offices from the police station at Acocks Green asking for immediate help to be sent to the Wesleyan Chapel at Acocks Green which was on fire. The superintendent with a steam engine and tender started within five minutes of the receipt of the telegram and reached Acocks Green within little more than half an hour. It was found that the smaller schoolroom was enveloped in flames, which were, however, confined almost entirely to that building. The church and schools consist of three buildings ranged side by side, the largest being the church, smallest an old schoolroom and the other, which was formerly the church also a school room. The fire had started in the smaller schoolroom and the church was therefore protected by an intervening building. After working for a little over an hour the brigade extinguished the fire, which had by that time destroyed one half of the schoolroom, the other portion having to some extent been saved by a dividing wall. The roof of the larger schoolroom was considerably damaged, but the interior of the building was not affected and the fire was entirely prevented from reaching the church. The building is insured and the loss will thus probably be fully covered. The minister is the Rev. H.G. Roberts."

Heaven help any building on fire nowadays if the services of the fire brigade depended on the despatch of a telegram. Perhaps there was Divine intervention all those years ago to prevent the fire spreading. Whether Divine inspiration prompted the Trustees to increase their church insurance is not recorded.

Early the next month the Trustees inspected new plans to replace the damaged school buildings at an estimated cost of £200 (but which later proved to be £419). The plan made provision for an extra class room, entrance, kitchen, extended basement and new dormer windows in the old roof. Not for the first time the Ladies Sewing meeting proposed to hold a Sale of Work to help meet this unexpected expense.

On May 10th, 1895, a special Trustees Meeting was called to consider buying the house next door to the church in Bottville Road. It was thought that for the first time Acocks Green chapel should have a manse for the minister. The following advertisement, taken from a local newspaper and dated May 14th, 1895, is stuck into the minute book:

"Messrs. Thomas & Bettridge will sell by auction at the Grand Hotel, Colmore Row, B'ham, at half past six o'clock in the evening:

Lot 3. A well built and comfortable Residence, known as 'Bradenshope', Bottville Road, Acocks Green, containing five bedrooms and box room (readily convertible into bathroom) three reception rooms, 2 pantries, kitchen, scullery and cellar, together with outbuildings and garden and let at a very inadequate rent of £32 p.a. Leasehold for a term having about 85 years remaining unexpired at ground rent of £4 8s 0d."

At this time the church had no projecting chancel and this house stood immediately adjacent to the back of the church. Only a narrow strip of land belonging to the garden of this house, separated the two. According to the 25" to the mile map of the area ‘Bradenshope’ was built on one plot of land with the adjacent plot in Bottville Road being an extension of its own garden. This fact was to be of considerable importance when the school buildings were erected in the early 1930s. A successful bid was made at the auction on 15^th May, and the house was bought for the sum of £540. Just four months later the Rev. T.S. Gregory and his wife, took up residence. At the January, 1896 Quarterly Meeting it was announced that the Acocks Green manse had been furnished entirely through donations without any expense to the circuit.

There was to be a lull in building activity on the chapel site in Shirley Road until the twentieth century was two decades old. In the intervening years there were only minor adjustments to the interior. The story of the purchase of the 'Tin Tabernacle' in Westley Road, Acocks Green, will be told later.

A photograph of the church interior taken some time in the early 1920s shows quite a difference in the arrangement of fixtures and fittings to what it was to become from the late 1920s until the early 1970s. Looking towards the communion rail one sees the organ on the left hand side with the choir stalls next to it inside the communion rail and facing the congregation. In the early 1900s an oak pulpit had replaced the rostrum brought from the first church, although until 1920 it had been placed centrally, when it was then moved to the right. Further right again there is just a high blank wall dividing church from schoolroom. There is no choir transept. The entire wall behind the communion rail and altar is covered in ornate stencilling. Below the rose window are two large arched windows on either side of an alcove in which is written in letters about two feet high: "The Lord is in His Holy Temple". This Biblical phrase replaced an earlier one: "Rejoice in the Lord" which can be seen in an earlier photo taken some time before 1907. The coloured glass in the two arched windows was given by the Misses Mellor and later was amalgamated to form the large window in the choir transept.

Amalgamation of a different kind was in the air in the early 1920s. A special meeting of the Quarterly Meeting held in December, 1922, resolved: "That this meeting heartily approves of the proposals for Methodist Union and hopes it will be speedily accomplished." This resolution was very short lived because in the same month the ordinary Quarterly Meeting resolved: "The time is not opportune for organic union in view of the, seriously divided opinion in all three churches." Two years later another vote was taken at the Quarterly Meeting which resulted in a tied vote. Methodist union was finally achieved in 1932.

The Wesleyan Methodists in Acocks Green were expanding their church activities in the 1920s to cater both for the spiritual and temporal aspects of church life. Six fellowship meetings were held weekly for 'United Bible Study and Conversation on Christian Truth and Experience'. Class meetings, the Sunday School, the P.S.A., the Life Boys, the Women's Cheerful Hour, the Wesley Guild and the Social Club all played their part in the life of the church in that decade.

By 1922 the church fabric was beginning to show signs of decay. It was reported to the Trust that there was dry rot in the minister's vestry, the roof coping stones were peeling and the woodwork of windows abutting the roof was soft. More ominously the wall on the side over the schoolroom was leaning outwards and the roof timbers were rotting. Repairs to the roof were put in hand immediately and once again the ladies of the Sewing Meeting were asked to hold a bazaar to raise money because of the heavy calls upon the Trust. Three years later Messrs. Williams and Boddy, a local building firm, were called in to repair the spire which had been damaged in a gale.

In September, 1925, the Trustees had two motions before them: 1. To clean and redecorate the chapel and repair the organ. 2. To purchase a new and suitable site for a chapel and ultimately a schoolroom. They decided to take limited action on both motions - to obtain estimates for the first and to ask Birmingham Corporation for particulars of the sites to be allocated for places of worship in south Birmingham and their probable cost.

Digression must be made here into the changing status of Acocks Green. By 1911 the Yardley Rural District Council was unable to cope with the demands made upon it for services for the rapidly expanding population. According to the local historian, John Morris Jones, in his history "Acocks Green and All Around" at the turn of the twentieth century the village "lacked most of the necessities of urban life - road surfaces, drains and lights, baths, pure water, refuse collection, hospitals, libraries, inter-district transport." The Yardley parishioners, most of whom worked in Birmingham, voted to become citizens of that city and this was accomplished in 1911. Not all were happy with the change and a letter in the "Acocks Green, Olton and Solihull Journal" dated May, 1911, reads:

"Sir, Rumours are afloat that the Tramway authorities are surveying the Acocks Green district with a view to introducing their octopus that is linking up suburban Birmingham. Surely to goodness with such an excellent train service and the improvements now in progress we can do without this peace disturber along our local roads. Already the situation of the present Council Schools is a nightmare to parents and what with irresponsible cyclists, the motorists and a prospect of tram cars these combined will about complete the death trap.
Signed: A Resident."

The First World War delayed the start of giving Acocks Green many of the amenities it required but in 1918 the South Birmingham Town Planning Scheme was published which contained proposals for the industrial, economic and housing development of the area. Existing roads were to be improved and new ones laid down with improved public transport systems. The biggest change to the social environment was the proposal to build large estates of municipal houses in the former parish of Yardley. This was done and between 1920 and 1939 over 17,000 council houses were erected, radically changing the social structure of the neighbourhood. Such a scheme today might be called a 'new town' development and would probably necessitate a public enquiry with calls to safeguard the existing character of the area. Acocks Green's transformation proceeded virtually unopposed in the 1920s and to the great credit of the church the Acocks Green Wesleyans enthusiastically set about meeting this challenge. Three thousand leaflets were printed advertising the church and giving an invitation to the residents of the new municipal estates being built in the Gospel Lane area and behind The Avenue, and many homes were visited by church members.

To return to 1925, a 'Site and Building Fund' was set up and the Trustees inspected several possible sites for a new church and Sunday School premises. Serious consideration was given to 'Oaklands', a house with extensive grounds, on the corner of Shirley and Victoria Roads, and to ground at the rear of the shops in Shirley Road in the 'village'. These proved unsuitable and so thoughts turned to renovating and extending the existing church buildings. Enquiries were made about purchasing the freeholds of the church site and adjoining manse, but the solicitors reported that the present freeholder would only consider a block sale which would consist of land extending from the chapel to ten houses in Botteville Road and to two in Victoria Road and to three in Shirley Road. This sale eventually did take place but not until 1932. At the Trustees Meeting on 15th January, 1927, it was resolved unanimously that "We adopt the amended plan submitted by Mr. J. Percival Bridgewater." Four Trustees, Messrs. W.J. Marshall, F.P. Ault, G.F. Morley and H. Hathaway, promised between them donations amounting to £650. An application was made also to the Wesleyan Chapel Committee in Manchester for a contribution towards the costs. On May 9th, 1927, the lowest of the seven tenders submitted, that by Messrs A.J. Teall and Son, for £5836 was accepted and at the same time a tender by Messrs P. Conacher & Co. for renovations to the organ at a cost of £1330 was also given approval by the Trustees. Unfortunately, only eleven days afterwards, Messrs Teall & Son had to withdraw their tender owing to what were described as "serious errors in arriving at their figures." Quickly the Trustees awarded the contract to the next lowest bidder, a Mr. W. Bishop, with instructions not to exceed the contract price of £6000 and stipulated that completion must be by November 30th of the same year. Negotiations for an overdraft of £5000 were completed successfully with the Acocks Green branch of Lloyds Bank and after a protest by the minister, the Rev. G.B. Robson, the Chapel Committee increased its early

The alterations involved incorporating the schoolroom premises (the first church) in such a way that a transept and a side aisle would be created; for the organ to be moved from its place on the left to the new transept, together with the choir stalls; for a projecting chancel to be constructed with three war memorial windows replacing the two former arched windows, and for plain glass to replace the coloured glass in the windows at the back of the church. In addition a large upper room was to be built over the porch entrance on the west side for Guild meetings with a stewards vestry below. The pulpit would replace the choir stalls on the left. When the building work was completed the exterior of the church became very much as it appears today in the mid-1980s.

The extensions were completed on time and on Saturday, December 3^rd, 1927, the opening ceremony took place. The late Alan Fitton recorded: "The new entrance was opened by Miss Mellor and the service was conducted by the Rev. F.H. Benson, the Chairman of the District." In the evening the organ was opened by Mr. H. Hathaway and a recital was given by Mr, later Dr G.D. Cunningham, the City of Birmingham organist. The Opening Services were spread over the next three Sundays and taken in turn by the Rev. J. Hornabrook, a former President of Conference, the Rev. Samuel Marriott, minister of Acocks Green from 1910-1913, and the Rev., later Dr Howard of Handsworth College. Greetings were conveyed from the Rev. W. Hodson-Smith, President of Wesleyan Conference, the Rt. Rev. Dr. E.W. Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, the Rt. Hon. Sir Austen Chamberlain, M.P., Sir Gilbert Barling, an eminent Birmingham surgeon, W.A. Cadbury, Esq., and several other M.P.'s from local constituencies.