| The Victorian period was perhaps the time when Acocks Green was in its
heyday. People of wealth and status moved into the area after the railway
arrived, and it changed rapidly from rural idyll to railway suburb. Alan Fitton wrote in the 1935 Methodist church handbook about what Acocks
Green was like before the 1850s:
'In those days it would have been difficult to find a more entrancing spot, or
one from
which the noise and
bustle of commerce seemed more remote. A few stately houses, for the
most part standing in
their own grounds and a number of humbler cottages, picturesque though
doubtless insanitary,
comprised the homes of the scanty population. [There was] one church -
the Congregational. [A
few] hostelries were evidence that the villagers were sometimes inclined
to wander, but the
fact that there were only three trains a day and few other means of transport,
ensured that these
wanderings should be in a strictly limited area. The roads consisted of
winding lanes bounded
by hedgerows that were the home of wild flowers and guarded by great
trees... Broad
stretches of meadow land or fields, farm-tended and fruitful, met the eye on
every
side.
There was no bustle and little noise, unless the song of birds, the murmuring of
the stream
through the village, and the whistling of a labourer at his work be deemed
disturbing.'
The Birmingham to Oxford railway opened with a station at Acocks Green in
1852. Wealthy businessmen could now leave the dirty and unhealthy town of
Birmingham for a pleasant life in the country after work, or they could retire
there. Three former hamlets along the Warwick Road, Flint Green, Acocks Green,
and between them Westley Brook, the location of today's centre, were eventually
absorbed. The building of mansions, churches and other manifestations of social
life near to the station pulled the centre towards Westley Brook, away from the
Dolphin, where the old hamlet of Acocks Green was. In a few short decades a
veritable wealth of social and cultural activities developed, making Acocks
Green a high-class suburb in the mould of Edgbaston. A particular example of
this was the Public Hall of 1878.
This website contains several resources for the study of Victorian Acocks
Green:
The Tithe Map and schedule. Look at the map and see how Acocks Green has
changed. See what the buildings and fields were called, who owned them, and who
rented them.
The 1880s map of Acocks Green
shows changes in the forty years since the Tithe Map.
The selection of directories to 1896. See who was in business, and which
people of standing lived in the area. Remember that Acocks Green was only listed
separately from the early 1880s.
Short histories of Acocks Green by C.J.H. Hudson, John Morris Jones, and
Joseph McKenna.
Histories of Botteville Road and
Hazelwood Road contain information about the
Victorian period.
The pages about buildings in Acocks Green contain photos and information
about many Victorian buildings.
The pages about Fox Hollies and the Walker family,
St Mary's church,
St
Mary's church school, the
Methodist church and Stone Hall have details about the Victorian period.
The pages on the urbanisation of Yardley Parish include quite a lot of detail
on Acocks Green in the paragraphs on Broomhall Quarter, and there are some references also in the pages about
brick and tile making, and on the
waters of Yardley. The
transport history of Yardley
also has very useful information on railways, the canal and road transport.
AGHS homepage
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