THEN & NOW | Slade Road, Erdington.

Comments · 14

• MA

  @Malkey67 · 6 months ago

  I remember Bon Bon’s in the 70s  used to get my sweets from there.. And the off licence corner of hillaries road. Still live local now ..Great memories

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• IT

  @itsclareaurora · 1 year ago

  You’ve definitely taken me back down memory lane Scott with this one. <br>Me and my friend used to love the chicken pakora from Lahore’s.

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• PH

  @philhughes1961 · 5 months ago

  Left erdington 1971 went to cubs at stockland Methodist &amp; schooled at Slade road great memories

• HM

  @HMACleaning · 1 year ago

  Lovely rd. Grew up there.

• AN

  @andydaring1347 · 1 year ago

  That was Fred Hanks Motorcycles, not Frank, and Fred was my grandad! He opened it in 1958 and my mom and my uncle (Beryl and Roy) owned it after him form the 90s until they decided to call it a day not long before Corona. If anyone who reads this has any photos of the old place, I&apos;d love to see them, I&apos;ve been slowly building up a store of anything to do with it.

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• MR

  @mrchalkie1 · 3 months ago

  Born and bred in Erdington.... lived in Spain for last 33 years I saw Jaws at that cinema when it came out... god im old..... Went to stockland green school... dont remember the tram lines but they did bring out buses with wheels that came out from underneath and ran along the concrete kerbs in two bus lanes... as i said god im old lol

• MA

  @maddcarew2048 · 7 months ago

  Banks used to have the monopoly of shops.

• JA

  @jaycooper2624 · 7 months ago

  I can certainly help with a little info about Slade Road because it was my stomping ground as a youngster. I was born (December 1947) in Highcroft Hall which was a maternity hospital during and immediately post war, later becoming a mental hospital and I lived in Hillaries Rd at number 63 until 1967 when I moved to Nottingham.<br>Starting at the beginning of your walk, The Plaza cinema was where I saw my first &quot;X Rated&quot; movie and I would catch the number11 Outer Circle alongside it to go to the Grammar School in Handsworth, pre 11-Plus I went to Slade Rd Primary directly opposite the bottom of our road. I well remember the &quot;PreFabs&quot; just down from the Green and I like the fact that they&apos;ve been preserved, so to speak. I&apos;m assuming that the Community centre utilises my birthplace but maybe not. The cricket ground you mention used to belong to the Police and with it&apos;s lovely pavilion was beautifully maintained - you could get a great view of it from the top deck of the number 65 bus which ran along Slade Road. Just past the Prefabs was the schools Dental Clinic where I had my first tooth extraction, they were stingy with the gas and I vividly remember the pain to this day LOL!<br>The top end of Slade Road was predominantly residential and things start to get more interesting when you get to the shops past Hunton Hill opposite which, on the corner of St Thomas Road, was ( I believe) Erdington&apos;s first Launderette, very popular in the days when few households owned a washing machine. The Hanks Motorcycles shop and workshop were opened by Fred Hanks, a successful rider in motorcycle sidecar racing, I went to school with his son Roy who later carried on the family tradition with his wife. As you can tell, Slade Rd is like river running through a valley and the roads leading off on both sides are steep but particularly on the side you&apos;re on which lead up to Gravelly Hill. From Hanks&apos;s Motorcycles almost to George Road, there were big fields behind the houses which provided a marvelous playground for us kids but all under bricks , mortar and tarmac now.<br>Crossing the road you get to the area of Slade Road around which much of my early life centred - George Road. I must say it looks a bit different these days. Next to the Primary School was the Star cinema outside of which I would catch the #65 on my way to school and next door to that was my Dad&apos;s local the Brookvale, which seems to be still there but no longer in use. Next in line was Eastgates cafe - a popular hang out for the local &quot;Teddy Boys&quot; - &nbsp;where I played a jukebox for the first time &nbsp;- Sandy Nelson&apos;s &quot;Teen Beat&quot; and it cost me 3d! - &nbsp;and in later years I would buy records taken out of the box for 1 shilling each (5p). Next in the line was a TV sales/Rental shop with a full length mirror alongside the doorway (much used) and next to that was &quot;Bon Marche&quot; a haberdashers and next to that was a &quot;Dolls Hospital&quot; where they obviously repaired dolls. and of course there was the inevitable Chippie! The little island roadside used to have two telephone boxes (2 pennies in the slot and press button B) remember that few people had telephones in those days and I spent many hours and many pennies in those boxes. On the opposite side of George Road was a game butchers , it&apos;s frontage festooned with rabbits, pigeons and even a couple of deer. Next to that was an ironmongers and a sweetshop. A few yards further up George Road on the same side was the Barbers where I paid a shilling for a short back and sides (compulsory for kids) and a few years later 1/10d for a trim, Boston and blow wave!<br>BTW, further up George Road on the left is All Saints Church where I sang in the choir for many years and over the hill is the wonderful Brookvale Park where we played footy and cricket, fished, boated and chatted up girls in the Bandstand.<br>BTW2, I&apos;ve just remembered that, next to the Launderette on the corner of St Thomas Rd was a shoe shop where I bought my first pair of &quot;winklepickers&quot; for 39/11d (£2) and and a TV/Radio shop Grants Electrics that also sold records.On the opposite corner to the launderette was another chippie ( 4 pennorth, Please).<br>And they are just what I can remember - not bad for a 78 year old I&apos;d say, Eh?<br>I&apos;m also old enough to remember the trams running along Slade Road and Gravelly Hill, uncomfortable seats but cheap , 2d for a ride into the City. They left the tram lines down for years before lifting them and all local bicycle riders had horror tales of catching their wheels in the tracks with painful consequences - &nbsp;me included. But it&apos;s an ill wind that blows nobody any good and when they finally lifted the tracks we had free pitch-soaked wooden blocks to burn for ages.<br>I&apos;m not being critical but I was disappointed that you finished your walk at the Brookvale pub and didn&apos;t show my old school which I believe is still in use nor Hillaries Road opposite where I lived. Having said that you do show a photograph at 27.37 of Barkers delivering bread at the bottom of our road, the shop behind him on the corner was, in my day, an off-licence run by Mr Job Brooks and on the opposite corner was a sweetshop. There were a couple more shops on the same side, a greengrocers and just before the railway bridge was our local grocers.<br>Whilst I&apos;ve enjoyed your walk down Slade Road it does not encourage me to go back and do the same, I&apos;ve seen in this and other videos that it&apos;s virtually impossible to walk unimpeded thanks to wheelie bins, shop displays and badly parked cars. However, I&apos;m grateful to you for this opportunity to wallow in nostalgia and I hope that my extremely long reminiscences prove to be of some interest to you. - Many thanks.

• KE

  @kenndo9906 · 1 year ago

  Thank you for the video. &nbsp;spent my early life 1970s living there. I visited the Plaza, it was a flee pit back then, I can remember the kids queueing for the matinees. It was a supermarket then became a bingo hall. loved the firkins. &nbsp;that disco centre was a big model shop years ago. it had a huge Lancaster bomber model hanging from the ceiling. I vaguely remember that it was featured in a film starring Susanna York. &nbsp;Bowens Travel had a shop opposite the Stockland pub and also a coach station where the tire place is today on Marsh hill.

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• MA

  @maddcarew2048 · 7 months ago

  Wasn&apos;t until i looked on google earth i didnt know my old school,Marsh hill grammar,boys and the girls schools plus stockland green school had been wiped off the map!!

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• DA

  @danielbate13 · 5 months ago

  I&apos;ll be living around the corner from there in less than two weeks, Hillaries Road, can&apos;t wait to get back to Brum and I think it gets unfair criticism from people who&apos;ve never even been there

• KE

  @kelly182237 · 1 year ago

  good video go down there at night time and go up the side roads then tell me a good area

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