Small Heath

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Lore & Background

Small Heath was first recorded in 1461, when the term applied to a narrow heath between Green Lane and the Coventry Road, where the baths and library were built later. The 1799 opening of the Warwick and Birmingham Canal (now the Grand Union Canal), from Digbeth to Warwick, defined the southern edge of this scattered rural community. In 1852, this definition was enforced with the opening of the Robert Stephenson–designed Birmingham and Oxford Junction Railway, which follows the same route. As Birmingham developed, the wealthy began to look for space outside the crowded inner city, and Small Heath began to be developed from 1834 when large houses first appeared east of the Small Heath between Green Lane and Grange Road. The next developments were mainly terraced housing estates laid out for the working classes as far as Charles Road. The development of properties was made much easier and cheaper through the extraction of local clay, which was then locally turned into bricks; the largest local clay pit was on Cattell Road.

In Their Own Story

Members of Holy Trinity Cricket Club, Bordesley had formed the Small Heath Alliance Football Club in 1875 as a way of keeping fit over the winter. After playing in Bordesley Green and Sparkbrook, in 1877 they moved to what became called the Muntz Street stadium, which rented for an initial £5 a year from the family of Sam Jessey, a Small Heath player. The field had a capacity of 10,000 spectators and was bordered on two sides by developed streets, Muntz Street on the western side, Wright Street to the south; the other two sides of the enclosure adjoined farmland. In 1895, the football club bought the lease to the ground, which had 11 years remaining, for a sum of £275. The club was renamed Birmingham City Football Club in 1943. The last game at Muntz Street was played on 22 December 1906, when Birmingham beat Bury 3–1 in the First Division in front of some 10,000 spectators. Within months the Muntz Street ground had been demolished, the land cleared and housing built in what became Swanage Road; no plaque commemorates the site, but the street of the same name remains.

Reader's Guide

By the outbreak of World War II, BSA Guns Ltd at Small Heath was the only factory producing rifles in the UK. BSA Guns Ltd was also producing .303 Browning machine guns for the Air Ministry at the rate of 600 guns per week in March 1939 and Browning production was to peak at 16,390 per month by March 1942. The BSA factory at Small Heath was bombed by the Luftwaffe on 26 August 1940 resulting in one H.E. bomb and a shower of incendiaries hitting the main barrel mill, the only one operating on service rifles in the country, thereby causing the unaffordable loss of 750 machine tools but no loss of life. Two further air raids took place on 19 and 22 November 1940. The net effect of the November raids was to destroy machine shops in the four-storey 1915 building, the original 1863 gunsmiths' building and nearby buildings, 1,600 machine tools, kill 53 employees and another 50+ local residents, injured 89 (30 of them seriously), and halted rifle production for three months. Small Heath was severely impacted by a strong tornado on 14 June 1931, severely damaging several buildings, and uprooting all trees in Small Heath Park. The area was affected again by the 2005 Birmingham Tornado, suffering severe damage along Coventry Road near Morrison’s, before passing just east of St Andrews.

Did You Know?

• Small Heath was first recorded in 1461, when the term applied to a narrow heath between Green Lane and the Coventry Road.
• The Coventry Road was first recorded in 1226, leading from the Digbeth crossing of the River Rea.
• The Muntz Street stadium rented for an initial £5 a year from the family of Sam Jessey, a Small Heath player.
• The BSA factory at Small Heath was bombed on 26 August 1940, losing 750 machine tools and killing 53 people and injuring 89; two later raids in November 1940 killed 53 employees and 50+ residents.
• Small Heath was hit by a strong tornado on 14 June 1931 that uprooted all trees in Small Heath Park.