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This book tells the story of a remarkable school, its various buildings and the people who lived and worked in them. It charts the social and educational changes which have taken place and the survival of piece of architectural history.
The story began in the 1850s when a family of Nonconformists acquired a site in rural Wake Green Road for the expansion of their training college for ministers. The present Moseley School, beginning in 1900 as College Road Board School (now Springfield Primary School), brings together different educational traditions as a result of: providing schooling for children whose families were moving out of the overcrowded city centre; the converting of nearby Spring Hill College into Moseley Secondary (later Grammar) School (1923); the opening of Moseley Modern School which replaced the senior school at College Road (1955). Through the bitterly fought debates of the 1970s, Moseley Modern School and Moseley Grammar School amalgamated.
Gradually the barriers came down and the school began to develop as a successful comprehensive. But the deterioration of the Victorian building became evident and led to its gradual closure during the 1990's. However, it was saved from demolition by being given listed status.
Surprisingly, there is a strong connection between Cleese and Moseley! In the 50's, “The Goon Show” on steam radio was eagerly awaited each week, indeed, a famous Chemistry Master (Neddy Bacon) was affectionately nicknamed after Harry “Neddy” Seagoon, a famous goon.
New comedies unfolded in the 60's: Beyond the Fringe, TWTWTW, Monty Python, The Goodies and many more became huge successes via the TV. But where is this Moseley Grammar School connection?
We need to travel to Somerset where John Cleese came from a family originally called Cheese but this was “Caerphilly” changed to Cleese! He went to St Peter's School at Weston-super-Mare in 1949 and eventually went on to become (and still is, I add) a leading comedian. He was taught by a man who later appeared at MGS the Rev Dolman for classics. How do I know? Imagine my recent shock when reading Cleese's autobiography “So, Anyway …” when I instantly recognised the Rev A H Dolman's face on p152. Cleese remembers him so accurately in his book:
Just half a century after Moseley School took possession in 1968 of the remote stone cottage which was to become a centre for building pupils' character and initiative, a previously unknown part of its earlier history has been revealed.
For about 20 years until his death in 1958 the Old Grouse was home to retired pit worker George Davies, his wife Susannah and their daughter Phyllis and grand-daughter Thelma.
Thelma, adopted by Phyllis shortly after her birth in 1943, is the sole surviving resident of Old Grouse and recently came across the Moseleians website. And in it the story of how her one-time home became the school cottage.
After the cost of meeting planning requirements outstripped the means of the trustees who sold it on, Thelma Dieltjens emailed webmaster Roger Green to express her delight at finding the cottage had been restored from its 1960s dereliction and says she hopes, under new owners, it will stand for years to come.
Heritage Open Day at Spring Hill College last September provided a vivid Down Memory Lane occasion especially for three visitors to the 1857 Spring Hill College building.
Margaret Yarnall, husband John and daughter Nicki was not on the official tour. It was the former caretaker's house specially opened for their private visit by head teacher Roger McBrien, at the east end of the college building and used for storage while awaiting improvement and restoration.
For Margaret lived there as a girl, daughter of long-service caretakers Les and Doris Brown, through her school years at College Road and Moseley Modern and courtship with John who was in the same class, until their marriage in 1965.
From the moment the key turned in the lock of the school corridor door to the house, the memories came flooding back for the couple and for Nicki who had visited, with brother Steve, while their grandparents continued in occupation until their retirement.
The staircases between the three floors, some of the wallpaper, the Victorian metal window frames in arched stone settings, the first floor bathroom put in for the family to improve on the old ground floor washroom, the four bedrooms, two of them occupied by her grandmothers.
“I remember sliding down the one set of stairs on a tin tray,” recalled Margaret, whose bedroom was on the top floor, “and dad somehow managed to get central heating extended into the house from the main school while the head's house remained heated only by open fires!”
THE WAR MEMORIALS TRUST is the national charity dedicated to the protection and conservation of our war memorial heritage.
The Trust manages a website aiming to create the UK's most comprehensive understanding of war memorials to date. It is designed to be a system through which the public can upload information directly to the site.
Details of two war memorials related to Moseley School have recently been added to the website. These are the main War Memorial in the foyer to Spring Hill College and the old War Memorial from College Road School. The latter disappeared many years go although we have a poor photograph of it in our archive.
We would be very pleased to hear from anyone who last saw the College Road School memorial before it went missing.
Chief Yeoman Warder of the Tower of London and former Moseley Modern School pupil Peter McGowran was the eldest of eight children living in Highgate, Birmingham in 1958. He started school at Chandos School before the family moved to Phipson Road, Sparkhill when he continued his junior years at St John’s before eventually joining Moseley Modern School in 1969. Peter takes up the story:
I would not change a thing: I enjoyed all the sport especially playing cricket and football for the school and taking part in the school performances that were laid on year after year, it was a blast. I believe that it is possibly due to the thespian in me that life eventually got me into the Tower of London as a Yeoman Warder (Beefeater).
Enlisting in the Royal Air Force Regiment in March 1975, I progressed through the ranks to become a flight sergeant, operating in many roles around the world; Hong Kong/Chinese border operations, Northern Ireland, Belize, many years in West Germany during the cold war, Cyprus and Gibraltar. I spent over 25 years in the RAF.
I joined the Body of Yeoman Warders at the Tower of London in August 2009, following a period working in the nuclear industry.
The Body consists of a total of 32 Yeoman Warders who all come from a military background, having completed a minimum of 22 years in the armed forces, achieved the minimum rank of sergeant major and have been awarde
Most ex-Moseley students from the Yardley Wood and Billesley area will well know or remember Billesley Common which remains today a major stretch of public recreation space in that part of South Birmingham. Billesley is an Anglo-Saxon place name meaning Bill's clearing, although it is not thought that anyone was called Bill in that period and the word probably originates from a 'beak' or 'bile' (sword) shaped mound or hill.
Today as well as having numerous sports pitches it is also home to Moseley Rugby Football Club who moved there to lease part of the common from Birmingham City Council for their pitches and clubhouse. Their ground has a seating capacity of around 5,000, with a new stand and clubhouse. There is also an Indoor Tennis Centre and Gym on the Common.
But turn back the clock to before World War 1 and it seems that Billesley Farm on the western edge of the Common along with the Yardley Wood side of the Common were both used as a civil airfield for early general aviation.
In 1911 the Birmingham Aero Club used Billesley Farm mainly at weekends where they flew a glider and several models. A contemporary account from a club member published in Flight describes how, in order to launch the glider, a wind of about 30 mph was required. A group of six very fit men reportedly then towed the glider running at 6 to 7mph in order to keep it airborne at a height of about 25 feet.
The airfield, which was never more than a grass surface, was not used for any military purposes during WW1, but in November 1919 what was then called Billesley aerodrome was listed as suitable for use by Avro 504Ks and similar aircraft.
Gerald believes that his surname originated in 10th century France as D'Racey, although his family settled in the West Country in Elizabethan times and had spread to London, Wales and Gloucester by the 18th C. In 1806 a John Draisey, was a cordwainer or bootmaker in Gloucester.
Two of John's grandsons, James and Henry, came to Birmingham in the 1850s and were apprenticed to a carriage lamp-maker, Beesley and Hyde in Severn Street, and lived in the Gas Street area of the city. But their father George Draisey, had by then become an alcoholic and abandoned his family, while their elder brother, George, had spent time in gaol for theft. Around the mid-Victorian period, and possibly because of the family history around that time, the family surname changed to Draysey.
As well as learning to be lamp makers, John and Henry Draysey, used to take the workers' bets to commission agents or bookies. They soon realised that they were taking more money in than paying money out, and in 1865 they set up their own bookies business in Holloway Head, where they became more and more successful. They decided to invest some of their money in building as Birmingham was expanding so much because of the Industrial Revolution and migration into the City from the countryside.
The two Draysey brothers built terraced houses notably those around Ombersley Road between Moseley Road and Ladypool Road, which became known as 'mugs row'. They later moved on to build the City Assembly Rooms in Hurst Street, on land leased from the City Council.
In 1899 the Draysey brothers built the Tower of Variety and Circus' behind the Assembly Rooms which opened in October of that year. But that was not successful and closed after just five weeks, and reopened in 1900 as the Tivoli Theatre, becoming the Hippodrome in 1903. That was also one of the first Bioscope Theatres in England before cinemas appeared in 1914.
Many will remember the Tower on the roof of the Hippodrome which is long gone, as the venue has undergone much remodelling over the decades until it is now one of the foremost theatres outside London staging musicals, ballet and opera as well as the annual pantomime.
When those of a certain age gather, and the conversation turns to stuff we saw on telly when we were little – mentioning such classics as The Tomorrow People, Timeslip, and Ace of Wands (and insisting that Pertwee was much better than the silly chap with the scarf) – a nervous silence always falls, until somebody says, “Who remembers the one with the stones – the stones with eyes?”
Its title, which most people seem to have blanked from memory, is Escape Into Night, broadcast by ATV in April and May of 1972 – a truly underpants-soiling, six-part weekly teatime serial that everyone who was a kid at the time still has at the back of all their recurring nightmares. And if online discussions of it are anything to go by, this is no mere hyperbole, but often quite literally the case. It kick-started a minor trend of setting children's TV fantasy amid spooky megaliths, such as Children of the Stones (1977), filmed at Avebury (creditable, but very tame by comparison), the Doctor Who story The Stones of Blood (1978), filmed at the Rollrights (silly chap with scarf), and Quatermass (1979) filmed at a fake Stonehenge (“Huffity, Puffity, Ringstone Round…”).
Yet Escape Into Night is not set at any ancient stone circle, but rather in the dreamscape world of its protagonist, Marianne, who, while poorly in bed for weeks on end, draws pictures in her colouring book that come to life as she sleeps. (Yes, this really is a case of, “…and then I woke up and it was all a dream.” Or is it?) There, she meets Mark, who can't walk, and is trapped in an empty house she has drawn. One night they argue, and in a fit of childish pique she draws eyes on standing stones surrounding the house, to keep Mark a prisoner, and from there the story unfolds.
