Castle Vale
Castle Vale is a housing estate located between Erdington, Minworth and Castle Bromwich. Currently Castle Vale makes up the Castle Vale Ward of Birmingham City Council which is part of Erdington constituency, northeast of Birmingham city centre in England. The area has an approximate population of 10,000 people and has a distinctly modern residential character stemming from its history as a postwar overspill estate.
The area was originally known as Berwood, from the Saxon 'Bearu' meaning 'the woods'. Historically being a boggy and wooded area, the area remained undeveloped for most of its history until the deforestation practices of Edward Darcy in the 17th century and the construction of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal in the 18th century. In the 20th century, the land became the site for the first aeroplane take-off in Birmingham which led to a long aviation history being associated with the area. Castle Bromwich Aerodrome was established on the site and operated from 1914 to 1960, being a major airfield in both World Wars and also having industrial importance as the testing facility for locally manufactured aeroplanes and the location for the British Industries Fair. Despite being steeped in aviation history, Castle Vale became infamous from the 1970s onwards as a large scale example of a failed postwar overspill estate, which suffered from poor construction and maintenance, social deprivation and high levels of crime. The area became the focus of a targeted regeneration initiative, led by the Castle Vale Housing Action Trust from 1993 to 2005, where the estate witnessed the demolition of many of its housing stock and facilities, the refurbishment of remaining properties, and the construction of new housing and facilities along with the remodelling of the estate, funded both privately and publicly.
History
Origins
The site has historically been a wooded area with a post-Domesday manor, although its construction date is not known. In 1160, the Manor of Berwood was given to the Abbey of St. Mary de Pratis at Leicester by the Arden family. A moated house, St Mary's Chapel, a hermitage, a bake house and farm buildings were built for them, although St Mary's Chapel was demolished in the 15th century after it fell into disrepair. Under the ownership of Leicester Abbey, the Arden family became tenants, despite having owned the land previously. In 1356–7, Sir John de Arderne briefly gained ownership of the property but the abbey regained it in 1360. Donations were made by the Arden family to the clergy and in 1244, a donation of land resulted in two priests being sent to the manor to maintain a shrine, pray for Sir William Arden and to assist travellers through the area. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, Thomas Arden purchased the property from King Henry VIII for £272 10s. The hall fell into disrepair and when it remained as just a shell, the property was confiscated by the Crown and given to Edward Darcy after the previous owner, Edward Arden, was convicted of treason and hanged. The son of Edward Arden started studying law and commenced several court cases to regain control of the land from Edward Darcy. When Darcy learned of a case to regain half of the land, he deforested it and moved the valuable timber to his land in Minworth, leaving a swampy area which was prone to flooding and with poor quality soil for agriculture. The hall was eventually demolished although the moat still remained into the 20th century. A later house was built outside the moat, which was eventually the site of Berwood Hall Farm. A mill stood in Berwood on Plants Brook in the 15th century.In 1789, the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal was completed to the north of the area which gradually encouraged an industrial presence along it. In 1881, W. W. Bagot sold of land in Berwood to the Birmingham, Tame and Rea District Drainage Board, and a further were sold to the Board on 29 September 1888. Home Farm was in the north west corner, near Tyburn House, and the land consisted of a large orchard, however its main function was to spread sewage brought from the City of Birmingham over the rest of the land. In 1898, filter beds were constructed as the volume of sewage was becoming too much with the rest of the land becoming farmland or swamp, surrounded by forest.
In 1842, the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway was completed to the southeast of Castle Vale with a railway station serving the area on the line. Another railway branch, the Sutton Park Line was completed in 1879 and formed the eastern boundary of the area, roughly marking the boundary of the land in the Arden/Darcy dispute.
In 1900, John Dunlop opened a tyre factory on the opposite side of the Chester Road to where the Castle Vale housing estate now stands and gradually expanded over the next few decades to become one of the largest and most recognisable tyre factories in the world. The name of St. Mary was revived in Berwood upon the construction of the Church of St. Mary to serve people housed in nearby Nissen huts. It was dedicated on 17 December 1923 but was destroyed by fire in 1926, only to be rebuilt soon after and fall into disuse.
Castle Bromwich Aerodrome
The area was a flat plain when it became the Berwood Playing Fields. In 1909, local mechanic Louis Maxfield assembled a flying machine in Berwood Playing Fields. The plane took off and is said to have reached a height of, making it the first flight in Birmingham. The site's suitability was investigated and it soon became the Castle Bromwich private aerodrome. By 1911, a pilot was giving demonstration flights in a Bleriot monoplane. In the London to Manchester air race of 1914, competitors stopped at the aerodrome for refuelling.The start of World War I meant a change at Castle Bromwich Aerodrome and it was requisitioned by the War Office for use by the Royal Flying Corps and flying schools in 1915. No. 5 Flying School was established at the aerodrome in the same year. Pilots were accommodated in tents and huts located around the site and on 1 September 1915, 19 Squadron was established at the aerodrome.
In the interwar years, the aerodrome had a dual military and civilian function. In these early days, it was the busiest airport in the area due to its passenger, post and railway air business. A large tract of land adjacent to the airfield was marked out for the British Industries Fair in 1920, which was advertised nationally. In 1937, more hangars and a Squadron Headquarters were built for the Royal Air Force and in 1939, it was extended further to become a fighter station, a base for other units and a dispatch site for aeroplanes built at Castle Bromwich Aircraft Factory on the other side of the Chester Road. At its peak, the airfield would be used for testing 300 Supermarine Spitfires per month for World War II.
Various units used the airfield following the war and there was an annual display to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Britain held at the airfield. Civilian flights returned, including the first scheduled helicopter service from London. The buildings that were used for the BIF were sold as storage units for various companies. In March 1960, the airfield was closed as a result of the impending expansion of the airport at Elmdon and in 1962, the airfield site, the BIF site and nearby farmland was sold for construction of the overspill estate which started in 1964. The last hangars were demolished in 1992 for an industrial site.
There are some strong symbolic links to these times in the shape of the Sentinel sculpture, a stained glass church window, and the names of tower blocks and streets on the estate. Remnants of the airfield also exist such as a row of ex-RAF housing along Church Road. It is often said that the three main roads on the estate were the original runways on the airfield, but this is not true. Aerial photographs from the Second World War and afterwards clearly show a triangular runway layout typical of British military airfields of that era, with none of them aligned to the modern day roads.
Castle Vale estate
Planning
At the end of World War II, one third of housing within Birmingham was declared unfit for habitation and a major construction programme was needed to deal with the problem. By 1950, Birmingham City Council had been constructing municipal housing to accommodate the rising population of Birmingham and to accommodate those who had been displaced by the slum clearances in the inner-city areas of the city, similar to the process which had started some 30 years earlier when the first council houses were built. Municipal house construction developed into high-rise construction in the mid-1950s with the guidance of Alwyn Sheppard Fidler, the City Architect of Birmingham. By 1962, however, the city council was demolishing more houses than it was constructing and Fidler urged the council to adopt the French Camus system which consisted of housing at a density of approximately 50 houses per hectare and 80 people per acre. The council refused this and demanded 48 homes per hectare with 75 people per acre. In a final attempt to convince the council, he proposed a 'garden city' layout for the Castle Bromwich Airfield site in 1963. This too was rejected and, as a result, Fidler resigned from his position. He was quickly succeeded by J. R. Sheridan-Shedden, the deputy City Architect who held the position temporarily. Upon taking the position, he designed a revised masterplan for the Castle Bromwich Airfield estate. The new masterplan used the Radburn Layout which consisted of super-blocks of housing, schools, retail and offices around a communal open space, a concept which was created by Clarence Stein in Radburn, New Jersey in 1929.The council attempted to limit the damage caused to their reputation as a result of the scandal surrounding the resignation of Fidler by agreeing to embark on the major building project at Castle Bromwich with five new goals. These were increasing housing output at the estate by a further 4,000 homes, which was aimed to reduce the cost of dwellings, introducing industrialised forms of construction to save labour, attracting new national contractors to work in Birmingham, and increase capacity by providing continuous work for contractors.