One doesn’t have to look far in Castle Bromwich to discover interesting personalities or families that have been there for generations.
In Croft Cottage, standing back off the Chester Road, just before you turn the corner by the Church of England School (on the way to Birmingham), live Mr. and Mrs. J.T. Leake whose family have lived in the same house longer than anyone can remember.
Mr. Leake, a retired foreman platelayer who had 50 years’ service on the railway to his credited, celebrated his 70th birthday on December 2, but looks very much younger.
“There,” he said pointing to a spot immediately in front of the fireplace in his living room, “is where I was born.” When the birth was drawing close, his anxious father built a huge fire and dashed off on foot for the doctor but did not forsee that his wife would decide to come downstairs at such a critical hour!
“We used to supply villagers with water at a charge of 1d. a week,” Mr. Leake recalled. “They could come as often as they liked. That was in the days before the people of The Green (then known as Ten-Acre Green) had a proper piped supply. The well, only a few yards around the corner from the next building, was owned by my granddad, Henry Leake. Alf Rushton used to come and repair the leather.”
The well was reputed to give the purest water for miles around. Although filled with ashes and rubble, it could be restored, if necessary; it is worthy of note that this supply has never been condemned by Warwickshire County Council.
The old pump has been removed but the handle has been unofficially preserved for prosperity – within reaching distance of the well. Within recent weeks it was used in alterations to ahouse owned by the nephew of Mr. Leake.
This nephew was remodelling the building and the long handle was just what he needed to form the “core” of a reinforced concrete lintel above the west window.
Mr. Leake’s great-grand-father lived for many years at Bucklands End Lane in a cottage now demolished. His grandfather was born in 1819 and his father in 1853. They were widely known by their nicknames, which, in turn were adopted from their somewhat intriguing favourite expressions. Thus Great-Grandpa Leake was referred to as “Dod-Rot-It”; Grandpa by the gibberish phrase of “Ar, Sure-and-a-What-not, Missus,” which he was wont to introduce into all his conversational gambits: while Pa Leake had the less pretentious nickname, “I Reckon.”
Mr. Leake’s wife, Lucy Emma, is 69. Her father, a Mr. Rhodes, could remember her husband’s great-grandfather the redoubtable “Dod-Rot-It) chasing him with a stick as the outcome of juvenile provocation.
The Leake’s have a fund of memories of old Castle Bromwich. Mr Leake says that the first person in the village to introduce electric lighting was the late Alderman Thomas Clayton, of The Cedars, Whateley Green. He worked for him when the alderman had his own generating plant installed, in 1897.
Then there was the sad story of Harrington Bullows, who built the police station at Castle Bromwich – and was the first prisoner in it. Harrington was doing all right, he said, until he decided to go in for coal-carrying. Unfortunately, he had to call at the public houses to collect this money, and that was his undoing.
Birmingham was as “quiet” in those days as Castle Bromwich Green is today, and Mr. Leake remembers when the city possessed only three theatres. In 1893 he drove three horses into Birmingham for the ploughing of fields at Ward End. A municipal bank and other properties now cover the site. As a youth he earned 8d. a day, doing a man’s work. When about 14 years old he went to be confirmed at St. Philip’s (now the Cathedral) and 4 d. was stopped from his pay for losing half a day’s work.
It was not so long ago he says, that residents of Castle Bromwich were called “Throstles” (thrushes) probably because they were so “chirpy” in the mornings; while the Coleshill folk were known as “Rabbits” to those who came to market with their butter and eggs. “Mudlarks” was the title bestowed on those living at Tyburn. This evidently had some connection with the presence of the canal and frequent flooding.
Mrs. Leake said there were no trains to Castle Bromwich when her mother came to the village. Later on coaches for passenger traffic were like cattle trucks and had hard wooden seats. Her husband can remember when rolling stock was fitted with springless buffers.
