Hall Green (The Shire, Hobbiton Mill and Old Forest?)

The references to places in JRR Tolkien’s books The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings reflect that we’ve been to Sarehole Mill (the Mill at Hobbiton in his books) and Moseley Bog (possibly the Old Forest), situated in the old area of Sarehole (possibly The Shire), now part of Hall Green, Birmingham.

Stepping stones over the River Cole

Just a short walk down the road from where we’re looking after Sooty while Abigail is on holiday we walked off Sarehole Road and down a track between houses to the River Cole and a little green world of trees , wild flowers and grasses and a row of stepping stones leading across the river, feeling a world away from the busy city suburb with hardly a house in view. A little track through the woods led us to the ford on Green Road, only about 150mm deep at the moment so easy for cars to get through, then on through fields to the old Mill.

The ford on Green Road

Sarehole Mill

Although it’s quite suburban round here now you really can get a feel for what it was like in Tolkiens day and it’s well worth a visit. The mill dates from the eighteenth century, although there has been a mill on the site since the sixteenth, and was used by the famous industrialist Matthew Bolton in the eighteenth century for scientific experimentation, but its main use was for grinding grain, for which it did until 1919. 

The Mill from across the millpool

After it closed it became derelict and was scheduled for demolition until, in 1969 the local community, including JRR Tolkien successfully restored it, handing it over to Birmingham City Council as a working mill. We visited and saw grain being ground into flour between two millstones driven through huge wooden gears from the wooden water mill, still being turned by water power.

Machinery at work

264 Wake Green Road

In the 4 years Tolkien lived in the area he stayed at Gracewell Cottages on Wake Green Road, situated at the back of the mill, near to Moseley Bog and he apparently played in the mill and bog and it was these experiences that apparently gave him the inspiration for his famous books, now made into films. 

Wake Green Road 2015....

His house in Gracewell Cottages is now number 264 Wake Green Road and is a private house, but I imagine we did the same as hundreds of other people and walked down there to take a photo of an apparently ordinary traditional house on a fairly busy city road. We walked down the road a bit to take a photo of the road from the same spot of a photo from the year 1905 showing it as a country lane (much to Jackie’s excitement – not!), the houses are still recognisable if now more modernised.

...And how it looked in 1905

Moseley Bog

Moseley Bog is a nature reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is made up of both wet and dry woodland together with patches of fen vegetation which has developed on the site of an old millpond. It’s a splendid place and access across the wetland is on railway sleepers and a wooden walkway that weaves through the woodland, making it a great little walk.

More Moseley Bog

We carried on along Wake Green Road to continue our walk along the River Cole, passing some old ‘prefabs’. Just after the Second World War 500,000 prefabricated houses were erected all over the bomb damaged county as temporary houses, until permanent brick built houses could be built. Their design life was 10 years, but many of them lasted into the 1970’s and beyond and I remember a whole estate near to where I lived as a child that were demolished in about 1965. 

The prefabs on Wake Green Road

These ones in Wake Green Road are some of the last and I believe they are now listed buildings and cannot now be demolished as they are examples of a past housing style. We did note the asbestos roofs, probably best left untouched and they now look very cold and dated, not the best accommodation! There’s about a dozen of them in a row and at least half of them looked unoccupied – prefab accommodation anyone?

Sooty cat taking a drink from the running tap

We walked as far as Trittiford Mill Park on the edge of Yardley Wood, near where I once lived, looked for a café, couldn’t find one so returned along the river through the woods, past the school outing and returned ‘home’ after enjoying an ice cream on a nice sunny and warm afternoon. Can’t believe the weather forecast for the weekend is cold, windy and heavy rain, it’s so warm and pleasant today!

Look at this old map from 1900. Sarehole Mill is in the centre, there is nothing but green fields all around

Now look at this one from 1930. Sarehole Mill is still in the centre, but now its surrounded by suburbia. The house we are staying in is on a road at the top of the map just right of centre

Solihull to Hall Green

We’ve now moved on from Solihull and looking after Maggy cat after Helen and Phil returned from their amazing USA climbing adventure. They achieved their objective of climbing ‘The Nose’ on El Capitan in Yosemite, often described as the ‘best rock climb in the world’. It’s a sheer granite wall 3000ft (1000m) in height and offers 31 pitches of superb climbing right up the middle of the wall. It took them 7 days to do it, sleeping in a portaledge (a ‘tent’ that hangs from anchors placed by them into the vertical wall) at night and hauling their gear of 40kg each up the face between each climbing pitch. Well done to them, we stand back in amazement!

Manu eases Jackies stiff shoulder

Before they got back we had a night out with our friends Manu and Crystal, who always seem to find the best reasonably priced restaurants in Birmingham, this one Turkish cuisine after a pint of real ale in a nearby pub – fabulous! Manu, a qualified masseur attended to Jackie’s stiff shoulder and my aching calf muscles after my Park Run and we had a tour of their inter-war built house that they are completely restoring. It’ll be nice when it’s done, but there’s lots to do yet and how they are living there in its condition is anyone’s guess, but it’s now plastered, the upstairs bathroom is done, the downstairs shower room is nearly done, the kitchen isn’t (but they have a utility used as a kitchen at the moment) and the dining room is stacked full of stuff!

Monday visited Denise and Pauls so Jackie could do her BBC engineer bit and get our DVD recorder to connect to their TV and VHS video player so they can transfer their family videos onto DVD’s. Family DVD film evening anyone?!?

Monday evening our regular pub evening with Mark, Bill and Martina. Mark, a running coach amongst other things told us all how we should be training and running, but I overdid it later and could hardly walk by Thursday, making me miss last Saturdays Park Run. Maybe I’m getting too old for this, but now I’m following a training plan, building up for my 10km run on July 12^th – wish me luck!

Sometime during the week Jackie, reading her emails, announced ‘I’ve won a mini ipad!’. Apparently she’d done a review of ‘trustedhousesitters.com’, the website we use for our house sitting assignments around the world and she won the draw! It arrived on Friday and since then she’s been absorbed in it – an Apple convert!

We took Monty dog for a walk on Thursday after helping Sarah clear a garage out in Alvechurch (and me with painful legs) and then an evening with Helen while hubby Ian was in Italy on business. Packing, lawn mowing and cleaning on Friday, more cleaning on Saturday, a quick visit from Abigail to deliver the keys for our Hall Green house, then very weary Helen and Phil arrived to tell us all about their climb and then we were off to see Sooty in Hall Green.

Hall Green is a pleasant enough place, it’s now a suburb of Birmingham with a population of over 25,000 and an interesting ethnic mix with lots of unusual shops, takeaways and restaurants with a few food stalls making it feel very cosmopolitan. Mainly built between the first and second world wars its architecture is quite interesting with some great buildings dotted about, including the nearby Sarehole Mill that used to grind corn using the water of the River Cole. The building dates from 1771, but there has been a mill on the site since 1542 and it’s a place we will be visiting whilst we are here. Its most famous neighbour was JRR Tolkein who lived about 300m away between the ages of 4 and 8 in 1896 to 1904 and used the Mill, nearby Moseley Bog, the Clent, Lickey and Malvern Hills as inspiration for his books The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, but in those days Hall Green was a small village in the county of Worcestershire, much different from today.

'Long cat' Sooty enjoying strokes

Abigail’s house is a typical inter-war year house, mid terrace in a block extending almost the length of the road, narrow, but deep with a very long but narrow back garden. It’s got a great feel to it, but the best occupant is little Sooty who is the softest cat, rolling onto her back, extending her front and back legs out as far as possible to make her very long, making a miaow like Simons cat and demanding strokes! We’re going to like it here!

Sleepy cat!

In between moving from Solihull to Hall Green we had a very pleasant weekend with Ian and Helen at their house in Moseley, backing on to Canon Hill Park. Monty dog walk with a stop at a local pub for a beer, back for G+T’s on the patio, home-made pizza (fabulous!), more G+T’s, a walk down to the local pub to see a Rolling Stones tribute band, but they had cancelled, so we just had another beer, back finally for a Baileys - oh no, mixing drinks! Yes, I had a headache next morning! Quickly back to see Sooty on Sunday morning after leisurely breakfast, then back to Ian and Helens to help with Canon Hill Park conservation, so out with saws , loppers and litter pickers, punctuated with a really interesting talk whilst working about trees, wood and grasslands by the local park warder. A great weekend

Sooty!

Today we started out running training, taking a route along the River Cole, out past Sarehole Mill and on, feeling as though we are in the country in this green corridor through a busy city, just occasionally having to stop at busy road crossings. We started off running together, Jackie did 2.5km and I went a bit further and did 8.3km – a good start!

Even the weather seems to have picked up, it’s been blue skies and sunshine since last Thursday, so let’s hope it continues!