Who REMEMBERS The POP MAN?

Indexed: 2026-05-17

[00:00:02]Welcome to another video of Walk With Phil, and today I'm in Smethwick.

[00:00:07]And what I want to do in this video is take you to a couple of very um very very well-known factories that used to be around here in Smethwick. I'm actually outside Victoria Park, and these two factories in question are very near to the park.

[00:00:24]Uh one of them, there's still a bit left of the old factory still standing, but as far as the other one is concerned, it is completely disappeared. And the actual road it used to be on is also disappeared without trace.

[00:00:39]So, as always, let's go and have a look and see what we can see. And we'll begin here, just inside Victoria Park, which is just off the high street here in Smethwick. And when this opened in uh 1889, uh it had a boating lake, bandstand, tennis court, bowling green.

[00:01:03]Not sure about the tennis court and the bowling green these days, but the bandstand is still here in Victoria Park, and it's over there. Now, I'm not going to have a look around Victoria Park today. I'm going to leave that for another time.

[00:01:15]Um but if we can if we turn our attention to this building here, which was once the lodge, and it's now part of the Smethwick Heritage Centre.

[00:01:29]It's a kind of a museum in the park, and there's the war memorial.

[00:01:36]We've got a barber, and we've got a convenience store, and oh, there's a restaurant there, Asmar.

[00:01:47]If you go along here, along the high street, you will reach the main shopping area of the town.

[00:01:57]The house was gifted That house was gifted to the Smethwick Borough in 19 03, I think.

[00:02:06]You can see we got the date on there of 1903.

[00:02:10]It was once a nursing home, the Cheshire Nursing Home.

[00:02:14]In 2024, that's about a couple of years ago now, it was um sold for £450,000 and converted into flats.

[00:02:24]And you can see it's uh beautifully appointed with a Calor Gas bottle outside, loads of litter, and an overflowing bin right next to it.

[00:02:37]Uh Edward Cheshire was um was a mayor of the town from 1902 to 1903.

[00:02:47]And he was also a brewer.

[00:02:49]He owned the brewery in Windmill Lane in Smethwick.

[00:02:54]And he op- operated that until 1913, I think, and then it was taken over by Mitchells and Butlers.

[00:03:04]There was a a road named after him, Cheshire Road, just round the back of that house.

[00:03:17]Now, as we go along this part of the High Street, I'm going to show you one or two well well, I think probably one some of the worst-looking roads and streets in the town of Smethwick. Just over there, beyond this green here, there's there's another road, and that's the Bearwood Road. And the High Street continues ahead.

[00:03:36]And just turn your attention to this little bit here.

[00:03:39]This this was a lavatory block.

[00:03:43]Closed, of course, now, as they all are.

[00:03:48]We all like to know where the lavatory blocks used to be.

[00:03:52]As I said in previous videos, I only mention them simply because they were all part of our landscape round here, weren't they? They're about the Black Country these lavatory blocks.

[00:04:03]Part of a civilized society they were.

[00:04:06]But they closed them all.

[00:04:09]Just here we've got a a large pub.

[00:04:12]Now this was a a very luxurious public house when it first opened in 1893.

[00:04:20]It opened as the Park Hotel.

[00:04:22]Then it it just became known as the Park.

[00:04:25]I think it was a vegetarian Well, I think it was a Indian restaurant and then it was a Well, I remember it as a vegetarian restaurant as well.

[00:04:36]But it it did close.

[00:04:39]In When when did it close? 2009.

[00:04:42]But it did open again a few years later on 2011.

[00:04:48]I think it's a bar grill now.

[00:04:51]At least it's still it's still open.

[00:04:56]I think this was built What do you say?

[00:04:58]1950s?

[00:05:00]It's not a very attractive block is it?

[00:05:03]A block of flats.

[00:05:06]And concrete balconies that hang Look as though they're looking precariously attached to the sides of the building.

[00:05:15]As we take a look at the park. It's got the Amritsar Amritsar eating, takeaway and delivery restaurant, bar and grill.

[00:05:27]Always an extraordinarily busy road is the High Street here day or night.

[00:05:35]Look as though they're Well, are they building something new here?

[00:05:41]Look at those concrete balconies.

[00:05:45]I dry washing over them, look.

[00:05:50]To my left, we've still got the park.

[00:05:53]And it's It's a little difficult to see, but if I will just show you here, we will have a look around here one of the days.

[00:06:00]But just in the distance, you could probably just make out the top of the of the bandstand. It's just ahead.

[00:06:13]And you've got some It's very high to access the front doors. Look Look at all them steps that go up.

[00:06:25]And the the the the frontage is looking It's overgrown with trees, shrubs, weeds. And that what's made it worse on this particular road terraced housing is all these bins that the council now have to give you for separating your rubbish, your black bin rubbish, and your recycling, and your garden rubbish in your blue bags.

[00:06:50]And we've got They're all all the bins you can see are all just all overflowing with rubbish.

[00:06:58]And a lot of these houses have got cellars, you can see.

[00:07:01]The cellar is there.

[00:07:03]Cellar window.

[00:07:04]And again, a few steps there to get you to your front door.

[00:07:11]And you can see here more evidence of overflowing bins.

[00:07:20]And this uh row of terracing is known as Gladstone Place.

[00:07:30]Ahead of here, we've got Edgbaston Road.

[00:07:31]We're going to have a look at that.

[00:07:33]There's a beauty lounge here, if you're interested. It's called Revitas, and they do waxing and nails and nails uh probably nails.

[00:07:47]The nail bar.

[00:07:50]Now, here is Edgbaston Road, as I said.

[00:07:52]We'll have a quick look up there. This is one of those roads which I suspect when it was first created late Victorian perhaps maybe it certainly was a very prestigious luxurious road to live.

[00:08:09]And you can imagine people with money would off would live up here, and I'll show you what I mean when we have a look up there.

[00:08:16]And as a case in point here, look at this uh this house here on the corner. It's currently going up for auction.

[00:08:26]And there's this large property here as well.

[00:08:32]And we've got some um date on that house there. 18 Looks like 1869.

[00:08:39]If you continue along here on the High Street, you will reach uh Cape Hill.

[00:08:45]And Cape Hill continues uh towards Birmingham. It's where the Mitchells and Butlers brewery once stood, right at the bottom of Cape Hill.

[00:08:54]I had done a video of that area.

[00:08:58]If you want to check that one out. They did plant a lot of trees along the Edgbaston Road, and you can see this building here, quite a large house as well.

[00:09:13]And it's must be having a bit of work done on it, isn't it? Look, it's all got piles of debris outside.

[00:09:22]This car precariously positioned.

[00:09:29]Uh the what's made this road far worse than it ought to be, of course, is all the parking. Now, this is the this is the bane of a lot of the roads and streets in Smethwick. There is simply no way to park. It's all roadside parking.

[00:09:45]All street parking and it's it's so so congested.

[00:09:52]This This house is almost hidden behind a hedge now.

[00:09:56]There's one or two houses that have plaques.

[00:09:59]Above sometimes it gives you an idea of the date.

[00:10:02]Uh this one just says Sierra Leone.

[00:10:06]If you live along here and you want to find a space for your car, you're very hard pressed.

[00:10:13]You could leave your space in the morning and come back and it's obviously gone.

[00:10:18]Now there's a couple of properties for sale ahead. I'm not sure if those would be the house or or it's flats.

[00:10:34]And this is what you have to do.

[00:10:37]Well, this is what some people do. They get cones.

[00:10:43]And as you look around, vans everywhere as well.

[00:10:53]White vans.

[00:10:56]Here we've got one or two houses and they're very very large houses, look.

[00:11:02]And we've got piles of and it's all littered and rubbish and this is all overgrown here.

[00:11:12]All unkempt at the front.

[00:11:19]And up there you got I don't know. What does that say? It says Tyne Villa up there above that white van and that one there I think it says Rhodesia that plaque.

[00:11:28]You look in there. All We're outside.

[00:11:31]But anyway, we'll leave Edgbaston Road.

[00:11:35]Um ahead of us, we've got Shireland Collegiate Academy.

[00:11:41]Now, this is uh ahead of us is Grange Road.

[00:11:45]To show you down here, Grange Road is down here, also.

[00:11:48]The houses seem to be far more compact along here, but there are also some really large properties down there on the right of Grange Road.

[00:11:59]Again, as you can see now, this is the Shireland school.

[00:12:03]And you can see entrance, one's for boys, and the other one maybe at the other end for girls.

[00:12:20]The Shireland school was built in 1907.

[00:12:25]And uh in uh then it became at the Shireland Secondary School, Secondary Modern.

[00:12:33]In 1998, it was the Shireland Language College.

[00:12:38]And in 2007, it became the Shireland Collegiate Academy.

[00:12:46]It also had teaching status in 2003, where new teachers can be trained and developed here.

[00:12:51]We look over the road at BMH Tutors, and lots of rubbish.

[00:12:56]This is Waterloo Road.

[00:13:01]But, maybe you wouldn't think it was Waterloo Road when you look ahead and you can see the house just there on the island in written in paint, Edgbaston Road.

[00:13:15]There's a hair studio next door.

[00:13:17]This is Grange Road.

[00:13:26]Again, we have piles of rubbish here on the corner of Grange Road.

[00:13:33]The road curves to be Well, curves to become Sycamore Road down there.

[00:13:42]Now, just ahead of me, we've still got the Shireland School.

[00:13:46]Uh but just just there, where this larger building block this block here stands, that was once the entrance to a road and it was called Grantham Road.

[00:13:58]Now, Grantham Road has now been completely wiped off the map.

[00:14:03]Uh so, what we can't do is go down there and show you what used to be along Grantham Road.

[00:14:10]Now, many of us still remember there was a pop factory down there.

[00:14:15]We used to have pop deliveries, didn't we?

[00:14:19]Uh but this pop factory along here was called Masons.

[00:14:23]Now, I'm not sure if if um Masons ever delivered pop.

[00:14:28]I don't think it did. I think you know, they just manufactured it.

[00:14:32]But I'm going to try and give you an idea as to where the factory once stood.

[00:14:36]Now, if you come along Sycamore Road back in its day, you would have seen the pop factory on your right.

[00:14:42]And I think I still remember it being operated there in late 1990s, I think.

[00:14:53]But this is uh Sycamore Road and as you can see, again, as with many roads and streets around here, it's just littered with cars on either side.

[00:15:05]As we go along here Sycamore Road, uh we will um see the entrance to Hadley Stadium. Now, Hadley Stadium is up Walsall Road.

[00:15:24]That's where we've just come from.

[00:15:27]And this is Wilson Road.

[00:15:37]Wilson Road, alike Grantham Road, was a no through road. It terminated the end.

[00:15:48]But all along this side of the road was once terracing terraced houses all along this side of Wilson Road.

[00:15:59]There was once houses along this side as well.

[00:16:03]More or less there where those metal gates are.

[00:16:05]That metal fencing, I should say.

[00:16:09]It's now got a board there now that says outdoor learning and forest school.

[00:16:16]But it's not the council tip as far as I'm aware.

[00:16:23]But quite long gardens some of those properties over there, weren't they?

[00:16:27]The outdoor learning and forest school.

[00:16:32]Think it was through there also.

[00:16:34]There was once another road, long gone now.

[00:16:38]It was called Hawthorne Avenue.

[00:16:41]Now as this begins to rain as we enter the entrance to Adwick Stadium, here to my left was lots of allotment gardens head of the recreation ground.

[00:16:55]I'm going to try and find out if I'm going to I'm trying to show you where the this factory once stood.

[00:17:00]It used to make pop.

[00:17:02]Adwick Stadium opened around 1962 and it's And in 1972 it opened the first UK's first all-weather synthetic running track.

[00:17:13]It's got an indoor sports hall, basketball.

[00:17:17]There's uh football pitches.

[00:17:20]They're all floodlit as well.

[00:17:22]And it says this is the home of Perry Woods United.

[00:17:27]It'd be very difficult to locate now where the the pop factory used to be. It was over there. You can't access anywhere over there though because of the Hadley Stadium.

[00:17:36]But Titus Mason set up his business to sell fizzy drinks in 1895 and he built what was known as the Jaffarade Works in Grantham Road, which as I said is now all long gone.

[00:17:47]T. Mason and Sons was probably the largest, most modern soft drinks factory in the UK.

[00:17:54]Uh I think Mason's was taken over by um Purity. I think Purity is still trading, aren't they?

[00:18:02]Still going in Wednesbury.

[00:18:06]They were famous Mason's were famous for their orangeade mainly.

[00:18:13]But as I said, I think it was still operating in the '90s.

[00:18:16]But I think when I remember when I was a kid, we did used to have deliveries of Alpine.

[00:18:22]And Alpine was always considered to be for those who were not so well off and Corona deliveries was usually for those who were a bit more posh, weren't they?

[00:18:33]Now the last thing I want to show you here in Bearwood Road is this place right ahead of me.

[00:18:38]This is the Bearwood Nursing Home. But the frontage still remains of the old William Mitchell Pens Factory that would dominate this area.

[00:18:48]Uh it would have stretched all the way over here.

[00:18:54]And uh on that ground now is a a lot of uh new properties built. Penmakers Court, I believe it's called, named of course after this place here.

[00:19:04]Now William Mitchell set up this building um well he established a pen making factory in Birmingham, I believe, in 1825. He But he created this purpose built factory to make nibs.

[00:19:19]And it opened in 1910.

[00:19:22]And it was around the 19th up to the 1930s it was employing around a thousand up to a thousand people.

[00:19:30]And it but when the Biro came along in 19 was it 1940s that more or more or less decimated the nib pen industry.

[00:19:41]But this would make um when it opened it it employed four to five hundred people. It just opened in 1910. In 1920 it became part of British Pens.

[00:19:55]And they made metal pen nibs pot pen holders letter clips window street window display clips and all different types of stationary.

[00:20:07]And in 1982 it became William Mitchell Calligraphy Limited for four years. And it closed in 1986.

[00:20:16]And we got this rather large apartment block opposite the pen factory. This is called Pens Close.

[00:20:25]Again a nod obviously to the to the factory.

[00:20:31]And you can still see the rather ornate entrance to the original offices of William Mitchell Pens.

[00:20:38]And it's still got the name William Mitchell above that door.

[00:20:42]Sadly we couldn't really locate where the the old Mason's pot factory used to be. And of course we know why. The whole of Grantham Road where it once stood has completely been wiped off the map. And so we can't really we couldn't really make out exactly where it stood. As far as the pen factory behind me is concerned well you can see that But still some some aspect of that factory that's still standing. But to think that beyond that office block it would stretch back it would stretch back quite a few acres.

[00:21:16]And now when you look is there's no trace at all of of the of the factory now that stands and in its place is loads and loads of houses and flats.

[00:21:27]Penmakers Court is just a nod to what used to be on that side.

[00:21:34]But anyway as far as the streets and roads are concerned around here, well, ain't they a they're a nightmare to negotiate what with all the traffic coming up and down and all the parked cars on either side.

[00:21:44]And you'll find loads of roads and streets in Smethwick just looking like the road we went up in Edgbaston Road.

[00:21:51]But anyway, I think we'll leave it at that. And if you like the video, hit the like button and also hit subscribe and hit the notification bell for new videos. See you on the next one.