Harlew Caravans Leaves Alum Rock

One of the longest-serving businesses on Alum Rock Road, Harlew Caravans, has left Alum Rock for new premises in Glebe Farm.

The owner, Kuldip Dhanjal, has been on Alum Rock Road since 1989. The business itself has been in the area since the 1940s, taking the name "Harlew" from its original owner, Harry Lewis. Also moving to Glebe Farm is Tony Austin, who has been working in the shop for nearly forty years.

The relocation is due to changes in the current lease, and the desire of the new landlords to maximize rental income having being purchased the property as part of the liquidation of the Norton Estate properties in the Alum Rock area over the last eighteen months.

The new address for Harlew Caravans is 33 Glebe Farm Road, Stechford, Birmingham, B33 9LY. Tel: 0121 785 2924 or the old number which still works: 0121 327 5369.

Roja Stores: Fifty Years at the Heart of The Rock

It is noteworthy for any shop to survive for a half a century, to have done so on the Alum Rock Road is a remarkable achievement, given all the changes in recent decades.

Yet Roja Stores has been present near the Saltley Gate end of Alum Rock Road since 1961. In fact the Rohman family has been running businesses in Birmingham since Mr Rojour Rohman entered the textile trade in 1948, running four large stalls in the old King’s Hall market. At the same time Mr Rohman opened one of the first Asian restaurants in Birmingham on Broad Street in the early 1950s, making him a double pioneer, an entrepreneur in both food and fashion.

He continued in the King’s Hall market until 1960 when the building of the first Bull Ring shopping centre forced a relocation.

In 1961 a store at Number 22 Alum Rock Road opened. Initially the name of the previous shop was kept – ‘Maurice’, a clothes store – as Mr Rohman became the first retailer of Asian fabrics on the Alum Rock Road. Business prospered and the present site of Number 24 and Number 26 was acquired.

As Mr Rohman’s son, Ahmed, now running the store with his sister Yasmin, recalls:

“Trade was good, he was open until ten o’clock at night. People were coming from Manchester, London, Leeds, all over the country, from Glasgow, just to buy the materials. So as he expanded the shops, Number 22 was kept as materials, this (Number 24) initially was all materials as well. Then Dad found there was a change in the area where people were coming in, Europeans, thinking they could buy European things, and they couldn’t, so he thought, well, I need to integrate that as well. He had the foresight to think, ‘Well, I’ll put Western clothing in, bring the curtains and nets back into it again’, soft furnishings.”

Today Number 24 Alum Rock Road survives, the longest established business on the road. Mindful of the saturated market in Asian textiles the store focuses on a selection of Western clothing and that same mixture of curtains, nets and blinds introduced thirty years ago.

As Ahmed Rohman remarks:

“It’s been a happy time here, we are well recognised by all members of the community. A lot of our long-established customers still return, some of whom date back to King’s Hall market. We’ve seen the changes on the road over the years and hopefully we can be here for many more years to come”. 

St Saviour's Church

“A large church in the perpendicular style”. So wrote the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner in the 1966 Warwickshire edition of his guide to the buildings of England.

St Saviour’s has always loomed large on the horizon of my life, ever since I spied it as a child from the top deck of the bus into the city centre looking East towards St Andrews. The imposing medieval cast of the tower and its prominent position on a steep incline still serves as a visual marker.

Until the recent Heritage Open Day I’d never entered the building. Courtesy of the genial warden Mr Phipps I was able to take these photographs and discover more about this richly decorated place of worship.

Constructed from 1848-1850 through an endowment from Charles Adderley, the first Baron Norton, with R.C. Hussey as architect, St Saviour’s has had only 15 vicars in its lifetime, survived war-time bomb damage, and continues to offer regular services in an Anglo-Catholic style.

The interior of the church is lofty, spacious, with rich symbolism at every turn. 

The altar is backlit through a vivid stained-glass window which clarifies the church’s Anglican inflection.

The Lady Chapel is particularly notable for an example of the art of Lawrence Lee (1909-2011) widely known for his nave windows in the rebuilt Coventry Cathedral

Nearby is the Chapel of the Transfiguration, dating from 1907:

To the left of the altar is the St Francis Chapel:

which like the St Vincent chapel at the rear of the church hosts smaller prayer and worship gatherings.

The most exciting, if treacherous, part of the visit was a journey to the top of the tower. What felt like nearly a hundred steps spiralling a steep incline took me past medieval-looking battlements cut into the tower:

Ever-dustier, slightly fragile stonework led me to the church bell, apparently still in working order:

I lacked both the courage and the footwear to attempt to get on the rooftop, another time I hope.

St Saviour’s is normally only open on days of worship, the main service being on Sundays at eleven. There is also a service at 7 p.m. every Wednesday evening.

Though denominationally Anglican, St Saviour’s looks and feels more Catholic than many modern Catholic churches.

The Walsingham influence is strong, providing the source for the font’s Holy Water and the destination of an annual congregation trip to the shrine.

Though some of the interior plasterwork needs renovation and the graveyard is severely overgrown, the dignity and intimate grandeur of this striking nineteenth century presence in the heart of Saltley remains intact - something signalled poignantly by the fragments left in one of the windows after an air raid in 1941, another connection with Coventry:

Traces of the Past (II)

Another layer of the area's retail past has recently been peeled back.
At Number 610 Washwood Heath Road, opposite Sladefield Road, is what used to be a ladies' outfitter called Jean Ballard. According to Kelly's Directory this stood here from about 1963 to 1967.
If you look carefully you can read its predecessor store, L. Newey, milliners, on the sign above the door.


The premises have been empty for quite some time, but recent refurbishment activity and the installation of new shutters suggest a new venture about to begin. 

Crowning Glory?

The Crown Buildings at the corner of Alum Rock Road and Washwood Heath Road are more than the gateway to Alum Rock. Their condition is an easy to read barometer of the area's vitality. With their failure to reach the guide price of £1.3 to £1.5 million at the May 2011 auction, the future of the eleven vacant units is unclear.   



Still for sale

As of July 2011 the agents acting for the estate that has been selling its remaining Alum Rock properties indicated that the units are now likely to be sold individually. Indeed one of the end properties on Alum Rock Road was purchased at auction in May 2011 and the new owner is applying for the property to become a takeaway (there are so few already).

The end property of the block on Washwood Heath Road has been a solicitors since 2002 and is not part of any future sale.

19 Washwood Heath Road

Despite their aged, neglected facades the Crown Buildings retain a little of the late nineteenth century grandeur of the Victorian era. The empty units have also housed significant institutions in the area’s history. Straddling the corner, the Law Centre grew out of the Saltley Action Centre – a radical community project and drop-in centre - part of the heady conjunction of local activism and the government funded Community Development Project in the 1970s. Before they are sold off to restaurants, retail and whatever passes for twenty-first century regeneration we should mark the traces of a more radical recent past.

The Saltley Print and Media Workshop (SPAM) on Washwood Heath Road housed printers which produced among other things screen-printed T-shirts, posters for gigs and publishing gems like Our Area, the collection of poems by local children compiled for the Saltley Festival of 1979.

Next door the signs for the Bangladesh Workers Association and the Mirpur Elders Centre signal the journeys from South Asian villages to East Birmingham factories, terraced houses and latterly endless card games amidst satellite television.

Although the City Council's Regeneration Framework for Washwood Heath identifies the Crown Buildings as a development opportunity, the failure of the units to reach the guide price and their likely piecemeal sale in the coming months may prevent a more imaginative reconstruction of their former glories.

As a former occupant pointed out the Crown Buildings make a statement about the area to residents and visitors alike. They are one sensitive restoration project away from giving Alum Rock the high quality gateway that would signal a fresh start.

The 'Other' Alum Rock



An area with a reputation for crime, drugs and gangs, populated mostly by one migrant community. A familiar description of Alum Rock – except this is not Alum Rock, Birmingham B8, but Alum Rock, San Jose, CA 95127.

Anyone who types “Alum Rock” into Google or YouTube quickly encounters this “other” Alum Rock of cycling in Alum Rock Park and basketball at the Alum Rock Youth Center 

I was able to visit the Californian Alum Rock in August 2009. A ninety minute journey on the pleasingly clangy Cal Train south of San Francisco through Silicon Valley took me to San Jose. Two bus rides later I was walking along Alum Rock Avenue, the broad seven mile thoroughfare from the city of San Jose to the foothills of Alum Rock Park.

At first glance the setting could not be more different from the Alum Rock Road in Birmingham: the hills of the park overlook a quiet shopping parade with a Starbucks at the intersection:

and further along White Avenue the five million pound Alum Rock Youth Center with its highly polished sports hall and play activities:

Yet the two Alum Rocks have more in common than at first sight: in California like in Birmingham one ethnic community predominates: 71% of the population of 15,000 are Hispanic. Local residents of the San Jose Alum Rock told me “you don’t want to live here”, “there’s a lot of gangs”. A few days after my visit a young woman was murdered at the Alum Rock transit station from which I’d caught my bus.

Yet like in Birmingham, community organisations attempt to bring shape and structure to everyday life. The Californian Alum Rock has a traders' association and a a Methodist church. 

As with Naseby Centre in Alum Rock, the Alum Rock Youth Center has faced the prospect of closure.

This unexpected connection between two Alum Rocks five thousand miles apart offers opportunities. How enriching and fascinating if the two communities could be ‘twinned’ in some way, with both online and face to face connections, one day perhaps exchange visits.

I now know the way to San Jose, many more from East Birmingham should have the chance to follow.

Hutton Hall: Transfer and Transformation



Hutton Hall, June 2011

Hutton Hall has sat at the heart of the Hutton Estate in Washwood Heath for several decades. Initially a meeting venue for local tenants, it became a base for a variety of local groups and services, but latterly a target for graffiti and vandalism. A few years ago a local resident, Masood Yasin, approached Birmingham City Council to question the quality of what Hutton Hall was offering the local area and to propose a community-led regeneration of the building. To their credit City Council officers together with Business in the Community and the law firm Eversheds worked with the local organisation Masood Yasin now runs - Comm:Pact - on a bold initiative.

Since 1st April 2011 Hutton Hall has been transferred from the City Council to be managed by Comm:Pact on a 25 year lease. As can be seen from the photograph above compared to the one below taken in 2008 the exterior of the building has been transformed.

Hutton Hall, 2008

The art work now adorning the building was designed in conjunction with local residents to reflect Hutton Hall's Birmingham location, local heritage, the colours of the fabrics used in Asian fashion, the names of organisations working in the building and iconic images of contemporary life.

Hutton Hall, June 2011

In coming months Hutton Hall hopes to extend the activities currently on offer which include: twice weekly sewing classes organised by the women's group Amina; Zumba classes; a play scheme for children aged 6-11; and a weekly health project run by Kidney Research UK.

Given the age profile of the locality, strengthening services for young people is a priority. The sports court at the back provides the land, but as many organisations are asking at the moment: who will provide the financial and human resources?



Traces of the Past (I)



Number 323 Alum Rock Road

Changing a shop sign can be an act of temporary urban archaeology by peeling away several layers of the recent past. Number 323 Alum Rock Road currently bears witness to everyday life in the 1940s: “tobacconist, confectioner, fancy goods”. The antique italics spell out “H.A. Porter” - Horace Aubrey Porter - whose store was first listed in the 1943 edition of Kelly’s Directory. This annual publication was the Google Maps of the analogue age, which tried to document all the addresses in the city. The listing remained as H.A. Porter for a further twenty-five years until it changed to R.J. Porter in the 1968 edition.



Goodbye Mr News



Mr Champaneria

The true value of things emerges when they are no more - something as true of places as of people.

Seeing the Crown Buildings wrapped around the corner of Washwood Heath and Alum Rock Road at Saltley Gate up for auction prompted me to use a blog to capture social change and everyday life in the Alum Rock area of East Birmingham.

The last tenant to vacate one of the eleven premises up for sale was also one of the long-standing reference points that defines any neighbourhood. The owner of “Mr News”, Hasmukh Champaneria, retired at the end of February 2011 after more than thirty years as a newsagent at Saltley Gate.

Born in Gujarat, India, Mr Champaneria came to England in 1975 and worked for several years in the Black Country before deciding to open a business.
In 1980 prior to the demolition of the Gate pub and adjacent stores to make way for the large roundabout,  Mr Champaneria took over an existing newsagents at Number 14 Washwood Heath Road and renamed it “Geeta News” after his wife.

Mr Champaneria explains how the business developed in the 1980s:

“Customer communication is more important than anything else. Business is only how you talk, how you give service to people. People come, they don’t care too much about money, service is important. I’ve always been a talking person, I’ll talk anything with customers, sports, whatever, I will talk with customers, make more friendliness with people. Word is always passed on. If you give good service, if you come into my shop once and find there is a warm welcome in here, you will say, ‘This chap is very nice, why not stop here next time?’ and that’s why the business built.”

With several large factories still operating nearby in the 1980s Geeta News opened at 5 a.m. every day – “customers knew I would be there at 5 o’clock and they would always be waiting for me”.

When the Washwood Heath Road properties were demolished to widen the road Mr Champaneria was determined to stay in the area:

“The business was doing well. Also you were getting on with the community as well. Society accepted me, so once your name’s there, you are established, and your business will be stable. I was looking for somewhere in any empty property in Alum Rock Road”.

The change of location to Number 4 Alum Rock Road in October 1989 brought a change of name:



Number 4 Alum Rock Road

“The thinking was a different image, rather than ‘Geeta News’, ‘Mr News’, something which when you go to the High Street, something which attracts people. People know and say ‘Mr News’.”.

In the last few months of Mr News’s existence I was able to see at first hand the three things this apparently ordinary newsagents offered the Alum Rock Road:

First, Mr Champaneria was not only a source of newspapers, sweets and cigarettes. More than most businesses a newsagents both responds to and shapes the rhythms of local life. For several decades Mr News witnessed the modest addictions, compulsions, little rewards, political views, consumer desires and global connections sustained by what we purchase in newsagents. His was a familiar face whose friendly demeanour defused many a row and often mediated between the different generations and diverse cultural backgrounds of the area. As Mr Champaneria remarked:

“I used to explain to the parents – ‘Your children have changed, you have to change your ways, you have to change to modern life, you can’t always do things in your way, you have to loose, you have to loosen your grip, give freedoms’. But whatever freedom, don’t abuse it, so when the children came to talk with me, I always said, ‘Parents give you freedom, you should respect it. If you do something wrong, your parents tell somebody else, you’re damaging other children’s lives. So if you have the freedom, accept the freedom, don’t do anything wrong’ ”.

Second, for many years the store was a trusted Western Union money transfer station. Dozens of people a week would come from all over Birmingham to send money to the Caribbean and Africa in particular. The corner of Alum Rock Road was linked to Jamaica, St Kitts, Nevis, Nigeria, Zambia, Ghana, Senegal as well as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Third, even for those who’d grown up in Alum Rock but moved away, Mr News’s continued presence offered a reassurance that part of their childhood remained:

“No matter how far away they went, they always came. I had some customers 30 years, they come themselves, their children came as well, and when I finished the last day, they said Goodbye, and they said they don’t think they will come on this road again, so you can see how communication is there. People came until the last day of my shop”.


Mr News prior to closure

Now Mr News is no more the residents of Alum Rock realise how important it was, particularly when they seek out lottery tickets or reliable money transfer services. Mr Champaneria himself experienced this sense of loss on the day he travelled to meet me:

“Even today, I came [to the Alum Rock Road] at 11 o’clock, everybody talking, everybody asking, ‘Where have you moved to?’, even one Afro-Caribbean woman stopped me and said ‘Where have you moved to? I’ve been looking for you’, I said, ‘I’ve not moved anywhere’. And she said, ‘I miss your shop, it doesn’t matter what you say’. It made me cry, if the people are like that, it makes me cry, yes, society, they did accept me”.

He has hopes for the future of the area:

"I think the area is still brilliant. It could improve more, if the City Council made some sort of change round. They should look at putting out a new image for the area. I have prayed to God that some developer buys the Crown Buildings, and brings a different image, and different way to the building, it will bring people in".