Stories to Tell

A surprise feature as we took a cut through a modern housing estate to reach our canalside path - to the cafe that serves three kinds of hot chocolate (dark/milk/white), and chocolate cake. No surprise that the towpath also passes the Bourneville Cadbury factory. 

No plaques here, no notices, no legends on the map. A bit of digging needed to find out what and why. A workhouse was built in this place in 1870 - the brutal last resort for the destitute and desperate. An infirmary was added seven years later - 300 beds and fitted with electricity, so this was serious investment in social welfare, however minimal. This water tower was soon added to ensure the infirmary had a safe supply. Ten years further on and a large nurses home was added. The workhouse evolved into a home for the chronically sick

Forty years later, 1948, the entire site was absorbed into the new National Health Service, as a hospital. Fifty years later it was designated a centre for 'Defence Medicine' - the treatment of military personnel - in addition to its civil functions. This soon developed into a controversy. Injured fighters from the US/UK invasion of Iraq were treated here. This was a controversial attack (a million of us marched through London to oppose it) and stories that service people being treated here (on non-dedicated wards) were verbally abused made the national news. A report to Parliament exonerated the hospital

Only a few years (2011), later, Birmingham built the central hospital complex where our grandson was born, 10 weeks ago (tomorrow), and this hospital was closed. The land was sold to Persimmon, one of the mass-market house builders with a less than glowing reputation in our distorted housing sector, with permission to build 650 houses. Unsurprisingly, they do not seem to have been required to do anything purposeful with the tower

I found a flurry of news about it in 2019. Two brothers  bought it at auction, with permission to convert to three appartments, with possibly a 'penthouse' on top penthouses. I can't find any later news - my guess is that a pandemic has disrupted their plans one way or another. The story is not yet over