Not To Scale

Celebrating the lost voices and forgotten lives of the women of Birmingham throughout history. Because the daughters of this city deserve a spotlight✨www.hannahswings.com  

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The Fruit and Veg Market Hall, Bullring, Birmingham in the 1960s. 

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Lidos (a public outside swimming pool) were all the range during the warmer days of the last century. There’s only a handful left across the West Midlands (but rumours of one being built in Digbeth!) but Mom remembers going to a lido to cool off in the summers. 

Here’s a selection of photos that span the decades across the different lidos of Brum. (Source: Birmingham Live)

- Cannon Hill Park Lido, MAC (date unknown)

- Hinckley Lido, end of the 1930s. Built in 1935 and financed by Mr Harry Simmons, director of the Hinckley hosiery company.

- The Lido at Stechford Swimming Baths, 1960s.

- A busy day at Droitwich Lido during the heatwave of 1976. 

- Sunbathers at Droitwich Lido in 1984. 

- Relaxing at Stechford Lido, 1984. 

- Much simpler times back in 1976! 

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Wartime Christmas (and still found opportunity to smile!) 

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Miss Heather Bradley, pictured here as a trainee midwife, conducting her rounds in a pony and trap around the Heybarnes Road area of Small Heath, Birmingham. 

Date of the photograph is unknown, although Small Heath was farmland until the 1920s so this photo must be earlier than that. 

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In 1941 at the age of 22, Vera Smith-Fletcher signed up at the Labour and National Service Department to become a Munitions Worker and with girls from other areas was drafted to Dunlop Rubber Company in Birmingham, leaving her 3 years old daughter with her parents in their home in Sunderland.

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Some local landscapes to be inspired by at a later date. Very George Shaw-esque. Taken on Monday 1st March 2021.

George Shaw is a contemporary British artist known for his realistic depictions of banal spaces in the English suburbs. In the artist’s paintings, the presence of graffiti, litter, and architecture, creates an eerie sense of someone else being there. “For me, it was taking those clichés of epiphany and the sublime and putting them in a place where great thoughts aren’t rumored to happen,” Shaw explained. “It has been said my work is sentimental. I don’t know why sentimentality has to be a negative quality. What I look for in art are the qualities I admire or don’t admire in human beings.”

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Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art - change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past, in all its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go.

Molly Ringwald for The NY Times on her leading lady roles in John Hughes’ movies.

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Nurses at the Dudley Road Hospital playing in the snow, Christmas Day 1962. 

One of them is Violet Withington; her story can be viewed here: https://www.swbh.nhs.uk/media/news/former-nurse-returns-to-city-hospital-to-mark-her-100th-birthday/

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Castle Vale flats, Birmingham, 1987. 

If this isn’t made for a book cover or movie poster then I don’t know what is! 

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Workers at an aeroplane factory in Birmingham, September 1918. 

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15 glorious old photographs of Birmingham seen in colour

If you’re a history buff, one of the things you may have noticed while in lockdown is all the people who are experimenting with the various apps you can find for computer or smartphone which will colourise old photos. Far be it from us to see a bandwagon rumbling past without clambering on, so we’ve taken a few old pictures of Birmingham and put them through a number of these programs. The results are sometimes impressive, sometimes less so. Most end up looking like those hand-coloured postcards that people used to buy in the early 20th century. But either way, they do give us a small insight into life from the past, at least now in colour.

There’s some really lovely (and surprisingly well done) colourised photos of Birmingham throughout time here, mostly 1900-1930 I suspect. Unfortunately not all are dated, but still a good source of people in larger spaces too. 

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The residents of back to back housing of infamous Summer Lane, Newtown, Birmingham. 

Date unknown, although by the looks of the outfits and hairstyles, I’m guessing 1920s. Later colourised. 

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...the labour cannot be very badly paid, or the girls would not look so plump in their neat summer dresses, or show such neat foot as some of them do, glittering in shiny pumps.

A Jewellery Quarter factory inspector’s report with a hint of propaganda, reported in The Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal, 3rd September 1883

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Sports Day 1938 on Trittiford Road, Yardley Wood, Birmingham, England. 

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A misty Monday morning walk through Moseley Bog (Tolkien Country). 

Moseley, Birmingham, B13.