Sparkbrook Or Sparkhill??

A Memory of Sparkbrook.

I was born in a house on Stoney Lane, long since demolished. I was never quite sure whether it was Sparkbrook or Sparkhill. Somehow I thought Sparkhill was 'posher'! Went to English Martyrs Primary School, followed by Swanshurst Grammar School for Girls. My earliest memories were of the Ladypool Road shops. Jones's for fruit & veg, Trippas, the wonderful bakery & Jukes's who seemed to sell everything from hardware to buckets & brooms. There was also a pork butchers shop where my brother had a Saturday job. On Stoney Lane there was a hairdressers called Rhoda. I worked there on Saturdays whilst a student. Prior to that I worked at a hairdressers on Stratford Rd called Miss Kitty's. Stoney Lane also had a wool shop and an outdoor, as we called it, now known as an off license. It was run by the Twigg family and you could walk in with a jug & buy draught beer. My sister & I would go shopping for our mother at the co-op on Stratford Rd. This was before proper supermarkets so we would hand our list to the assistant & the money was taken & whizzed along an overhead wire to a cash office which seemed to be on the ceiling. Your change would be returned the same way. I left Birmingham in 1968 and now tell people that I was born in what is now known as 'The Balti Triangle'.

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