Hillfields

The CDP office (top of Vine Street) opened in 1971 and closed in 1974 for demolition. Stringer opened in 1975 I believe.

Does anyone know why St Peter's Vicarage was so far away from the church itself? Was there another much older church closer to the vicarage originally?

Neither existed in 1837 according to the map but both are on the 1850 maps, so the parsonage (as it was labelled) seems to have been deliberately distant. There was room to put it closer but perhaps the location offered a better long term view?

Thanks to Gray Forster on FB - good shot along Vine Street looking south. You can see The Foresters Arms at the bottom on Raglan Street -

Anyone know where The Polar Bear Cafe was? Its not on the 1957 directory despite this allegedly being '63/'64?

I think the property next door says 'Mundy' which might be 48 Harnall Lane West? So was it number 50?

Notice the Fireplaces set in to the Chimney breasts on the upper level from the property that I presume was destroyed in the War.

The ground floor ones have been recycled. Mundy is in the 1953 directory but not the 55 or 60. In those it goes 50, 48, 46, newsagent. The 1950 map shows 3 properties and then a passageway and more properties.

Mundy is in the 1937 direcory at number 48 and the same in 1940 directory (which can be found online). This image is from the 1937 directory.

A session on scanning with David Fry last week led to a discussion on Hillfields and top shops, something David is researching. He mentioned Prest, but I remembered, from 2015, being sent a report and a set of degraded colour negatives by Chris Capewell, who studied top shops in 1972 and took some photographs of interest. I've scanned the negatives and desaturated them so they're b&w now, but they are in glorious colour in the later part of the PDF of the report. Chris has used colour stickers to relate images to paragraphs. A PDF won't work as a SmartFrames so no embed sadly, but do let me know what you all think, sample of the strips scanned below Ben

Great Ben and Chris Capewell. Re the top shops I think there was something in the health reports about them. They recognised that the tops were derelict and there was a before and after shot of one property where they'd decapitated the building to reduce it to the bottom two levels. I wasn't paying that much attention, so I don't know if they did many.

Not Hillfields, but there is still a block of decapitated top shops in Edgwick Rd at the end nearest to the junction with Cross Rd. These top shops were removed about 1973, so reducing the houses to a more conventional two storeys.

Referring back to the Capewell collection on FB - Apols Ben but I've lifted from CD and posted in here directly for the fuller view - I also had to flip as it's been reversed on CD but you can see this one - taken from Raglan Street - This one links with my previous post#296 - That's the same property which I think was 63 Raglan Street viewed here - looking at its rear on the left on this one from Canterbury St - you can see the same Billboard -

That wall on Raglan Street is still there - is it part of the old Alma Street Dunlop works?

It was Singer motor car works before and just after the war. I don't know about later.