Lost Creatures in Castle Bromwich

Taken circa 2014.

A patch of overgrown wasteland near Castle Bromwich contained, until relatively recently, two strange concrete curiosities hidden in the bramble and long grass. One was an abstract form seemingly with a tail, the other was a stylised bird. When I walked this route along the River Tame, in the early- to mid-2010s, each visit would find these statues moved through the copse, as if gently grazing. On two different occasions, burnt out cars had arrived, and the stones had seemingly waddled over to take a look. Strewn around were scorched remnants from inside the cars – scraps of maths homework, or the remains of a bag. The next time I arrived, the car would have been removed, and the statues shuffled back to shelter, snuffling under the shade of young trees.

I stopped visiting them in about 2016, but I returned a couple of years ago and they had gone. The entire riverside had undergone improvements designed to compensate for the intended cutting of HS2 along the route. Wildflower meadows lined the gentle slopes of the hill, sprays of white, yellow and purple, and a neat pathway meandered gently through. It took a similar route to the river, before it had been straightened into concrete culverts. I searched the remaining undergrowth, but the sculptures seemed to have taken flight.

The concrete creatures were two of several sculptures commissioned to adorn housing estate playgrounds in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The sculptor of all of these was John Bridgeman, but only one of his playground sculptures survives, in Acocks Green, and is now Grade II listed. If I had of known what the Hodge Hill curiosities were ten years ago, I would have attempted to rescue them.

The housing estate which they had been part of was the Firs Estate. It had been named after a house called The Firs, its own name possibly taken from the fact that this land was once covered with furze, a yellow-flowered scrub plant. The “brom” from Castle Bromwich means broom, another yellow-flowered scrub plant, but less thorny that furze. Both names paint a picture of a once partially barren landscape dotted with sprays of sunshine-gold.

Birmingham City Council not only built the new houses and high rises on the ancient floodplain of the River Tame, but on the filled-in land of the original route of the water’s flow, before it had been redirected around the racecourse in the early 1900s. It did not take long for the eight-story flats to soak up the ground water, becoming so waterlogged that the ground floor apartments were uninhabitable. When most of the estate was demolished, in 2001, Bridgeman's sculptures must have been left behind, left to wander, rewilded to the land. 

S C U L P T U R E   O N E

Photographs taken circa 2014.

S C U L P T U R E   T W O

Photographs taken circa 2014.

M I S C E L L A N I E S

Brick marked "C A S T L " found near the sculptures, 2016.
Castle Bromwich is nearby.

O R I G I N A L  I N S T A L L A T I O N

Below are photographs of the sculptures in situ, with thanks to artist Tom Bloor (Instagram) for sending these to me.

T H E   F I R S   E S T A T E

Images of the Firs Estate taken from Pimple Hill in 1968. The Dunlop factory can be seen in the background, and the River Tame is seen in the bottom image, flowing from beneath Castle Bromwich Bridge. This is all, now, beneath Bromford Viaduct - a raised stretch of the M6. 

The Tame Valley looking down from the Motte called Pimple Hill in Castle Bromwich, Phyllis Nicklin, 1968.

The Tame Valley upstream from the Motte called Pimple Hill in Castle Bromwich, Phyllis Nicklin, 1968.