SLHC MEMBERS’ TALKS

A SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY, by ALLAN EVANS

11 March 1954 was the date on which Solihull was created a Borough. Princess Margaret, on behalf of The Queen, presented the Charter of Incorporation to the Mayor Designate. She arrived by train at Solihull Station and was driven, in a motorcade of five cars, to the Odeon Cinema in Shirley – the only venue in the Borough large enough to accommodate the ceremony. Her route was along Blossomfield Road, then a country lane. Her car slowed outside Tudor Grange, now a Special School, whose children lined the verge to see her wave to them. Allan, aged 3 ½, was amongst them. Charter Day was also marked by the construction of the ceremonial gates into Brueton Park from New Road. The foundation stone was laid by Mrs Cooper, wife of Clr.R.D.Cooper, the last Chairman of the Urban District Council and Mayor Designate. Clr. Wright, who funded many gifts to the Borough, paid the construction costs.

PINFOLD FARM, by TREVOR ENGLAND and EDNA HANDLEY

Trevor had examined the timber framed construction both externally and internally. Its heavy, good quality timbers (cut when green and hardened as they dried out in situ), with chamfering and stopping on the main supporting beams, built around a central chimney stack, meant that it had been built between 1560 and 1640 for a yeoman farmer before the Civil War. [This caused great distress to ordinary people with soldiers stealing produce, horses and other livestock, besides damaging buildings. Prince Rupert and his cavalry came through Solihull in 1642 and Shirley in 1643; Stratford-on-Avon was plundered four times and Warwick only escaped because Lord Brooke lived there]. The square panels between the timber work were filled with wattle and daub (which was lime washed regularly to kill insects and reduce draughts), later replaced by bricks – longer and thinner than today’s types – for better insulation. The roof had wind braces which were not essential but added to the occupants’ status. The catslide was added 100 years later to provide more storage space for the three ground floor rooms.

Edna explained that ‘Pinfold’ meant a pen for stray animals. This was Longden Manor’s pinfold and would have had a cottage for the keeper. The first documented reference, to what had become a farm, was in the will of John Davis dated 11 February 1711. He bequeathed the messuage and it’s appurtenances to his mother, Jane, and after her demise to his five sisters equally. John was buried at St Alphege on 24 February 1711, his sister Elizabeth on 26 March and his mother on 7 April 1711, probably due to a local epidemic. The farm (not named) was shown in William Yates’ one inch map of Warwickshire in 1788.

In 1794 William Lewin bought Pinfold Farm from John Winfield, a large property owner in Birmingham and Solihull, who had owned it since the Land Tax records began in 1781. The occupier from 1781 was Samuel Wood who continued until 1796 when William Lewin came to live there. The service end of the house became a separate cottage where Sarah Wood, the widow or daughter of Samuel, resided. Sarah continued to live there until 1815, when John Wood followed her until 1831. William Lewin died in 1820; his widow became the owner and sold it to Thomas Chattock in 1832. The Chattock family continued ownership until 1937, but only Edward Chattock lived there briefly 1904-06. He was a fruit farmer, who used the orchard and erected glasshouses on Seed Furlong (on the other side of Hampton Lane) which William Lewin had bought under the Enclosure Award in 1820.

In 1938 Warwickshire County Council planned a by-pass whose eastern line went down Marsh Lane and would have destroyed Pinfold Farm yard. That section was never built. Philip Skelcher, a Birmingham architect, bought the property that year and, like the Chattocks, had a series of tenants in what were now called Pinfold Cottages. In 1953 Claude May, a racing driver, bought the cottages and lived in one with his wife, Joan, until 1972. He converted his barn into a three car garage. The other cottage was rented by Basil Izzard, a coal merchant, from 1945 to 1973; he kept coal in his barn. The Mays sold the property by auction in 1972 to Peter & Patricia Hammond who lived there. He was an architect who covered one of the timber framed walls in brick and added a buttress – something that would not have been allowed after the property was Grade II Listed in 1976. Listed Building Consent was given in January 1980 for an extension to ‘the derelict cottage’ to form a three bedroomed house. This is now 32A Hampton Lane; Pinfold Farm retains its entrance from Marsh Lane.

The Hammonds sold Pinfold Farm in 1981 to Stanley & Sheila Hodgkinson who, after two years, sold it to John & Susan Owen. He was an optician. They left in 2011 when it was bought by Daniel Ruiz. After considerable internal refurbishment and giving much help to Trevor and Edna in their research, he sold it in 2014.