Sunday 6th July

We had another 60+ visitors come to see the exhibition today. We were able to have the Dovecote open too and the volunteer gardeners were busy preparing for the Britain in Bloom judging later this month.

More stories came in today. One linked to an old credit card recently found on a litter pick alongside the golf course by Fiona Adams from the Moseley Society. The card expired over 20 years ago.

"The Moseley Society has been organising litter picks since 1st April 1979. Monthly in the car park and special events. I found this Access card which expired in 1993, during a recent litter picking around the perimeter of Moseley Golf Club. Its already social history as most expired cards are cut up. Who was Jayne Russell? The Jane Russell?"

For those too young to remember Jane Russell was a curvacious Hollywood star in the 1950's. Well you can see how she could have lost her credit card.








Another story was left by Ken Watson. It was about the time in the early 60's when his mother worked as a night sister at the Children's Hospital (now Moseley Hall Hospital). She used to have to go on the bus, but when Ken passed his test and got his first car, he proudly took her to work. He could still remember the car registration. He also said that he had been told about a secret passage in the original hospital building and reckoned it must still be there.

"In the early 60's my Mum was a ward sister at the Children's Hospital. I used to bring her down on Sunday nights, Monday nights in a Ford Popular (and on Tuesday night). She was a night sister. her name was Florence May Watson. When it closed down, she went to work at the Sorrento Hospital. The Matron said there was a secret passage in the Children's Hospital from her bedroom in the main part of the hall. Somewhere around Christmas, when the hospital was closed, me and Mum used to come and keep her company. Before the old people's home there was a tree that was knocked down, the left of the front door (copper beech tree) (the car was a Ford Anglia - registration number 610 CLF)"

Ken had his arm in a sling, so his friend Gail Sheldon wrote his story down for him. Like many Moseley folk, Gail was born in Sorrento Maternity Hospital on Wake Green Road where Ken's Mum moved to after the Children's Hospital closed.

"My Mum June Mary Sheldon, with Doug Sheldon, lived in a bedsit opposite St Ann's Church. She used to watch the weddings taking place in the 1960's. I was born at the Sorrento Hospital on 11th November 1968. They moved from Ladywood to Moseley. We then moved to Pineapple Road."

Julia Macauley left a story from her childhood living on Salisbury Road. She recalls the time she and her brother and sister were shouted at by a local builder for leaving footprints in his newly laid concrete. Julia thinks the concrete prints must still be there somewhere.

"As a child I lived in Salisbury Road with my brother and sister - backing on to our house was the butchers which was undergoing building work and we three kids had a whale of a time playing in piles of sand and clambering around on scaffolding. One day one of the workmen remonstrated with us and told us not to play there again. I cheekily said 'how do you know it was us?' - he pointed to 3 sets of footprints in the concrete."