Acock Green - The Edwardian Lady's Childhood Home

The Edwardian Lady is Edith Holden, who wrote the famous "Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady". This book contains natural history observations that she made while exploring the Solihull/Birmingham area. My intention is to create a 21st Century equivalent.

I didn't make it to Birmingham this week but S, a colleague, circulated an article via Facebook that mentioned Acocks Green, a place that Edith lived in as a child.

Ina Taylor's biography of Edith Holden says that as her family grew bigger, in about 1876, they ...

... moved to a larger house called the Elms in another village, Acocks Green, a few miles south of Birmingham. Edith was then five and able to remember the house later.

... Another pursuit which the children shared with their parents was walking in the country around Acocks Green. Arthur Holden loved the countryside and had a good knowledge of the birds and wild plants of the area. Mrs Holden was not always strong enough to accompany them, so the children made a special point of picking a colourful bunch of flowers to cheer her.

The Holdens' bunches of flowers probably included violets.

The Acocks Green History Society web site explains that, after the railway arrived in 1852, Acock Green grew rapidly and, in 1911 was absorbed into Birmingham. They have also gathered a selection of  postcards, which show what the village looked like in the early 1900s.

William Dargue's site's Acocks Green page has modern photos, which show that there are still green places to explore. Also, there are plenty of flowers to see thanks to the 'Bloom Team' whose efforts are described in the Village in Bloom section of the Acocks Green Neighbourhood Forum.

The article that sparked off this post was a Birmingham Mail piece about a different type of green-fingered activity altogether. It describes a Police raid on a house in Florence Road, just the other side of the railway line from where Edith lived, in which 411 cannabis plants were being grown.