A day to blow the cobwebs away

Today was a day for discovering secret places and hidden treasures. There are so many places on our doorstep in Birmingham that we have never visited, so we took advantage of it being a Heritage Open Day to start to put that right.

Our first calling point was Winterbourne House and Garden, belonging to the University of Birmingham. I used to have lectures at Winterbourne, and I lived right next to it as part of the last cohort at University House (now the Birmingham Business School). But I had never been for a look round. So it was an absolute delight to discover magnificent, expansive gardens and a fascinating Arts and Crafts style house.

Winterbourne walled garden

Winterbourne was built in 1903 for the Nettlefold family - powerful Birmingham-based industrialists who owned a factory in Smethwick which made woodscrews. Various incarnations later, and the business still survives today as GKN in Redditch.

Oriental garden

The house is now an exhibit of Edwardian family life. The drawing room focuses on the women of the family, in particular Margaret Nettlefold's creation of the garden, inspired by Gertrude Jekyll. In the study, visitors can see John Nettleford's plans for the Moor Pool estate - 'garden city' housing in Harborne similar to Cadbury's Bournville. While upstairs, the bedrooms, nursery and hobbies rooms provide an insight into how wealthy Edwardians lived.

Out in the garden, we roamed through woodland trails, strolled through pretty walled gardens, crossed still water via a Japanese bridge and ventured into hothouses full of orchids and cacti.

As the heavens opened, we moved on to our second discovery of the day - Moseley Park and Pool. Once again, I lived in Moseley for several years but had never had the chance to go in the park. Usually accessible by keyholding residents only, it had thrown open its gates today for the world to see.

We were surprised to find a sizeable lake, complete with boathouse, and swans that were clearly used to being fed! The park is also home to an 18th Century ice house. Two extremely informative guides from the Moseley Society explained to us how the ice house was constructed to function as a pre-electricity refrigerator, and how its use was primarily ostentatious - the lord of the manor used it to served chilled wine to his guests at summer dinner parties!

Moseley Pool

Heritage Open Days take place every September, and offer free access to places that are normally not open to the public, or that charge an entry fee. Moseley Park has various open days throughout the year, usually coinciding with the Moseley village farmers market. Winterbourne House and Gardens are open every day, except for over Christmas.

A tranquil oasis in deepest Wolverhampton

Every now and again, you stumble upon something that takes you completely and utterly by surprise. Wandering one lunchtime in Wolverhampton, that place came to me in the form of the Wolverhampton City Archives.

There's a ring road there somewhere

Tucked between the ring road and the Molineux, and behind the rather unforgiving-looking and sadly now defunct Wanderer pub, you'd be hard-pressed to find a less salubrious location. But believe it or not, nestling right there is a beautiful little garden which makes for a very pleasant and tranquil spot to eat your sandwiches.

At this time of year, the gardens are abloom with lavender and some lovely flowering yuccas (thanks to The beet route for that plant knowledge). You can gaze across at St Peter's Church and relax as bees buzz busily beside you and butterflies elegantly flutter by.

The Archives themselves are housed in the Molineux Hotel Building. Dating from the mid-18th Century the building was originally the home of Wolverhampton's wealthy Molineux family (yes, as in the football ground), and became a hotel in the 1870s. It remained a hotel for over 100 years, before closing in a dilapidated state. Thankfully, it was restored with funding from English Heritage, among others, and reopened as the Wolverhampton City Archives in 2009. If you're interested, there's more information about the history of the Molineux Hotel Building on the WAVE website.

The very grand Molineux Hotel Building

The Wolverhampton City Archives are located on Whitmore Hill and are open every day except Sunday and Monday. The building (and gardens) are accessible on foot from Ring Road St. Peters - in between Waterloo Street and Molineux Street.

Birmingham in black and white

Right on cue this week, snow fell. It's been an extremely mild winter so far, but like clockwork, the week of the end of January / start of February arrived and it snowed. Casting my mind back, it's snowed during this week more or less ever year since I moved to Birmingham - which is now 10 years ago.

We live on a student estate, so six inches of snow meant just one thing for our neighbours: snowball fights! Sadly then, the freshly driven snow didn't enjoy its pristine condition for long. However, down on the canal early this morning, I did manage to find myself in the middle of an extremely atmospheric scene.

Fog hung gently around the factories and gas works, as the sun struggled to push the cobwebs away. Virgin snow lay on the canal side, while sinister-looking branches formed as the ice on the water's surface began to splinter.

With each black and white photo I took, I pictured myself in bygone times. Down at this level, with the black locks and ironworks standing proud against the white of a world covered by snow, it's easy to imagine that not much has changed since the construction of this stretch of the Birmingham and Fazeley in the late 1700s.

View photo gallery on Flickr.

Science and Fiction

Last week's commute was accompanied by H.G. Wells' 'The Time Machine', a book I've been intending to read for more years than I can remember. My closing impression of the novel was its huge influence over the science fiction genre that followed it - particularly Doctor Who; I found between its pages the shape and movement of the TARDIS, the colour of the time vortex and plenty of Saturday tea-time aliens. So much for an original TV show!

But it's my opening impression that really fired my imagination. The story begins with a group of well-heeled professional men gathered after a satisfying dinner in an opulent house, waxing-lyrical over scientific possibilities. Immediately a vision came to mind of Matthew Boulton's Lunar Society meeting in Birmingham's Soho House.

The Lunar Society was a club for some of the brightest minds in science, philosophy and learning of the 18th and early 19th Centuries. This power-house of industrial revolutionary thought came together in Boulton's home to discuss ideas and conduct experiments on electricity, geology and meteorology, amongst other topics.

Matthew Boulton himself was one of the leading figures of Britain's industrial age. In today's world he would probably be called a marketing guru or entrepreneur, being the business brains behind inventions by business partner James Watt, as well as innovating with a host of manufacturing processes.

Soho House

He acquired Soho House in what is now an inner-city suburb (Handsworth), but was then nearer countryside, and founded an estate which included the most modern and possibly the largest factory of its day. Now only part of the house remains, but it has been lovingly restored to its former Georgian splendour, and filled with artefacts belonging to Boulton and Birmingham's scientific heritage.

We enjoyed an excellent guided tour of the house thanks to Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, which managed to pack into 45 minutes facts about the house and its features, the work of Boulton and the Lunar Society, and the personal life of the man. I walked out of the grand doors into the sunny garden completely inspired, and proud of the legacy of my adopted city,

So while the Lunar Society never did invent a time-machine, it doesn't take much of a stretch of the imagination to fancy that they could have done, just as Wells later envisaged!

Soho House is sadly only open in the spring and summer but is definitely worth the wait. Public transport is the metro to Soho Benson Road plus a short walk, or buses 74 and 79 down Soho Road. Soho House museum has also just received funding for a new exhibition and more refurbishment work - excellent news.