Dolobran Road, Sparkhill

A Memory of Sparkbrook.

I lived on Dolobran Road Sparkhill from 1956 (DATE OF BIRTH) to around 1962 when we moved to Northfield. We were the only double fronted house on the street and we fronted Lime Grove where my grandmother lived at Number 1. I was friends with a group of children from Lime Grove who all had blonde hair full of natural curls and ringlets. Sadly I do not remember their names, We also had a back yard with an outdoor toilet and a metal bath that used to hang on the wall. But at the side of the house we had a really big garden with a huge Oak Tree in the middle of it. I think we were the only family to have a TV in the house and all our friends used to come in and watch The News, Dixon of Dock Green and Coronation Street with Ena Sharples. There was a shop on the corner of Dolobran road on the other side of the street to our house where I used to go and get my sweets from. I went back to Dolobran Road when I was grown as I worked for a Housing Association that was based in the park there and was devasted to see what had happened to the place. Our house was gone and all that was left of it was the tree with all these new houses built on the land of our house and Lime Grove. I used to play with a deaf boy called David who lived further up the road and he had almost his entire front room set out with a train set full of bridges and stations and people - it was fantastic. I saw him on a bus years later when I was coming home from school but he was with a group of his friends and did not recognise me. I wanted to say hello but I didn't and I regret that now. I remember that Dolobran Road went into to Farm Road and there was a sweet shop on that junction where the roads met. Smith's Coaches were on the left corner as you went onto the Stratford Road and opposite farm road was Woolworths and a Post Office.

I was so happy in that house that I vowed when I grew up I would buy it But it lives on in my heart!

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