Village Shop

A Memory of Castle Bromwich.

I lived in the bungalow at the end of the spinny on West Avenue in the late 1960s and went to Highcroft School from age 4 to 5, which was an old Victorian building which always smelt of tomato soup and stood on the corner of Kyter Lane.

The shop you mention was called The Castle and my friends and I used to buy our sweets and regretably, our cigarettes from there,10 between 4 of us I recall. Right by it was a farm with an old barn with a circular window (and, now I'm reminded, the smell of pigs). Further into Castle Bromwich, on the opposite side was a butchers by a then derelict school with a bell tower (supposedly haunted) and Victory Hall where my cousin and I took judo lessons.

There was open farm land stretching from Pimple Hill to Arden Hall and back from Kyter Lane as far as the River Cole, where the M6 is now. There was a Scout hut there with its own pond, with a raft. Beyond there was bluebell woods, now disected by the motoway. Hares ran free there.

Bradford Hall (Lady Bradford's) stood empty and was a place of fascination to us kids who scrambled over its high walls, to roam around its grounds, incuding its own woods with gamekeeper. In all a wonderful place to grow up in, then.