Nechells () is a district ward in central Birmingham, England, whose population in 2011 was 33,957. It is also a ward within the formal district of Ladywood. Nechells local government ward includes areas, for example parts of Birmingham city centre, which are not part of the historic district of Nechells as such, now often referred to in policy documents as "North Nechells, Bloomsbury and Duddeston".
Origins of the name Early recorded versions of the name include Echeles (about 1180), Le Echeles (1290) and Le Necheles (1322). The latter form of the name derives from "atten Eccheles", "belonging to the Eccheles", an Old English word meaning "land added to a village or estate".Ekwall, E. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place Names, 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960, p.169. The philologist Eilert Ekwall speculated that a more precise meaning could be "land added by clearing", or "land added by draining a marsh".Ekwall, E.,"The English Place-Names Etchells, Nechells" in Mélanges de Philologie, offerts à M. Johan Vising par ses élèves et ses amis scandinaves, à l'occasion du soixante-dixième anniversaire de sa naissance, Gothenburg: N.J. Gumperts and Paris: E. Champion, 1925, 105–106. In the Middle English period, following the process of language change known as metanalysis, only the "n" in "atten" remained in oral usage and became assimilated to "Eccheles". So, n+Eccheles became the "Nechells" (pronunciation ) of modern usage. However, the pronunciation was also current, as indicated by the spelling of Tomlinson's Map of Duddeston and Netchells, published in 1758.Chinn, C. The Streets of Brum, Part 4. Studley:Brewin, 2007, p.3. This pronunciation was also to be heard in the 20th century amongst some older inhabitants of the area.Chinn, C. One Thousand Years of Brum. Birmingham: Birmingham Evening Mail, 1999, p. 103.
The name "Nechells Green" originally referred to the triangle of land at the meeting point of the present Nechells Park Road, Nechells Place, Bloomsbury Street, Rocky Lane, Charles Arthur Street and Thimble Mill Lane. On Tomlinson's 1758 map the area was indeed shown as a village green surrounded by a few lanes and fields,Chinn, The Streets of Brum p.3 and a sparse population consisting of a handful of widely-spread homesteads.Chinn, C. One Thousand Years of Brum. Birmingham: Birmingham Evening Mail, 1999, p. 103-4. In the 1950s and 60s the name was adopted for the re-developed area of Ashted, Duddeston and Vauxhall to the south-west of Nechells itself.
History
The 19th century
Nechells became a densely populated area during the 19th century, with mass development of houses and factories taking place. Mass immigration occurred from Ireland. In 1868 it was described thus:
Developments in the Victorian era include the opening of St Clement's Church, designed by J. A. Chatwin, his first church, in 1859Dent, R.K. Old and New Birmingham. Birmingham: Houghton and Hammond 1880, P. 578 (the church was largely demolished in 1977, with only the church hall and a short section of the south aisle remaining);Foster, A., N. Pevsner and A Wedgwood, Birmingham and the Black Country, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Yale University Press, 2022 and St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in 1872 (incorporating the former chapel of the Roman Catholic cemetery, designed by A. W. Pugin and opened in 1850). The later church was designed by Pugin's son, E. W. Pugin;Victoria History of the County of Warwick, Vol. VII. London: Oxford University Press, 1964 the former Presbyterian chapel of 1888–9 on Long Acre, "a rare survivor of [the prolific Birmingham architects]Ballard, P. (ed) Birmingham's Victorian and Edwardian Architects, Oblong, 2009, p.471. Crouch & Butler's early chapel work".;Foster, A., N. Pevsner and A Wedgwood Birmingham and the Black Country, Pevsner Architectural Guides, Yale University Press, 2022, p.233. a board school situated in Hutton (later Eliot) Street in 1879; the building of almshouses adjacent to St. Clement's church to accommodate "31 inmates, widows, single women, and married couples - whose age is above 60"Dent, R.K. Old and New Birmingham. Birmingham: Houghton and Hammond 1880 and Bloomsbury Library of 1892 on Nechells Parkway, described as "a typical vigorous example of the red brick and terracotta school for municipal building at the end of the 19th century.".Pevsner, N. and Wedgwood, A. The Buildings of England: Warwickshire. London: Penguin, 1966.
The London and North Western Railway's line from Stechford to Aston cut across Nechells Park Road and neighbouring streets when it opened in 1880,Clinker, C.R., Railways of the West Midlands: A Chronology. London: Stephenson Locomotive Society, 1954 as had the Grand Junction Railway from Liverpool and Manchester to Birmingham in order to reach its temporary terminus at Vauxhall in 1837.
The 20th century and later After the Second World War, further immigration occurred from parts of the Commonwealth, mostly the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent.
By the 1950s, however, many of the homes in Nechells had been reduced to "slums" and were unfit for human habitation. People were living in homes without electricity, running water, bathrooms or indoor toilets. The gasworks caused a continuous unpleasant smell. The bulk of the area had been designated as a redevelopment area in 1937, but its regeneration was put off by some 20 years due to the Second World War.
The face of Nechells changed dramatically during the 1960s, with the decaying Victorian terraces being cleared and the area redeveloped with new houses and tower blocks. Some families remained in the new homes that had been built around Nechells, but there were insufficient new homes to rehouse all of the area's original residents, and as a result some families moved to new housing estates like Castle Vale and Chelmsley Wood. The new homes were certainly a big improvement on their predecessors, but the area still suffered from rising unemployment and crime.
The development of high rise flats in Nechells had actually started in the 1950s, and it was the home of Birmingham's very first tower block – Queens Tower, on Great Francis StreetBartlam, N. The Little Book of Birmingham. Stroud: The History Press, 2011, p.108. – which was completed in 1954 and is still standing today.Jones, P. "The suburban high flat in the post-war reconstruction of Birmingham, 1945–71". Urban History (32), pp.308-326 (2005). However, many of the tower blocks in the Nechells area were demolished in the 1990s to make way for new low rise private and rented housing.
The siege of Austin Street On 8 July 1961, the then vicar of St. Clement's, Elwyn Evans, was called upon by police to assist them in negotiating with a man who had barricaded himself in his house and refused to come out until a clergyman was called. He had fired an unloaded air pistol from the window of his house in Austin Street. According to the Birmingham Post, several hundred people had watched the police try to arrest the man who had effectively laid siege to the street. Evans eventually persuaded the man to give himself up and accompanied the unemployed man as he surrendered to the police. Evans, who served in Nechells from 1952 to 1964,Crockford's Clerical Directory 1965, Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 384. told reporters that had been taking a bath when the police arrived at his vicarage on Stanley Road. (subscription required)
Austin Street itself, situated between Aston Church Road and Trevor Street at right angles to Nechells Park Road, no longer exists, having been built over by new housing.
Industrial and commercial development
Early evidence of industrial, or rather small-scale craft activity in Nechells is given on Tomlinson's 1758 map which shows a slitting mill used as a stage in the manufacture of nails situated at a point towards the northern end of what was to become Nechells Park Road.
On Ordnance Survey 1:2500 maps of 1902 and 1904 there is much evidence of industry in the early 20th century: Nechells Chemical Works and Birmingham Paper Mill were located adjacent to the Birmingham and Warwick Junction Canal at the eastern end of Cattells Grove; a tube works, stove works and varnish works were situated in an area bounded by the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal, Holborn Hill and Long Acre; and a building shown as "Park Mills (Edge Tool)" is shown on Wharton Street, again adjoining the Birmingham and Warwick Junction Canal, which runs parallel at some points to the River Rea, both forming an eastern boundary of Nechells.
Later in the 20th century Nechells was chosen as the location of two gasworks, in Windsor Street and Nechells Place, Nechells power stations were two coal-fired power stations situated on land now occupied by the Star City complex. The first was opened by the Prince of Wales in 1923 and a larger plant, known as Nechells "B", opened in 1954. The B station had a capacity of 224 megawatts (MW) and generated 52.869 GWh of electricity in 1980–81. A small railway network was used by both power stations for the transport of coal from the main line railway at Saltley and within the plant. The power stations closed in 1982, but a steam locomotive used at the site, "Nechells No.4", has been preserved and is operating on the Chasewater Railway in Staffordshire.Clawley, A. Birmingham Then and Now, Batsford, 2013, p.98
The second of the two gasworks was the setting – in an "obscure suburb on the eastern side of Birmingham", according to one historian,D.Sandbrook, State of Emergency - The Way We Were: Britain 1970-1974. Allen Lane, 2010, p.121 – for the so-called Battle of Saltley Gate in February 1972, a confrontation between striking mineworkers, the police and the West Midlands Gas Board over the picketing mineworkers' attempt to prevent the transport of coke from the gasworks. In labour history and mythology, the name "Saltley Gate" (or "Gates") has persisted, despite the locale for the incident being in Nechells.
Nechells played a part in the development of the petrol-driven internal combustion motor car. At the age of twenty and with no formal qualifications, Frederick William Lanchester so impressed the owner of the Forward Gas Engine Company of Birmingham that he was offered the position of assistant works manager at their factory near Bloomsbury Street where he made various improvements to the equipment produced by this company. Lanchester resigned from the company in 1893 and went on to produce the first all-British four-wheel petrol car. A sculpture, the Lanchester Car Monument, was built in Bloomsbury Village Green to commemorate Lanchester's work.A. Clawley, Birmingham Then and Now, Batsford, 2013, p.103
Nearby, on Lingard Street, close to Bloomsbury Library, was situated another branch of the motor vehicle industry. David Haydon Ltd manufactured bodies for fire engines until the closure of the firm in the 1960s.
Foundry Services Ltd, later FOSECO, moved into premises on Long Acre in 1933. The company had been created by two German Jewish refugees, Eric Weiss and Kossi Strauss, and specialized in the manufacture of fluxes and compounds used in the iron foundry industry. The firm moved to Tamworth in the 1990s and is now a multinational business.
At the corner of Long Acre and Plume Street stood the large factory of Verity's Ltd, a manufacturer of electrical motors, fans and electrical fittings. The company went into voluntary liquidation in 1959.
Flights Hallmark, a coach and corporate vehicle operator, had its head office and a depot on Long Acre, on the site of the former Aston motive power depot.
The privately owned St Clements Nursing Home at the junction of Nechells Park Road and Stanley Road was built on land formerly occupied by St. Clement's vicarage.Old Ordnance Survey Maps, Gravelly Hill 1902, Alan Godfrey Maps.