Fascinating Picture of St Margaret’s and land development

/ June 7, 2014

There is an excellent site called Britain from Above – LINK

On here you can see old photo’s taken from the air and it is searchable. So I searched for Great Barr/Pheasey etc and found this photo from 1936

Great Barr Park Colony for Mental Defectives (St Margaret's Hospital), Walsall, 1936. This image has been produced from a damaged negative. - Britain from Above

And from 1950

St Margaret's Psychiatric Hospital, Walsall, 1950 - Britain from Above

As you can see it shows what they horribly called the ‘Great Barr Colony for Mental Defectives’ and the surrounding land. What you can see from 1936, is well nothing, no Park Farm, and nothing along Beacon Road. In 1950 you can just about see homes on what I think is Beacon Road.

What it shows to me in the current debate is that the Land changes over time.

No generation has a right to perserve the land/area for itself within sensible boundaries. After all we all live on land as can be seen from the pictures that was indeed Green Belt within some residents living memory.

Related posts