Hi long time since I have posted but chuffed to see these pictures many I've not seen before
I lived at Windmill Cottage between 1985 and 1995.
We rented initially then purchased the house from my OH's family who had i believe rented and used the windmill in the past.
Dick Lewis who lived a few doors up and was mayor had tried to prevent the demolition of the windmill back in the 1950s
I was friends with Mrs Robbins who lived in a little shack by the windmill where she had farmed for decades with her husband.She told me lots of stories, about my OH's family who lived at the Priory, the Germans using the millpond as a marker by it's reflection to start dropping bombs on Sparkhill. how you could pick watercress from the Yardley Wood brook and how there used to be cart loads of rubble and rubbish (sometimes human remains!) dumped where the Launde housing estate now stands after the bombing raids in the war. I know my friend had to have her garden soil replaced due to contamination when she first lived there!
I have very special memories at Windmill Cottage as we had our three children there. The first two were born at Sorrento Maternity Hospital and the third at home in the bedroom at the cottage just before Xmas.
We had a lovely big white dog (samoyed) who all the school children loved to say hello to at the gate on their way home.
I did not meet my OH until nearly 30 though we had both grown up a few roads apart, Paradise Lane and Doveridge Road! We actually met in Curzon St Station which had just been renovated and was being used for various government projects and although I had lived in London as a teen, then Worcester, Shrewsbury and Brum on and off we found we had both fished for sticklebacks in the Dingle down Scribers Lane!
Now our connection is our youngest son who lives in a flat in one of the Sentinels at Holloway Head, has a part time job at New st and is at university in Wolverhampton. He's second from the top floor so has a views to Bartley Green but I find it unnerving to be so high.