Selly Oak Meeting House Grounds
Selly Oak is blessed with about an acre of land lying back from the main Bristol Road. (This sometimes feels more of a blessing in disguise as such an area can involve quite a bit of work)
The meeting originally met in the Selly Oak Institute which was founded by George Cadbury and still exists today for further education. However Sunday worship could be interrupted by the brakes of trams screeching as they went
down the road towards town and apparently many of the locals also kept clucking hens and crowing cocks. When land became available further up Selly Oak, Edward Cadbury, our first Clerk, arranged for us to have a 99-year lease on this land from the Bournville Village Trust. As a result the present Meeting House was able to be built and was opened in 1926.
Initially there was a gardener to help the wardens and a tennis court was laid out and in the 1920s and 30s there was an active Adult school with a tennis club that used this at summer evenings and weekends. (Incidentally it was this that led to many marriages between the members!) However the land is low lying and rushes erupted through the tarmac and it was no longer viable for tennis. In the late 1980s the Urban Wildlife Trust (now the Birmingham and Black Country Trust) helped to lay out a wild life garden, planted many trees, made a platform over the pool and hopefully initiated a ”wildlife meadow”. Management is still needed in a wild life garden and though we have an interesting variety of plants we also have too many brambles and nettles. In spring there are wood anemones and cowslips following on from the snowdrops, and the small “spinney” planted in 1994 has coppiced hazel, and field maples and a Dawn redwood, Metasequoia glyptostroboides, flourishing in the damp, clay soil.
Trees planted 80 years ago are now sometimes causing problems but we are glad to have this quiet oasis off the main Bristol Road.
Jean Osborne, Selly Oak
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