Spirit of place: Moseley and the Wall of Hate

I completely forgot this story (a story which doesn't show people up in their best light & thus tickles yours truly) until someone reminded me of it today. It also rather relates well to a thread in the previous post about how we treat other people, what we do with what we have, & how some people are quite content to profit from others' loss. This story relates to two of Birmingham's best-known families & to two of the swankiest houses in the city, one of which now belongs to the city council & the other to the local health authority. I'll start by over-stressing the background information then go on to tell the actual story, which also explains the pictures in this post.
The first of the two houses is Highbury Hall, associated with the name of Cahmberlain.

Located three miles from Birmingham city centre, Highbury Hall is situated in a beautiful countryside setting. Steeped in history, Birmingham famous parliamentarian, Rt. Hon. Joseph Chamberlain MP, built the picturesque Grade II manor as a family home in 1878. (Source: Birmingham City Council website)

The listing details show the Arts & Crafts splendour of the house:

YEW TREE ROAD 1. 5104 Moseley B13 Highbury Hall (formerly listed as Highbury Moor Green) SF 08 SE 12/75 21.1.70 II 2. Dated 1879 by J H Chamberlain for the fit Bon Joseph Chamberlain llP whose house it was from 1880 to 1914. Extensive modern additions have been made since the house became in 1915 a hospital and later an old peoples' home. Red brick with stone dressings and some applied timberwork in the gables; tiled roof with richly carved brick eaves cornice. Mostly of 2 storeys plus attic, but partly of 3 storeys. Asymmetrical composition essentially L shaped in plan. Original panelled double doors with stained glass tympanum within a richly moulded stone arch on 2 orders of pink marble shafts with gable above. Left and right gabled pilasters. Above, a 2 light window with richly carved tympanum and gable. The windows pointed and mostly of plate tracery trype. Much use everywhere of decorative materials and carved, especially cut brick, decoration. The right hand return is the garden facade, again asymmetrical but esentially a long 2 storeyed wing with two 2 storeyed bay windows and a 3 storyed wing with a 3 storeyed stone canted bay window in it. Interior of great richness. The Great Hall, with floor of variegated woods, rises through 2 storeys to a timber and glazed roof. At one end of the room, the staircase rises behind the first floor balcony to appear through an arcade of 5 arches with pink marble shafts set in a tile diapered wall at the other end, a richly marbled fireplace with carved panels and tiles and a reredos like mirror with crocketted gables. Walls with pink marble pilasters, panelled dado, tiles and carved foliage panels. Gilt gesso to the underside of the balcony, which has geometrical railings. Huge central brass gasolier. Off this hall, the principal rooms all with Gothic panelled doors with good brass furniture, elaborate fireplaces with coloured marbles, carved foliage panels, tiles and rich ceiling cornices. The former Billiard Room is L shaped with an arcade of 3 bays with marble piers and 2 centred arches. Panelled dado; richly coffered wooden ceiling with painted foliage, inlay work and geometrical panelling; fireplace with brass surround, pink and white marbles and foilage carving. (Source: http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=217837)

Living next door, in the former Uffculme House, now Uffculme Centre, were the Cadburys.

Uffculme House was built for Richard Cadbury, of the chocolate making family, in 1891; it is located next door to Joseph Chamberlain's Highbury Hall. It was named after the village in Devon where the Cadbury family had a house. Richard Cadbury and the family moved to the house from Moseley Hall, after giving the Hall to the City of Birmingham for use as a children's hospital. His wife Emma continued to live there after the death of  Richard in 1899
Uffculme was first used as a hostel for Belgian refugees, when the family made it available for the war effort with the first arrivals in September 1914.  In November 1916 it was taken over by the Friends' Ambulance Unit and opened on 7th December 1916 as a 200-bed unit.  It later became a regional limb-fitting centre for soldiers living in the counties of Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Oxfordshire. Uffculme became an annexe to All Saints Hospital, and was used for Outpatient facilities. It became a centre for the treatment of neurosis and is still in use as a medical facility to this day
In 1932 Part of the grounds were given to Birmingham Corporation, and, along with land from adjacent Highbury Hall, became Highbury Park. (Source: http://www.bhamb14.co.uk/index_files/UFFCULME.htm)

This extract from the listing details gives a better idea of the sheer luxuriousness of Cadbury's gift to the city:

House, now hospital. 1891, by William Jenkins for Richard Cadbury. Red brick with Portland stone dressings. Slate roofs with shaped gables with finials. Brick axial and gable-end stacks with stone dressings. PLAN: Large house divided by a large full-height central hall with an oriel at the north front and a semi-circular conservatory at the other end on the south garden front; small entrance hall to the side of the hall with a porte-cochere on the north front; service wing on the west side. Jacobethan style. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attic. Moulded stone stringcourses and coping, quoins and stone mullion-transom windows. Asymmetrical north front with projecting entrance at centre with shaped gable with large stone tetrastyle porte-cochere, the columns with big pedestals and with bay window above; large canted oriel to left with balustrade and shaped gable above; short wing projecting on left with shaped gable end. The south garden front has large semi-circular cast-iron conservatory at the centre, re-clad in plate-glass and with lead domed roof with clerestory; to left and right taller 2-bay ranges, each with two small shaped gables and 2-storey stone bay windows, the left canted, the right semi-circular with balustrade on top; lower 2-storey wing set back on left with small gables to first floor windows and glazed single-storey addition in front. The east elevation has shaped gables, bays and C20 2-storey wing. INTERIOR dominated by enormous central hall, extending from the front to the back of the house; it has closely spaced piers with paired brackets supporting a gallery running around three sides of the room with a large oriel at the front; the hall has arch-braced roof trusses with tracery above the collars and with roof lights; a wide imperial staircase rises from the east side of the hall with stained glass window on the landing. Also a stained glass window from gallery to the conservatory; the conservatory now has an inserted floor and has been re-glazed, but the cast-iron structure is intact, with its slender fluted wall columns and central column supporting arches radiating from the centre to the walls. Much of the original joinery also remains including finely inlaid doors and chimneypieces. NOTE: Richard Cadbury and his younger brother George were joint heads of Cadburys, the chocolate manufacturers. George Cadbury founded the Bournville Village Trust. This Quaker family were known for their philanthropy and the hall at Uffculme is thought to have been used for entertaining and for charity events. (Source: thread on Birmingham history forum about the Uffculme centre http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=36079)

So far it's only a story of bourgeois competitiveness & expansion worthy of Hyacinth Bucket. The point where it turns into something else is where you add in that the Cadburys were Quakers & pacifists, while, at least according to the story, the Chamberlains dealt in armaments. I'm actually unable to find verification for this, but whether or not it's true, they got hold of a load of empty gun shells & built a wall with them between themselves & their pacifist neighbours. Of course the story clearly states that they did this with the definite intention of cocking a snook at the Cadburys. Certainly their contributions to public life have a very different flavour: I don't care what your stated intention is, the pursuit of politics is about the acquisition of power, while the Cadburys did so much to improve the lives of people in the city.
Whatever, this story tickles me because it is simply such a good one. And very environmentally friendly to reuse those shell cases in the cause of sowing enmity with your neighbours!
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