Homes and How to Own One : house builders brochure : Ernest Mason & Co. Ltd. : Birmingham : UK : nd [ca.1925] : title page

It is the mid - to late 1920s and in Birmingham, one of Britain's great industrial cities that, although the nation's economy is spluttering, the city is relatively fortunate that it is the home to some of the growing trades of the day; motor manufacturing and the numerous associated businesses along with many other of the 'new' light industries. This helped the city expand and develop, like many other British towns and cities, and it is a period of great suburban expansion as new homes, both council and privately built, mushroom in the once green fields of the city's outer areas. To help the prospective buyer, likely from the growing middle class blue or white collar workers, one of the the city's "specialists in the building of labour-saving homes", Ernest Mason & Co. Ltd. of New Street, Birmingham, (Directors Ernest Mason and T.A. Twyman) have produced a small booklet; it gives details of their houses that are purchasable by payment of a small deposit and the lowest possible weekly repayments over a minimum period like so many other properties constructed by speculative builders.

 

Mason's properties shown are in two areas of the city's suburbs. Already completed is an estate of semi-detached homes in the Hall Green area, centred around Sarehole Road, Delamare Road and Kedleston Road. These recently open fields are now a 'pleasant' suburb and conveniently served by the Corporation's newly expanding motor bus system. The booklet gives details of the specification, services, the indemnity against road making charges (some borough councils demanded that the developer construct roads to a certain standard before the council would 'adopt' them) and the prices and terms.

 

Mason had also seemingly acquired a site in the north east of the city known here as the "Bromford Park Estate" around Morris Road that was adjacent to Bromford Lane and Washwood Heath Road alongside the famous "Fox & Goose" public house and that was the then terminus of a tram route to the city centre. It also noted that the "Red" bus, the Midland Red bus, also gives access to the 'open country' that such suburbs were rapidly encroaching upon.

 

The booklet, printed by J. Allan Hanson of Oldham, Lancashire, is not dated but the style is very mid-late 1920s. It also contains numerous adverts for the suppliers of Mason's building activities and so Evos "Columbian Pine Doors" are fitted throughout and the bricks variously came from the Castle Bromwich Brick Co. Ltd. of Ward End and the Little Bromwich Brick Co. Ltd. of Bordesley Green.

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