Acocks Green

This roundabout on the Warwick Road at Shirley Road is now thought of as the centre of Acocks Green.

Acocks Green is an example of the changes that occur in placenames over time. The modern district is named after the Acock family who have long since left the area.

The term green was not originally used for a settlement name but was used to describe an agricultural feature, usually an area of land over which commoners had rights of grazing. Here it was taken as a house name and then used as the name of the nearby tollgate.

The name was subsequently shown in the wrong location on a canal survey map, a mistake that was later reinforced by the naming of the railway station.

With extensive house building in the 19th century the name Acocks Green was applied to the whole urban district, with the modern shopping centre popularly but wrongly believed to be the location of the green.

Until 1956 Acocks Green House stood on the Warwick Road east of the junction with Woodcock Lane, now the site of Bericote Croft. It had been built in open countryside as the English Civil War came to an end, and was the successor of an earlier house raised on the same spot some two hundred years before. That earlier building was the home of the Acock family, one of whom, John Acok is recorded in a document of 1420. It was from the family surname that the name of the nearby green derived.

During the Middle Ages the word green usually referred to common pastureland. This was often situated away from the main settlement on poorer land that was not good enough for growing crops. It was, however, a vital resource where the local peasants could assert certain rights including that of grazing their livestock. The green near the Acocks' house was actually further out along the Warwick Road than the present centre of Acocks Green at Shirley Road. In medieval times the Shirley Road junction was the site of a tiny hamlet known at that time as Westley Brook after the stream which crosses the Warwick Road west-to-east north of the junction. The stream is now largely culverted except in Westley Vale Park off The Avenue.

In 1726 the Warwick Road was turnpiked and a tollgate was set up at Dolphin Lane near the Dolphin coaching inn. The tollgate was referred to as Acocks Green Gate taking its name from Acocks Green House which stood almost opposite.

The change of location of Acocks Green took place as a result of the surveys which were undertaken in preparation for the cutting of the Birmingham & Warwick Canal in 1792. The mapmaker mistakenly applied the name Acocks Green to the hamlet of Westley Brook.

The opening and naming in 1852 of Acocks Green Station on the Birmingham & Oxford Railway confirmed the change of name. The station, whose present buildings date from 1907, was originally known as Acocks Green & South Yardley - not the station at those locations, but the place at which to disembark for those places.

(South Yardley, the southernmost point in Yardley manor, was at Yardley Wood some 3 miles away. However, that name has also been relocated and the district now known by that name lies north of Acocks Green station immediately south of Yardley.)

Above: Acocks Green station from the Geograph website OS reference SP1283 © Copyright John Evans and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons Licence Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. See Acknowlegements.

Right: 25 May 1957 GWR 2-6-2T 4108 at Acocks Green with a local train from Moor Street to Leamington Spa. Thanks to Robert Darlaston for permission to use this ‘All Rights Reserved’ photograph. See Acknowlegements for a direct link to his family website.

The Old Dolphin, Acocks Green, was replaced in 1930 with a new building. This drawing was re-drawn in 1936 from an orginal sketch made just prior to the demolition of the pub in 1930.

Thanks for the use of this image to E W Green, Historic Buildings in Pen & Ink - The Work of William Albert Green. All rights reserved. See Acknowledgements for a direct link to that website.

St Mary's Church - the east end (actually physically facing south)

Take a look at the Church of St Mary the Virgin 

St Mary's Church was built early in the development of the district. The church stands prominently on the Warwick Road and is a large, tall building made of sandstone in a 13th-century gothic style. Designed by J G Bland, it was consecrated in 1866 at a time when new churches in Birmingham were being completed at the rate of more than one every year.

Only twenty years after it had opened the building was enlarged by Birmingham's well-known gothicist, J A Chatwin, although Bland's proposed steeple was never built. In 1940 during the Second World War the building was hit at the crossing by a German bomb which damaged the Burne-Jones east window. The church was restored during the 1950s.

The churchyard here was a much-needed addition to that at Yardley church where all burials in the parish had previously taken place. 

Acocks Green School viewed from Westley Road

Take a look - Acocks Green School

Built relatively late in the development of the district was Acocks Green School. Opened by Worcestershire County Council in 1909 with accommodation for 1200 children, its striking period style and prominent position at the junction of the Warwick Road with Westley Road make it a notable local landmark.

House building in Acocks Green continued after the First World War and by the outbreak of the Second World War most of the surrounding area had been built up with a mixture of private and council housing.

But what happened to the green of Acocks Green? The original green was on the Warwick Road at Woodcock Lane. This green, which had given the district its name, was built over with housing during the 19th century. However, at the junction of the Warwick Road with Westley Road there used to be a grassed area which was believed by many to be the green. It was in fact the site of the tram terminus which was created in 1932 when the line from the City Centre finally reached the village. With the demise of the trams after the Second War, the site was grassed over and was popularly known by local people as 'The Green'. The roundabout at the centre of the road junction is now grassed and is now, presumably, Acocks Green. And the Acocks? The family had left the area by the end of the 18th century and have not been heard of in the area since.

For the first Anglo-Saxon settlement site near here, see Tenchley. See also Westley Brook.