Tiger/s Island
B26 Grid reference SP163836
First record 1937
Tigar (sic) Island first appears in the 1891 Census as the home of the Burgess family; Thomas Burgess was employed as a gamekeeper, presumably at nearby Elmdon Hall. (My thanks to Les Homer for pointing this out. He can remember a cottage of that name on the site of the new office development, Eagle Court.)
As Tigers Island it is recorded in 1937 on the Coventry Road on the Birmingham side of the present boundary with Solihull, formerly Warwickshire. The island was the terminus from 1934 of the Corporation trolley buses which ran along the Coventry Road from the City Centre. The name seems equally to have been used of the bank on the south side of the Coventry Road between Goodway Road and Glencroft Road. John Adams remembers it in his youth as a good place to watch the planes at Elmdon airport.
No. 2576 Coventry Road, on the north side of the Coventry Road east of Hatchford Brook Bridge, was known as Tigers Island Cottage/s. Eagle Court has been built on the site.
The origin of this unusual name is unknown.
William Dargue 25.07.2012