The Kingstanding pub and its car park, 1965
1965 · Kingstanding Road
The Kingstanding public house in 1965. Copyright Ron Jameson.
The original Kingstanding pub, with its “M&B” sign, seen from its car park.
On Voices of Kingstanding, Barry Gater remembers that the pub “took up the whole corner of the road (Kingstanding Road to King’s Road) where the library is. It had a brick arch on the front. It had loads of rooms, smoke rooms, and bars.” He adds that the buses from town terminated at the pub, and that pigeon racers took their birds there in baskets to be sent off to the railway station. Barry Floyd recalls “a beautiful building with large chimneys and a big frontage”.
Notes
The date comes from the line that follows the photo on the Voices of Kingstanding page (“The Kingstanding public house in 1965”).
About this place: The Kingstanding pub
Local memories
What people who knew this place have said about it, in their own words. These are memories, not checked facts.
“My parents were in the bowls teams of the Kingstanding Pub, and I remember summer evenings at the green playing with my cousins, while our parents were busy on the green! I thought it was a great pity when the old building was knocked down and replaced with an inferior modern one.”
“I remember as a child my grandad Frank Jew who was a local plumber and decorator, taking me there on my bike, he would have a quiet pint of beer whilst I whizzed round on the slabbed paths. The Kingstanding Pub looked so big to me….”
“I worked in Kingstanding 1966–67 as site engineer and remember surveying the bowling green before its redevelopment as “shopping precinct”; the turf was sold for 2/6 per yard.”
“I was born in Coleshill Hospital 1954, my parents Val and Ken Robinson were living at the time with my grandparents Frank and Doris Robinson the Licensees of the Kingstanding Pub. They moved later to the Bromford Pub near the racecourse. My memories of back then were that the pubs were huge like hotels, lots of ground and both had quality bowling greens.”
“I was a bar man in the Kingstanding pub in 1960–1963, I worked in the Officers Lounge, 7 nights a week, the landlord was a very large guy and his wife was only about 5ft 5in but no customer crossed her path, she ruled the pub with a fist of iron.”
“my friends and I used to drink at the kingstanding pub. we used to go in the bar where we could play darts, dominoes or sing our heads off. there was a guy named Bimbo who loved to get up and stand in the centre of the floor and sing out loud. He was a great character”
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