What was here?
At the corner where Erdington’s High Street becomes Sutton Road, by the end of Station Road, Josiah Mason built his first almshouses and orphan home in 1858. By 1882 it was a Gothic building with two gabled wings and a central tower.
History
This is where Josiah Mason’s giving began. In 1858 he built, on the turnpike road from Birmingham to Sutton at the corner of what was then Sheep Street, a combined almshouse and orphanage: rooms for aged women and space for twenty or thirty orphan girls, soon enlarged to fifty. The Sir Josiah Mason Trust says it housed 30 women over 50 and 20 orphan girls, who were taught domestic skills.
Mason told his biographer why. Tired of handing money to beggars who drank it, “I first thought of almshouses for aged women … Then I thought of the orphans … ‘Surely it must be some of each’.”
Almshouses only
When the great orphanage on Bell Lane opened in 1868, the children moved there and the whole building became almshouses. The trust deed fixed the number of residents at 26 women, widows or single and not under 50, each with a furnished room, coal and gas. Bunce described it in 1882 as a large Gothic building of two gabled wings and a central tower behind a low wall with an arched gateway; by then it had 31 sets of rooms and a home for former orphanage girls between jobs. Among the first residents, Bunce noted, was the widow of the man who had once bought Mason’s uncle’s business over his head.
The Victorian building has gone, and when it was demolished has not been established. The Trust says that a section of wall survives at the junction of Sutton Road and Station Road.
Why it mattered
The first of Mason’s Erdington charities, and the seed of the Sir Josiah Mason Trust, which still provides almshouses today.
Why it disappeared
Other or unknown
The building was replaced as the Trust moved its residents to newer homes; when and why it was demolished has not been established.
The same spot, then and now
1888–1913
Today
Old map: Ordnance Survey six-inch, reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland (CC BY 4.0). Today: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Josiah Mason’s almshouses, on today’s streets
What’s there now
What replaced it
Not established.
What survives
A section of wall at the junction of Sutton Road and Station Road (Sir Josiah Mason Trust).
Today
The junction of Erdington High Street, Sutton Road and Station Road.
Key dates
- 1858 — Mason’s almshouses and orphan home open in ErdingtonJosiah Mason built almshouses for aged women and a home for orphan girls on the corner of the Sutton road and Sheep Street (now Station Road), Erdington: the first of his great charities.
Sources and further reading
The demolition date has not been confirmed: a search-engine summary of a Trust page gave 1974, but this was not found on any page actually read. Sources differ on the original numbers (Bunce: 20 women and 20–30, then 50, girls; the Trust: 30 women and 20 girls; the trust deed: 26 women). The exact footprint on the corner has not been plotted. Bunce (1882) says the almshouses’ principal front faced Bell Lane, with another front to the main road; the 1869 account and Dent (1880) put them on the corner of the main road and Sheep Street (Station Road), which is followed here.
- Josiah Mason: a biography — John Thackray Bunce, Simpkin, Marshall & Co.; Cornish Brothers, Birmingham, 1882. pp. 64–67, 79–81, 93–94
- Old and New Birmingham: a history of the town and its people — Robert K. Dent, Houghton and Hammond, Birmingham, 1880. p. 590
- Sir Josiah Mason Trust — history — MY Trust
- Birmingham Heritage Week – a potted history of almshouses — Sir Josiah Mason Trust
- Josiah Mason’s Orphanage, Erdington, Birmingham, Warwickshire — Peter Higginbotham, Children’s Homes (childrenshomes.org.uk)
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