The Hare and Hounds

At weekends in the war, John Dunn remembered, American soldiers sat “all along the wall outside the H/H” on Kingstanding Road and sent the local boys across the road for fish and chips from the Welcome chip shop. The GIs always handed over far too much money. The boys bought their own chips with the change.

The Hare and Hounds was a new pub on an old site. An inn of that name had stood on Holly Lane since at least 1875. When the council estate came, Mitchells & Butlers replaced it: the Brewery History Society dates the new house to 1931, by the architects Batemans, and a Birmingham History Forum post gives the same year. It stood at 413 Kingstanding Road, next door to the old Kingstanding post office run by Miss Ryan.

Down the terraces to the green

Behind the pub the ground fell away, and the grounds were laid out as a staircase of terraces. Rosemarie Hunt set them out from memory: two terraces down to the big centre terrace, a flight of steps to a narrow one, more steps to the terrace with the bowling club house, “then down again onto the green”. The gate to the green was locked, so the children climbed the railings.

John Bailey “virtually lived there”. His father, Bill Bailey, “was the secretary of everything there; bowls, crib, darts, fishing, run the OAP club and bingo.” His uncle Jack kept the green, and his Nan, Floss McKenzie, held a corner of the bar that everyone knew as Floss’s corner. Valerie Buck’s father and his pals ran a club there for local pigeon fanciers.

Landlords and characters

Morris Evans remembered the landlord Mr Lowe, who wore sandy-coloured plus-fours, and old Ernie who worked in the cellars. Mr Lowe’s grandson, Jerry Fitch, wrote that Teddy Lowe retired in the early 1960s. A forum post names Elsie and Bill Edmundson as licensees in the early 1960s. From about 1970 to 1982 the licensee was John Thomas Buck, with his wife Joan, and their son Marc grew up in the pub: “I have many many fond recollections of living there and many of the regulars and staff too.”

The children ran a trade of their own. Alan Hitchman climbed into the beer garden, borrowed empty bottles from the crates and took them round to the outdoor at the front for the deposit. Charlie Southam, who lived in the bungalow next door, did the same “until they got wise and ripped the labels.”

The Pudding and Pint

In its last years the pub was renamed the Pudding and Pint; a Library of Birmingham photograph of 2002 shows regulars outside under that name. By 2011 it was closed and its forecourt was a hand car wash. In May 2016 fire gutted the building, and in 2018 the plan was for 34 homes on the site.

The Hare and Hounds name had been on this stretch of road for well over a century, from a beer-house on a country lane to a roadhouse with its own bowling green. What people remember is not the building but the steps down to the green, and a corner of the bar that belonged to Floss.

Then and now

1988

2011