The Sportsman’s Rest

On 25 May 1959 a photographer stood on Cooksey Lane near Norbury Road and recorded a brand-new pub: brick, with a big bay window, Mitchells & Butlers monograms, a Good Cheer Cellars off-licence at one end and the pub sign on a post at the other. The caption on the print reads “Rest And Be Thankful”.

It came late. Most of Kingstanding’s pubs went up with the estate in the 1930s; the Brewery History Society dates this one to 1959. Joan Crook, who grew up in Cooksey Lane, remembered it being built on a piece of waste ground where the children used to play.

Rest, and be thankful

Joan had a theory about the name. It might, she wrote on Voices of Kingstanding, “be because you needed one after carrying the shopping up Kingstanding hill.”

Her mother, Elsie, was the barmaid at the Rest, and she was working on Christmas Day 1959, the pub’s first Christmas, when Joan’s father came in to tell her that her own mother had died that morning. That same night, in the same pub, Kerry Hodgkins’ parents met. In 2024 they were still together: “so many happy memories”. When Joan read Kerry’s comment she replied: “Such a sad day for us but a really happy one for your parents!”

Darts and a football team

A regular on the Birmingham History Forum remembered the licensee in the late 1960s as Jack Breeze. The pub had a darts team, and he helped start a football team for the Rest, managed by Bob Whitehouse, and played in it.

The Sportsman’s Rest

Later the Rest and Be Thankful was renamed the Sportsman’s Rest, and it still trades at 20 Cooksey Lane. The name on the sign has changed. The hill it was named for has not.