Lickey Grange

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Lickey Grange is a Victorian private house and estate near Birmingham, England; important because of its association with the renowned automobile designer Herbert Austin, who once owned it and lived there for 31 years. It later became a residential school and was recently redeveloped for private housing.

Lickey Grange is located in the village of Lickey, and is accessed directly from the Old Birmingham Road (B 4096). The B4096 appears to have once formed the route of A38, but the A38 now bypasses Lickey.

1 Herbert Austin
2 Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind
3 Redevelopment
4 Reference

[edit] Herbert Austin

The early history of Lickey Grange is not known. Herbert Austin founded the Austin Motor Company, at Longbridge, in 1905 and he moved his family to Lickey Grange in 1910. His new home included 100 acres (40 ha) of surrounding land; and a lodge.

He had previously worked as an Engineer at the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company in Australia and returned to England, with his Australian wife, in 1893 to become Manager of its manufacturing operations in Aston, Birmingham. He extended the range of the company; but continued as Manager of both parts of the company. The new part became known in 1901 as the Wolseley Tool and Motor Company; and he had designed its first car. He left the Wolseley Tool and Motor company in 1905, bringing two former Wolseley designers with him to his new company at Longbridge, which was then in the countryside, in Worcestershire. However, he continued working for the Wolseley Sheep and Shearing Company; and was Chairman from 1911 to 1931.

Between 1893 and 1910 Herbert Austin had lived in various parts of Birmingham. By 1910 he was sufficiently wealthy to move from Birmingham, with his wife, two daughters and his son, to his new home, Lickey Grange, where he spent the rest of his life.

The Austin 7 was designed at Lickey Grange between 1921 and 1922, in the billiards room, but not on the billard table! This was a 7 horsepower (hp) car. It had been designed in private, at Herbert Austin's expense, at Lickey Grange because the other directors of the Austin Motor company preferred bigger 12 hp-engined cars and were against the idea of a "small" car. Herbert Austin patented some of the features and so gained a royalty for every Austin 7 sold by the company. The co-designer of the car, Stanley Edge, who was 15 at the time lived at the Lodge, but ate his meals in the adjoining library.

Herbert Austin died in 1941 and was buried in the graveyard of Lickey Church. The Grange was later sold.

[edit] Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind

The Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind (BRIB), a charity, then took over Lickey Grange and the first pupils moved-in in March 1953. The BRIB's school had previously been at Carpenter Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, but this site was acquired by the BBC, (firstly Outside broadcasting in 1954, then the Regional HQ in 1955), forcing the move to Lickey Grange.

The BRIB kept the Victorian house very much the same as it had been. However, the grounds were developed to meet the needs of a residential school for blind children. Individual houses were built for teachers; Hostel blocks were built for the pupils, an assembly hall, an indoor swimming pool and class rooms.

The school catered for a mixture of residential and day pupils. Until the 1980s there were more residential pupils than day pupils; however changes in the methods of education - integration - lead to a large drop in the numbers of children being sent to the school.

[edit] Redevelopment

The house is Victorian with the large rooms, such as a library and a billiards room, that might be expected in such a house. After the BRIB vacated the site, it began to be redeveloped. The individual houses formerly occupied by teachers, nearest to the Old Birmingham Road, were sold off first. The rest of the site has been used for new up-market "executive" homes; isolated on the estate behind closed electronic gates.