Marston Green

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Marston Green is a town of around 8000 residents in the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull in the West Midlands, approximately 7 miles from Birmingham.

The town is adjacent to Birmingham International Airport and the National Exhibition Centre. It lies on the Birmingham loop of the West Coast Main Line railway, with a railway station served by local trains to Birmingham and Coventry, and a small number of semi fast services to Northampton. Notable features of the area include a number of shops, the Marston Green Tavern, St Leonards Church and Marston Green Infant and Junior schools.

The Marston Green Tavern, prior to a recent refurbishment

[edit] History

Marston Green began as a small village surrounded by agricultural land in the estate of Coleshill; at this time, the village was known as Merstone. The village grew into a leafy suburb in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, due to the construction of many detached and semi-detached homes in the 1930s, which were typical of many suburban homes in the area. The growth of homes here was encouraged by the presence of a rail station. Following the expansion of the nearby Birmingham International Airport, the construction of the National Exhibition Centre and the local housing estate of Chelmsley Wood, Marston Green has grown into a small commuter town with many of its residents working in Solihull and Birmingham. Older residents still refer to Marston Green as a village and it does still retain some of its old village charms, with a village clock as well as the local St Leonards Church and village hall, though, given the size of Marston Green, it is quite clearly no longer the quaint village that it used to be.

There was a Canadian airforce base in Marston Green during the second world war. Afterwards, the buildings were used as a maternity hospital and then a psychiatric hospital. They were demolished in the 1990's.

The town is part of the civil parish of Bickenhill.