Factories & Sho

ALEXPIESTAND

Alex's famous pie stand on the corner of Suffolk Street in the 60s

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ARMOURYROAD

Armoury Road

Birmingham has been famous for the manufacture of swords and small arms since at least the 16th century, supplying weapons to governments and traders throughout the world.

By the middle of the 19th century Birmingham was the chief supplier of arms for the British Government .

Between December 1854 and April 1856 Birmingham's gunsmiths supplied 156,000 hand built rifles for the British forces in the Crimea, this amounted to nearly 70% of all small arms purchased by the Government in that period.

Then suddenly, everything changed.

At the beginning of the 19th century the government had established a factory at Enfield to build and supply guns for the British forces and in 1855 the Enfield factory started to mass produce weapons by machine. It very quickly became clear to the Birmingham gunsmiths that to compete with Enfield they too would have to switch from hand built to machine built production techniques and so, at a meeting in June 1861, fourteen members of the Birmingham Small Arms Trade Association decided to form a company to build guns by machine methods. They decided to call the company "The Birmingham Small Arms Company" and thus was born what is arguably the most famous of all of Birmingham's industrial giants.

BSA1

They started with working capital of £24,000, which allowed them to purchase 25 acres of land off of what was then Golden Hillock Lane and build the factory

and Armoury Road, which was on their own land. They later built terraced houses in Armoury Road to house their key workers.

By 1868 BSA had become the largest private arms manufacturer in Europe.

2,800,000 Air Rifles

By 1880 the market for small arms had declined, with the Government giving most of it's peacetime orders to the

Enfield factory and only calling on the BSA when extra arms were needed. This was when the BSA board decided to diversify.

They started making bicycles and tricycles and in 1909 their first mass produced motorcycle went on sale priced at £50.00.

With the outbreak of WW1 in 1914 all production was switched to war needs but this wasn't confined to rifles and machine guns, they also produced motorcycles for the army and shells and fuses.

MACHINEGUN

14,180,000 Machine Guns

BSA also produced the world's first folding bicycle at that time and also the engine and gearbox for the world's first tank and Daimler, which had been bought by BSA in 1910, produced tens of

thousands of staff cars, ambulances and trucks.

During this time the Small Heath factory underwent huge expansion.

CANON

75,400 Cannons

After WW1 the Small heath factory again started producing bicycles, motor cycles and cars for public sale whilst acquiring several other companies and by the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 they had 67 factories employing 28,000 workers. 11000 of those workers lived in the districts immediately surrounding the Armoury Road Factory.

Once again, at the onset of war, BSA geared itself up for military production.

Amazingly, as well as turning out millions of rifles, machine guns, shells and fuses, they also managed to produce 126,000 M20 military motorcycles!

SERVICERIFLE

3,260,000 Service Rifles

After the war BSA entered it's final golden age thanks to the sudden worldwide boom in demand for motorcycles!

BSA's reputation for quality was unsurpassed and their products were in huge demand worldwide.

BSABICYCLE

I

3,200,000 bicycles

In 1951 they bought Triumph which then made them the biggest producers of motorbikes in the world!

The boom continued until the mid 60s, when increasing competition from Japan and Germany started ringing alarm bells!

BSAMOTORBIKE

2,600,000 Motorbikes

From 1966 onwards there was a rapid decline in the British share of the motorbike market and by 1972 things were so bad that the government intervened with a rescue plan that involved the breaking up of the BSA group of factories.

The BSA itself was taken over by Manganese Bronze.

The government's rescue plan envisaged the three main British Bike manufacturers, Norton, Triumph and BSA all occupying the Armoury Road works, thus closing the Norton and Triumph factories.

The Triumph workers refused to go along with this and occupied their factory, forming a "Workers Cooperative".

This created a political standoff with the Government, preventing them from going ahead with the rescue plan and after two years both the BSA and Norton factories closed.

A few years later the Triumph factory also succumbed, thus bringing an end to the proud history of the British motorbike .

Now BSA branded motorbikes are hand built in Southampton and BSA branded bicycles are built in India.

At least the name lives on!

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These shops were on the corner of Bordesley Green and Victoria Street, 1958

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This Cafe was on the corner of Green Lane and Eversley Road and was a favourite meeting place for me and my pals in the 60s and before that, for my older brothers and their pals in the 50s.

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This shop next door to the Green Lane picture house was Pinnicks radio and tv and it was where our dad bought our first TV on the knock in 1956.

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This Great photo was sent in by Pat bassett

Your site has brought back a lot of fond memories of Small Heath, The photo I have sent you may be of interest but I don't expect anyone to remember it? It was taken about 1928, it was my father's greengrocers shop on the Coventry Rd just round the corner from Greenway St and about 2 doors from the Oxford Pub, my fathers brother and sister are in the photo his sister Nell is still alive she is 102 yrs. When I was born my family had already moved to 4, Greenway.

Pat Bassett ( Nee Harris )

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