BRIEF HISTORY OF GRANGE PARK
The large gabled brick house at Grange Park, formerly known as Lickey Grange, is most famously associated with Lord Herbert Austin, the automobile designer and founder of the Austin Motor Company.
Originally built for the Birmingham solicitor, Joseph Rowlands in 1880, the house was designed in the style of a Victorian suburban villa, although it was set in a rural location with substantial grounds. It was deliberately constructed with large rooms, including a library and billiards room.
In 1910, Rowlands sold the property to Herbert Austin who was looking to move his family from Erdington to a larger home closer to his successful car manufacturing business at Longbridge. It is said that the popular Austin 7 motor car, ‘the Baby Austin’, was designed in the billiards room of the Grange in 1921.
This was to remain the home of Lord Austin and his wife Lady Helen for the rest of their lives, until his death from a heart attack and bout of pneumonia aged 74 on 23 May 1941. His wife died exactly a year later on 24 May 1942 and they are both buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church in Lickey.
Their only son, Vernon had been killed in action in France in 1915 and the peerage became extinct after Lord Austin’s death. The estate was sold to the Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind (BRIB) with the beneficiaries being their two daughters Irene (Mrs Waite) and Zeta (Mrs Lambert).
BRIB opened a junior school on the site in 1945, which became a senior school called Lickey Grange School a few years later. In the following years, further buildings sprang up around the original house which was kept much the same as it had been during Lord Austin’s time.
The grounds were developed to meet the needs of a school catering for a mixture of residential and day pupils. Individual houses were built for teachers, two of these remain, they are the houses just outside the main entrance gate. Hostel style accommodation blocks were built for the pupils, plus an assembly hall, indoor swimming pool and classrooms. In fact, many local people recall learning to swim as a child in the pool at Lickey Grange.
In the early 1980s changes in the methods of education led to a large drop in the numbers of children being sent to the school. BRIB subsequently closed the school in 1991, selling the two teachers houses outside the gates and the entire site for redevelopment.
The house has returned to residential use and is now subdivided in to apartments and further new housing was built on site by developers Chase Midlands. On 3 October 1997, the bust of Lord Austin set into the wall next to the main gates was unveiled by his grandson, Gerald Lambert, at the official opening ceremony of Grange Park.
Our contact details
Old Birmingham Road, B60 1RB
admin@thegrangepark.com
Estate Registered Address
The Grange Park Management Company (Old Birmingham Road) Limited H3
1 Manor Park Business Centre, Mackenzie Way, Cheltenham GL5 9TX United Kingdom
Estate Managing Agent
HML Cheltenham
1 Manor Park Business Centre, Mackenzie Way, Cheltenham GL51 9TX
Tel: 01242 695 126
Email: info.cheltenham@hmlgroup.com