Selly Park is the area of Birmingham located between the Bristol Road (A38) in the west and the River Rea in the east. The Pershore Road (A441) runs through the district on its eastern side with the Bourne Brook and the Birmingham Nature Centre at its northern boundary and the Dogpool Lane junction at its southern boundary.

Selly Park was named initially after the park around Selly Hall, now preserved within Selly Convent, and the land to the west of the Pershore Road was laid out for development in the mid nineteenth century with spacious plots and tree-lined streets, where development is still restricted by covenant. On the other side of the Pershore Road, between it and River Rea are several streets of superior 19th and early 20th century terraced housing.

Much of the housing in Selly Park is owner occupied along with a smaller proportion of privately rented accommodation. Selly Park forms part of the Selly Oak Ward of Birmingham City Council and is part of the Selly Oak Constituency. Selly Park is essentially a pleasant part of the inner suburbs of Birmingham, situated 4km (2½ miles) south of the City Centre. The neighbourhood of Selly Park South consists of some 700 households situated in the south eastern part of the district (see Your Forum page for further locational information).

Selly Park is well served by public transport. The Travel West Midlands No 45 and 47 bus route forms the main link with the City Centre, services operating every few minutes during the daytime and every fifteen minutes during the evening. The First National No 146 route from Redditch also follows the Pershore Road. The TWM No 69 route forms a link between Weoley Castle, Selly Oak, Selly Park, Kings Heath and Solihull. Bournville and Selly Oak railway stations on the Cross City Line are within reasonably easy reach.

A completely “green” transport route also passes through Selly Park, namely the Rea Valley Cycle Route. This links the City Centre with the southern suburbs of the city, continuing south via Stirchley, Kings Norton, Northfield and Longbridge to Frankley. Much of this route is via purpose built, asphalt surfaced, traffic-free cycle tracks. The Selly Park section follows this type of route (which is shared with pedestrians) through Cannon Hill Park and the playing fields to the south and then takes to the side roads of Kitchener Road and Cecil Road to pass into Stirchley south of Dogpool Lane. The Rea Valley Cycle Route is part of the long distance National Cycle Route 5 which runs from Reading to Anglesey! For those who do not wish to cycle quite that far, The Rea Valley Route provides a good opportunity for local, safe leisure cycling as well as for commuting to and from work in the City centre!

The area has a number of local shops, hotels, places to eat including inns, schools, churches and medical and dental practices. Larger shopping centres (such as Kings Heath), further services and the Selly Oak and Queen Elizabeth hospital complex are only a short distance away. Birmingham City Centre is likewise within easy reach taking approximately 15 minutes on the 45 or 47 bus.

Selly Park, as the name suggests, has extensive local parkland which lies along the green corridor of the River Rea Valley. Cannon Hill Park in the north consists of formal parkland, grassland and various leisure facilities including boating lakes and children’s playgrounds. The Birmingham Nature Centre lies adjacent to the Park on Pershore Road. Further south the parkland becomes less formal with mixed woodland and grassy areas and also the extensive playing fields including football pitches to the north of Kitchener Road. On the eastern side of the River Rea, just over the Ward boundary into Moseley is a cricket pitch, an all weather playing surface and the Holders Lane Woods.

For further information please see the Local Links page.

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Information for newcomers

We bid all new residents a warm welcome, including students for whom Selly Park will be their temporary home while studing. We hope your time here will be happy and we hope you will get involved in the life of our local community. Please look around the website to find out more about the neighbourhood and if you have any questions please do get in touch with us via the Contact Us page.

In particular you will find it helpful for you to know the City Council arrangements for refuse and recycling collection. Please do stick to these arrangements to avoid uncollected rubbish spoiling the neighbourhood.

Only put your household rubbish out, in securely tied black bags, on Monday evenings ready for collection at 6.00am on Tuesday mornings. You can be fined by the City Council if you put rubbish out at other times.

Recycling collection: Green recycling boxes for glass, plastic and cans. Blue recycling boxes for paper and card: Put out on pavements fortnightly on Monday evenings from 5th October.

Green bags for green garden waste: Put out on pavements fortnightly on Monday evenings from 28th September.

No household waste in green bags, no garden waste in black bags please. Everything must be put out on Monday evenings - it won't be collected from inside gardens. Don't leave it until Tuesday mornings - the collection crews come really early, as you will notice when they wake you up!

A Concise History of our Neighbourhood
by John Williams

The earliest record of our neighbourhood could be regarded as the entry for the manor of Escelie (Selley?), a holding of William Fitz Ansculf, (son of Ansculf De Picquigny) in the Doomsday Book of 1086 – the map shows the River Rea lying between Escelie and Muselie (Moseley)in the County of Worcestershire. Selley was a manor greater than Birmingham in those days but merely a clearing in the woodlands which dominated this area in those times.

Essentially, the rural nature of the area remained unchanged until the middle of the 19th Century and our area consisted of a few farms and the small hamlet of Ten Acres (named after the field on which it was built) at the cross roads formed by the crossing of the ancient pathways between Selly Oak and Moseley and the later turnpike road between Birmingham and Pershore (Pershore Road). The land was held by various tenant farmers from the Selly Manor which was within sight of each farm. There is a reference to ‘Mill Lane’ as part of the road to Moseley which may indicate that the manorial mill was situated on the river close by and its mill pond would be the ‘Dogpool’ from which this area derives its name.

The mill became the focus for the expansion of the village in the latter part of the Victorian period in line with the general industrialization of the Birmingham area. It became primarily a metal forming establishment and continued in this role as Clifford’s Mill until the 1980s.
Most of the local terraced houses were built to house the workers from the mill and other industrial developments in Stirchley, Selly Oak and Bournville. The main period of development took place in the last decade of the 19th Century until the beginning of the First World War in 1914. A few Georgian style houses were built along the turnpike road in the early Victorian period to house middle class professional people who desired to move out of the smoke and grime of Birmingham. These were the earliest speculative properties encouraged by Robert Dolphin, a Birmingham Solicitor, who had himself moved out of the city when he purchased the Estate of Selly Manor in 1835.

He later was the author of the Selly Hall Estate which became the Selly Park Estate largely built on the parkland which surrounded the Palladian Style Selly Hall, now incorporated into St Paul’s Convent at the top of Kensington Road. The remaining farm lands were developed as the pleasantly green suburb of Selly Park in the inter-war years and the 1950s to result in the present-day neighbourhood we currently share and to which we welcome new residents.

JHW-09-April-2009

Flood Action Group

The latest report from the Selly Park South Flood Action Group was published in December 2009. It contains a full overview of the major flood event of 6th September 2008 and all of the progress which has been made since then towards defending the neighbourhood against future flooding and making it more resilient should another serious flood threaten us. Please take the time to read this important report by turning to our FEATURES page and accessing 2009 in the Archive Section at the foot of the page.

Update - May 2010: Flood defence equipment for Selly Park South

The Flood Action Group successfully applied for a grant from the Birmingham Environment Partnership for a flood defence equipment pilot project. This has involved the purchase of FloodSentry air brick covers. These are one-use-only products. They have now been stored centrally here in Selly Park South by the Flood Group and are ready for deployment in a flood emergency.

For further information on the FloodSentry product and plan click here.

Further funding from the City Council has also made it possible to purchase yellow high visibility jackets for all of the Flood Group personnel to make them easily identifiable in a flood emergency and a set of powerful megaphones, each with a siren device, to alert residents if their homes are in serious danger of being flooded.

To watch a short video of the SPS Flood Action Group Coordinator explaining the flooding of September 2008 and subsequent action taken, please click here

National Flood Forum Conference

Selly Park South Flood Action Group was represented at this event which took place at the University of Aston on Thursday 25th February. It was well attended with in excess of 100 people there from all over the country. These included NFF personnel, representatives from CMS (Communications and Management for Sustainability, a leading consultancy for professionals working on water and environmental issues), flood action group leaders, officers from the Environemnt Agency, national and local government officers, academics, politicians and representatives of the insurance industry and flood protection equipment suppliers. The conference heard from speakers about experiences of flooding and discussed the lessons to be learned from these events. Latest developments in flood defence and resilience were explained and the keynote speech was given by Lord Chris Smith, Chair of the Environment Agency. The Under Secrertary of State for DEFRA and the Shadow Environment Ministers from the Conservative and Lib Dem parties spoke on their policies relating to flooding and answered questions from delegates. Selly Park South Flood Action Group was represented by its Flood Coordinator, John Clayton.

Pictured above at the conference (from left to right): Norma Boyd (Flood Coordinator for Rea Valley Residents Flood Action Group - Northfield), Charles Tucker (Vice Chair of the NFF), Wendy Rees (Environment Agency Midlands Region Floodwise Campaign Coordinator) and John Clayton (Flood Coordinator, SPS Flood Action Group).

To find out more about the work of the National Flood Forum please click here.