Route developed by: Ted Spiller
Starting from Triplex House, Eckersall Road
A kissing-gate (para.2) on the route makes it impractical for wheelchairs and prams.
[1] Leave Triplex House (A) by the main gate and walk along Eckersall Road, past the Triplex Sports Ground (B) on your left. Turn next right into Westhill Road and immediately right between bollards into a greenway. The River Rea (C) runs in the trees to the left of the path, the old mill stream in the scrub to the right. This is part of the Rea Valley Route which can be followed by riverside meadows for six miles, from Digbeth to Longbridge. At the first path junction turn left and take the tarmac path over the river and through trees to Wychall Lane.
[2] Cross Wychall Lane to the corner of Meadow Hill Road opposite, and go through a kissing gate on the left into the local nature reserve (D). The reserve was set up in 2005 along a ribbon of wetland habitat formed by rivers, millstreams, canal feeders and open water. Follow the possibly slippery unmade path through scrub, over a ditch (a canal feeder), across more scrub and along the left hand side of a field, ignoring the path to the right (to Merecroft Pool). Continue uphill beside the iron fence on the left side of the field, and emerge through housing onto Westhill Road. Ahead, St Nicolas's 184 feet high steeple points to heaven.
[3] Cross Westhill Road, turn right into it then first left into St Nicolas Gardens (E). When this residential road bends left continue ahead past pastiche Georgian houses (F) onto a tarmac walk. Follow Birdcage Walk through trees and past a churchyard on your left to the corner of an old building on your right, just before the lych-gate. Mind the step.
[4] Turn right and make a circuit anti-clockwise around the triangular village green of King's Norton (G). The Green, with its remarkable medieval buildings and mixed architecture, has survived largely due to the creation in 1825 of the Pershore Turnpike (the A441) which bypasses the village.
The old building on the corner is the Saracen's Head (H) (St Nicolas' Place), half-timbered with a heavily over sailing upper storey. Built in 1492 as a wool merchant’s house, it became an inn and now houses the parish offices and a tearoom (open Mon to Sat 10am - 4pm). Upstairs is the 'Queens Room', named in honour of Henrietta Maria who stayed here whilst taking reinforcements to Charles I during the Civil War - the troops camped by the River Rea near Camp Lane. The Queen used a maid as a messenger between herself and the troops but the maid died of influenza. Her ghost has been seen on the first floor. Next door is the Bull's Head pub (1901), with bulls’ heads glaring from its timbered gables. Watch out for traffic.
[5] Turn left just after the Bull's Head and take the path across the green. Look right to see the older buildings on the south side - No 10 a shop (Spar) with 15th Century timber framing, No’s 16 - 19 houses (painted white) in Georgian style. The Green was the site of the Mop 'Hiring' Fair and the Cattle Market. A Civil War skirmish occurred here in 1642 when Prince Rupert's Royalist troops were routed by a large Parliamentary force. The seventy men who died are buried together in an unmarked grave in the churchyard.
[6] At the bottom corner of the green turn left and walk up to the top of the green. Go through the lych-gate, past the mutilated Middlemore Monument (on the left built in 1805, in Classical style) to look at the impressive parish church (I) if it is open. Much of St Nicolas' is 14th Century Gothic but the pinnacled tower and dragoned spire are later (from around 1475), the nave arcades earlier (around 1300), and the round-headed chancel windows are Norman. Inside, below the 10 peal bell tower, stand two early alabaster tombs with figures representing the deceased - Humphrey Lyttleton and Martha (died 1588) cut into the slab, Sir Richard Grevis (died 1632) and Ann sculpted in relief. Note: the church floor is stepped and badly lit: take care.
[7] Standing with your back to the porch (beneath the medieval sundial) and turn left beside the aisle wall (with Tudor gables). At the end of the chancel bear left on the path running diagonally across the graveyard then fork left. The Old Grammar School (J) (ahead), with a half-timbered upper and brick lower storey, was in use as a school by the 1540s. A plaque above the door recalls Thomas Hall, the puritanical schoolmaster who wrote leaflets on 'the loathsomeness of long hair' and 'the exorbitances of women'. Both the Old School and Saracen's Head have been rescued from decay after winning the BBC 'Restoration 2004' competition. With care descend steps to the left of the Old School, turn right into a drive and walk along it, with the cemetery on your left, to Pershore Road South.
[8] Turn left into Pershore Road and walk downhill past the Library (K) (right hand side 1906, with Baroque style entrance). Turn left at the end of the cemetery (L) into a formal avenue - the entrance to Kings Norton Park (M). The park, created on open farmland in the 1920s, was a gift from the Birmingham Civic Society. Its most distinctive features are the two formal entrance avenues, each a broad grassy strip flanked by long straight paths and hedges.
[9] Walk down the avenue and at its end turn right onto a path running through the open park. Keep ahead when the path joins the Rea Valley Route and follow it around a left curve, with the canal feeder ditch on your right, to the end of another formal avenue. Continue along the avenue and at its end turn right onto a path that meanders along the park edge, beside Westhill Road. Cross the River Rea and at the T-junction ahead turn left into Eckersall Road, using the pedestrian lights to cross Westhill Road. Follow Eckersall Road back to Triplex House (A).