Foundry Lane: Round the Bends

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Foundry Lane is interesting for the way it separates yet binds Soho Foundry and the Black Patch. The road can be understood as a spine, which both connects and separates: that which is on the left is very much connected to that which is on the right, but the two sides are distinct in their placement and detail, as is the thing that runs between them. The road and its flanks are three distinct yet inseparable entities, just as Smethwick and its flanks - the Black Country and Birmingham - are three distinct yet inseparable entities.

The road is flanked by industrial glory along one side, including Avery Weigh-tronix (Avery Berkel) on the site of the former Soho Foundry, and by open space on the other, including the Black Patch (park, allotment, wasteland). Avery/Soho Foundry and the Black Patch are connected in ways that are similar to connections between Birmingham and the Black Country. These connections are physical and social, economic and historical, and are blurred in some instances while sharply defined in others.

In the case of Birmingham and the Black Country, distinctions are physical and social, while connections are historical and economic. Along Foundry Lane, distinctions are also physical and social, connections are also historical and economic. The road itself physically separates the two spaces even though it is important to the history of both sides. Physical distinctions also separate left and right sides: factories largely occupy one side and open space largely occupies the other. But history connects the two. Both are products of industrial processes. 

One side of the road is largely built up and industrial and the other side is largely knocked down and pastoral. These are differences which tend to separate the glorious industrial history from the not-so-glorious domestic history. But both histories are connected by the people who worked in the factories, played in the open space and lived in the houses that once stood along Foundry Lane, Kitchener Street and Perrott Road. 

These histories, like the road and its flanks, are distinct yet connected. The industrial is distinct from the social, yet the two are inseparable, connected by people and place. Running through the place is Foundry Lane. Running through the history are people. The road creates and occupies a space that is partly industrial glory and partly open space, connected yet distinct. The road is part of the space and the history while while also a thing unto itself. The road, the history, the people are distinct, yet inseparable.

Just as Smethwick occupies a special place between the two regional entities, Foundry Lane takes in both the industrial glory of Boulton and Watt's Soho Foundry and the notorious and much-derided Black Patch. A stark contrast in reputation separates the two places, yet both came into existence simultaneously and symbiotically — each partly dependent on the other, and both dependent on the road, the canal, the railways, the town of Birmingham and the villages of the Black Country. 

This quality of between-ness makes travel along Foundry Lane an adventure in past, present and future, as history gives way to dereliction and regeneration, as factories and open space face each other across the road, as one set of contrasts turns into another. The space contains these contrasts without blurring them. It shows that twilight zones are not necessarily about blurring of bondaries, but of unexpected and disorienting juxtapostions.

 Each twist in the road brings some surprise, whether it's a skip lorry careening around the bend, a sudden vista of mature plane trees and wide, grassy parkland, or serene 1930s maisonettes with Art Deco details juxtaposed with the wreckage of former industrial might. A closer look reveals layer upon layer of changes: name changes, population change, boundary changes, industrial change, social change. Foundry Lane has been and continues to be a place of changes: the maisonettes will be knocked down, a spine road will be run through the allotments and the park, the old factories will be levelled and replaced with aluminium sheds, the current 'notorious' tenants will move out and new 'upmarket' ones will move in. Yet these changes will be on the back of what came before. The place might be wiped clean, but the layers of history and connections will continue to accumulate. 

At this point we might ask what the future holds. I think the answer depends partly on that which has already happened. Where is it going? Where did it start? Is there a trajectory, a line of flight? These questions are not easily answered. There are clues, but so far, nothing conclusive. If we look at maps from various points in time, we can get an idea of how things developed: of how this part of Smethwick went from manorial heath lands to one of the most heavily industrialised plant in the world — and how that shapes its future. Let's start with an 1830 map, just because it's to hand. There are earlier maps, not very detailed, but evocative, perhaps even indicative of patterns which become evident later.