Lickey Grange is a
Victorian house and estate in the
village
A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred ...
of
Lickey
Lickey is a 'Linear Development', as opposed to a village, in the north of Worcestershire, England approximately south west from the centre of Birmingham. It lies in Bromsgrove District and is situated on the Lickey Ridge, amongst the Lickey Hil ...
,
Bromsgrove District
Bromsgrove is a local government district in Worcestershire, England. Its council is based in the town of Bromsgrove. It borders the built up area of Birmingham to the north. Other places in the district include Alvechurch, Aston Fields, B ...
,
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...
, near
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, where the automobile manufacturer
Herbert Austin
Herbert Austin, 1st Baron Austin (8 November 186623 May 1941) was an English automobile designer and builder who founded the Austin Motor Company. For the majority of his career he was known as Sir Herbert Austin, and the Northfield bypass ...
lived for 31 years. It later became a
residential school
A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes comp ...
and is now private housing.
Herbert Austin
The early history of Lickey Grange is not known. Herbert Austin founded the
Austin Motor Company, at
Longbridge, in 1905 and he moved his family to Lickey Grange in 1910. His new home included of surrounding land; and a lodge.
He had worked as an Engineer at the
Wolseley Sheep Shearing Company in
Australia and returned to England with his Australian wife in 1893 to become
Manager
Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business.
Management includes the activities ...
of its manufacturing operations in
Aston,
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
. He extended the range of the company but continued as manager of both parts. The new part became known in 1901 as the
Wolseley Tool and Motor Company; and he had designed its first car. He left the Wolseley Tool and Motor company in 1905, bringing two former Wolseley designers with him to his new company at
Longbridge, which was then in the countryside, in
Worcestershire
Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see H ...
. However, he continued working for the Wolseley Sheep and Shearing Company; and was
Chairman from 1911 to 1931.
Between 1893 and 1910 Herbert Austin had lived in various parts of Birmingham. By 1910 the family, two daughters and a son, moved to Lickey Grange where he spent the rest of his life.
The
Austin 7
The Austin 7 is an economy car that was produced from 1923 until 1939 in the United Kingdom by Austin. It was nicknamed the "Baby Austin" and was at that time one of the most popular cars produced for the British market and sold well abroad. ...
was designed at Lickey Grange between 1921 and 1922 in the
billiards
Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as .
There are three major subdivisions ...
room (but not on the billiards table!). This was a 7
horsepower
Horsepower (hp) is a unit of measurement of power, or the rate at which work is done, usually in reference to the output of engines or motors. There are many different standards and types of horsepower. Two common definitions used today are t ...
(hp) car. It had been designed in private, at Sir Herbert Austin's expense, at Lickey Grange because the other directors of the Austin Motor company preferred bigger 12 hp-engined cars and were against the idea of a "small" car. Herbert Austin
patent
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
ed some of the features and so gained a
royalty for every Austin 7 sold by the company. Stanley Edge, the young design draughtsman who worked for Sir Herbert, lived at the Lodge but ate his meals in the adjoining library.
Herbert Austin died in 1941 and was buried in the graveyard of
Holy Trinity Church, Lickey. The Grange was later sold.
Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind
The
Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind (BRIB), a
charity
Charity may refer to:
Giving
* Charitable organization or charity, a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being of persons
* Charity (practice), the practice of being benevolent, giving and sharing
* C ...
, then took over Lickey Grange and the first pupils moved-in in March 1953. The BRIB's school had previously been at Carpenter Road,
Edgbaston
Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre.
In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family a ...
,
Birmingham
Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...
, but this site was acquired by the
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in 1954, then the Regional HQ in 1955), forcing the move to Lickey Grange.
The BRIB kept the house much the same as it had been, but the grounds were developed to meet the needs of a residential school. Individual houses were built for
and class rooms.
The school catered for a mixture of residential and day pupils. Until the 1980s there were more residential pupils than day pupils; however changes in the methods of education - integration - lead to a large drop in the numbers of children being sent to the school.
and a billiards room. After the BRIB vacated the site it was redeveloped with teachers' houses nearest to the Old Birmingham Road sold off first. The rest of the site is now a gated community of up-market homes.
Lickey Grange is accessed from the ''Old Birmingham Road'' (B4096). The B4096 appears to have once formed the route of the
* Sharratt, Barney, (2000). ''Men and Motors of The Austin: The inside story of a century of car making at Longbridge''. Sparkford: Haynes Publishing.