Ten Acres & Stirchley Co-operative Society

The first “Ten Acres and Stirchley Street Co-operative Society Limited” shop opened at 2pm on Saturday the 25th of June 1875 in the front room of a rented house at 112 Hazelwell Street, Stirchley . As most of the founders were working men, the initial opening hours were 6.30pm to 9pm on weekdays and 2pm to 10pm on Saturdays. The shop was originally illuminated by paraffin lamps but after a short time the committee decided to install gas lights.
The word “Street” was dropped from its name in 1901 and, in 1927, the acronym TASCOS (Ten Acres and Stirchley Co-operative Society) was coined for use in advertising and quickly became popular.
It is remarkable that from these simple beginnings there grew such a successful and important enterprise with over 60,000 members.
I hope to continue the history of the Society in future. If you have any information or artefacts relating to TASCOS, I would be very interested to hear from you.

So it's been around for quite some time,interesting to read about it ,didnt realise how big it had grown and still going today,sorry I cant help with any information.

I haven't checked the numbers but I assume the rather plain looking Co-op at Hazelwell Street and Umberslade Road is built on the site of the original.
I have driven past it thousands of times but have never been tempted to shop there, I think it's the lack of doors that puts me off.

There is a lovely old building on the opposite side of Umberslade Road, it must be part of the pub..

I've now done bit of research and have discovered that there was a TASCOS further up the road, just opposite the end of Hunts Road, perhaps this was once Hazelwell Street.

This D J Norton webpage for Stirchley shows a TASCOS shop at 1393 Pershore Road. [URL] http://www.photobydjnorton.com/GTC/Stirchley.html[/URL]
The current view on Google is quite similar…
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.427495...12!8i6656?hl=en

The first reference to TASCOs in directories is in 1879, when it is just listed in the Kings Norton section (being outside Birmingham no street list was included, and no street was listed against the name). but the manager until the 1882 edition is listed as Charles Taylor. On the 1881 census he is listed (as shopman in grocery trade) in Ten Acres St (no number). I had thought he might live on the premises. Am not sure though. Have not yet succeeded in finding Hazelwell st on this census. Parts of what are now Pershore Road were at one time called Stirchley St , Ten Acres St, and possibly Hazelwell St. I went into this some time ago while trying to correlate all the various addresses in Pershore Road, but never got very far with this part. will try again and see if I can throw any light on it. In 1888 the TASCO store is listed in Stirchley St, but might not have been the same store.

It's an odd bit of street Mike, part of it is also part of Icknield Street.

I've found a website … https://stirchleycommunitymarket.co.uk/2...uesdays-market/
Here they say that ‘The Central Bakery, 1891’ shop at 1399 Pershore Road was the Co-op bakery whilst the original shop was on the site of the new shop.

A bit about Icknield Street from Wikipedia…..

The 7 miles from Stirchley in the south of Birmingham to Perry Bridge at Holford in the north is a serious problem. It has long vexed Birmingham antiquaries and is perhaps insoluble. Hutton[8] gave the course as "onwards by Stirchley Street, crossing the Bromsgrove road at Selly Oak, leaving Harborne a mile to the west, by the observatory in Lady Wood Lane, crossing the Dudley Road at Sandpits, and along Worstone Lane, passing five furlongs north of the Navigation Bridge in Great Charles Street, Birmingham. He saw the section of the road where the inhabitants attempted to pull it up for the sake of the materials, 20 yards wide, and one yard deep, filled up with stone cemented with coarse mortar," and he says that "the course was discoverable by its barren track through uncultivated meadows." Icknield Street or Icknield Port Road are not old names and cannot be traced in the city prior to 1825 and may have been introduced as a result of Hutton's theory.[3] Birmingham and its suburbs now cover the old road.[2] The line of Hazelwell Street sets the course of the road towards the next established point of the route at Metchley Fort in the grounds of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The fort was established about 48 AD by the Roman army as a base camp for its conquest of the Birmingham area[9] and part of a network of forts across the Midlands linked by roads.[10] It stood by Birmingham's earliest known road junction at the point where Icknield Street was met by Roman roads coming in from Droitwich and Penkridge.[9] From here the road runs north to another fort at Wall, Roman Etocetum near Lichfield.[10] The Perry Bridge of 1711 stands at its crossing of the River Tame in Perry Barr.[2] However, Walker cast doubts on this orthodox view of the road's course in this area[11] and resistivity surveys undertaken on sites either side of the crossing in 1992, showed that, although the line of the road is clearly indicated on old maps and aerial photographs, the site has been considerably altered this century by, among other things, the embankment of the M6. The one place where the road might have been detected proved inaccessible without considerable clearance of dense undergrowth (remnants of a hedge-line following the road?) and a 20-metre grid on adjacent open ground proved negative. The second site was on wasteland immediately south of the river. Here, the "Walker" road-line only shaved the top comer of this before disappearing under a modern industrial development (plot-holders in allotments to the south did not recall any finds during building work, nor were they able to identify any "hard" areas on their land, where the "Walker" line might be expected to continue). A series of complete and partial 20 metre grids laid down the fence line between the industrial estate and the wasteland and then right across the open area yielded nothing which could relate to the "Walker" line but did produce some low resistance features running parallel with the site's east boundary.[12][13]

Volty
I'm not sure you are right there. I read it as saying that the large store that I remember in the 1960-70s, pictured in the first photo, has been replaced by the store shown at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Bour...44!4d-1.9338974 ., and leaves it vague as to position of the first store

Mike, I was referring to this bit "Sadly, the glorious former Co-op building in Stirchley (TASCOS branch number one) was replaced in the latter half of last century by the superstore we see today. "
As you say it doesn't state that the original store was on the site of the new one, just replaced by it. You can read it at least two ways, I jumped to my preferred conclusion.

The answer must lie in the street numbers, the house opposite the new store is number 15 and further up is number 25, all a long way off number 112.

Trouble is there is no number as high as 112 now, and it is likely that when road was subdivided, renamed or changed the whole road was completely renumbered so present numbers are not relevant.

Quite right, but it could indicate that the original building was about 43 houses further up the road on the same side as the present store.

I think it was about here, https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.427574...12!8i6656?hl=en

The building is Coningsby Place 1830 ? Seriously old.


I now dispute the Hazelwell Street address anyway Mike, as you pointed out earlier, parts of Pershore Road had various names.
In Kelly's 1880
Ten Acres & Stirchley Street Co-operative Society Limited (Charles Taylor, man.), Stirchley street,King's Norton

In Francis White 1875.
Ten Acre and Stirchley Street Co-operative Society Limited, grocer El, &c.

In both directories there are numerous references to Stirchley Street and none to Hazelwell Street.

Why open in a Hazelwell Street and name the business after Stirchley Street?
It doesn't make sense.

I would agree with that . Not sure where the original suggestion of an address came from, but have seen it quoted in several places

On Godfrey map 10.12 for Kings Norton 1903, although the part of the Pershore Road in question isn't shown, it must be on 10.08 which I don't have, there is a lot of information on the back taken from Kellys 1907, which I don't have either.

An entry under T reads as follows….
Ten Acres & Stirchley Co-operative Society Limited (Mortimer West, sec.) Pershore Road, Stirchley ; 152 Pershore Road, The Cotteridge & Bristol Road, Northfield.

I can't decide if that is a single address or more as the Bakery exists by this time.
One thing I know is that there are a lot of businesses on Stirchley Street and Hazelwell Street gets a number of mentions, including one for Stirchley Street Working Mens Club (Joseph Powell, sec.), Hazelwell Street.

Hi
Thanks everyone for all your comments. DELETED If you have any specific queries or would like me to list all of their 50+ (!) branches, just let me know.
Littlejos

Quote: littlejos wrote in post #14

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Hi
Thanks everyone for all your comments.DELETED if you have any specific queries or would like me to list all of their 50+ (!) branches, just let me know.
Littlejos

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