Definitely a slow burner of an explore this one. The 'port loop' area gets its name from a canal loop formed when the Birmingham canal navigations main line canal was built, effectively bypassing and an older section of canal used to access the maintenance depot at Edgbaston reservoir. Looking at old maps the area has always been heavily industrial in nature and things were no different when I moved over to Birmingham around 2011. Back in those days there were quite a few places round the area either sitting derelict or more often than not in the typical kind of post industrial/pre development limbo of back street garages and dodgy industrial units. Over the years we have explored quite a few of these places that have since been wiped away in favour of cheaply built plywood terrace housing. Of the places we explored off the top of my head i can think of Johnson Paints, Hermite Gaskets, Frank Dudley and of course the remains of the Mckechnie copper tube mill that still sits next to the refuse destructor today. Some of the explores were pretty cool, clandestine canal boating on a summer evening is always a pleasure especially if it involves getting into a fresh derp along the way! However none of these sites really ever proved good enough to be worth a report or even more than a handful of token photos tbh. However, recently, with the refuse destructor just siting there and a blast of fresh February sunshine showing through I though I should make a little bit of effort to get what is undoubtedly the most interesting (and last) part of port loop documented before it too is just a memory and is absorbed into sprawling overpriced housing ghetto. Although the site is well stripped the buildings here are definitely the most interesting thing we've found in the area and the architecture is pretty amazing I'm sure you will agree.
Looking at old maps from the Victorian era the site simply appears as a 'council wharf' but by the turn of the century it starts being referred to as a refuse destructor which makes sense as it is around that era when household waste starts to move from simply being ashes from the coal fire to being something we would loosely term today as actual 'rubbish' and one strategy to deal with it was to simply burn it! I believe it is around this same time when the brick built stable building fronting Rotton Park Street was built. The white deco buildings come a few decades later being built around 1930 when the site becomes known as a 'Salvage Department' instead.
The older buildings at the front of the site would once have been stables on the ground floor with a canteen and toilet facilities upstairs. Recently like most of the site they were split up into small industrial units but if you look closely theres still a few signs of their former use (such as the lovely cobbled floor downstairs) The deco 1930s part is actually mainly there to form a ramp that allowed dustcarts to drive up to the top of the incinerator building and tip into the top of the furnaces. (I'm sure nowadays the same thing would be easily accomplished by a simple belt conveyor!) In addition to this function they also contained workshops to work on the new fangled motorised dust carts that would have been taking over from horses around this time.. The incinerator building itself has probably undergone loads of modifications over the years but I was really surprised how much there was left inside that had anything to do with its former use. Im unsure exactly when the council vacated the site but it doesn't look to have been that long ago really. Possibly the 1990s sometime? When it closed it was no longer being used to incinerate waste but simply as a waste transfer station. Maybe it was going long enough to have worked in conjunction with its modern day equivalent in Tyseley!? Interestingly one control panel I found inside refers to the 'West Midlands County Council' which was only in existence from 1974-1986 so gives a pretty good idea what era its latest incarnation was built at a least. Most of these buildings were in use as small units until 2019 or so and after that the 'local community' have used part of the site for 'arty events' I believe there is plans to retain the older stable block (along with the Mckencnie building next door) but sadly i think the 1930s stuff (the best stuff of course!) is under threat of demolition.
Looking at old maps from the Victorian era the site simply appears as a 'council wharf' but by the turn of the century it starts being referred to as a refuse destructor which makes sense as it is around that era when household waste starts to move from simply being ashes from the coal fire to being something we would loosely term today as actual 'rubbish' and one strategy to deal with it was to simply burn it! I believe it is around this same time when the brick built stable building fronting Rotton Park Street was built. The white deco buildings come a few decades later being built around 1930 when the site becomes known as a 'Salvage Department' instead.
The older buildings at the front of the site would once have been stables on the ground floor with a canteen and toilet facilities upstairs. Recently like most of the site they were split up into small industrial units but if you look closely theres still a few signs of their former use (such as the lovely cobbled floor downstairs) The deco 1930s part is actually mainly there to form a ramp that allowed dustcarts to drive up to the top of the incinerator building and tip into the top of the furnaces. (I'm sure nowadays the same thing would be easily accomplished by a simple belt conveyor!) In addition to this function they also contained workshops to work on the new fangled motorised dust carts that would have been taking over from horses around this time.. The incinerator building itself has probably undergone loads of modifications over the years but I was really surprised how much there was left inside that had anything to do with its former use. Im unsure exactly when the council vacated the site but it doesn't look to have been that long ago really. Possibly the 1990s sometime? When it closed it was no longer being used to incinerate waste but simply as a waste transfer station. Maybe it was going long enough to have worked in conjunction with its modern day equivalent in Tyseley!? Interestingly one control panel I found inside refers to the 'West Midlands County Council' which was only in existence from 1974-1986 so gives a pretty good idea what era its latest incarnation was built at a least. Most of these buildings were in use as small units until 2019 or so and after that the 'local community' have used part of the site for 'arty events' I believe there is plans to retain the older stable block (along with the Mckencnie building next door) but sadly i think the 1930s stuff (the best stuff of course!) is under threat of demolition.
Stable and Canteen Block
Transport Workshops
Destructor Building
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