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There were stables and outbuildings for the Abbey designed by Robert Lugar for Hubert Galton.   They were to the north of the building itself closer to Abbey Road near to where the play area is today.  There was a roadway into the stables that came off the main drive through that play area location which can be seen on several OS maps.

There were stalls for 8 horses, a corn-room, harness room, coach house and a number of bedrooms for the stable lads. Around the gated yard were kennels, a privy and a lead-lined water tank.

When the house was a family residence they were used for their original purpose.  When the park was opened to the public some of the outbuildings were converted into public toilets (1906 Parks Department minutes).  As the grass mower was horse drawn and we have photographs of horses grazing, it is likely that they were still used in their original way, even if the animals were fulfilling a different function.  Gradually it became a general location for park staff and their equipment.

In 1947 the stables were badly damaged by a heavy fall of snow (Smethwick Telephone 15th November).  They had not been used for some time due to cracks in the brickwork.  Some, but not all, of the buildings were rebuilt, but now to house tractors.  The pitched roof was replaced with a flat one.

Our oral history project revealed most about them, with memories of tractors, trailers, tools, a store room and a mess room for staff with a big fire.  We heard about pigsties and how scary (and smelly) it was to visit the public toilets.

We heard that one of the paintings from the Abbey had been moved into a manager’s office in the stables and was in pride of place.  The memory teller remembered it being there when the stables were burned down.  We think this was in the 1970s when a new mess room was built, which was also burnt down.  We understand the stable cobbles remained and are probably still there under layers of leaf mould.  The public toilets also remained, but we have no information about when these stopped being in use.  Still more to discover!

Would you like to read about somewhere else on the history trail?  Go back to the main listing page.