History
Great Barr was a largely rural area in south Staffordshire, on its border with Warwickshire, as recently as the First World War, but during the 1920s development for private and council housing began. The urban district of Perry Barr was ceded to Birmingham, then in Warwickshire, in 1928.
By the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 it was a very busy residential area with good road connections to West Bromwich, Walsall and Birmingham.
Expansion continued after the war, and during the 1960s the area received a motorway link when Junction 7 of the M6 motorway was opened on the A34. It is also located close to the starting point of the M5, which can be accessed just one mile (1.6 km) northwards on the M6.
On 11 August 1975, eight-year-old local schoolgirl Helen Bailey was found dead from a single knife wound, in woods near Booths Farm. Her killer was never found.
Kidnapper Michael Sams abducted estate agent Stephanie Slater from a house in Turnberry Road, Great Barr before holding her for eight days in January 1992. Following receipt of £175,000 ransom, Sams released her. Police arrested him three weeks later and he was sentenced to life imprisonment for abducting Slater and murdering Leeds prostitute Julie Dart.
Read more about this topic: Great Barr
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)