Gravelly Lane
(Somerset Road junction) 1940's-60's, Hand-Drawn Map
A resident has done this drawing from memory. Note the Council allotments where the fish and chip shop etc now is. However you may have noticed the "1920's" Somerset Road photos on the site shows buildings there. I'll look into this discrepancy.
On the other side with the shops the lead dome (still there of course, now the roof of Cambridge Antiques) was a sort of trademark for Wrensons The Family Grocers, which was there. Wrensons tended to be on corners and all had this dome, painted green with gold leaf spars and Wrensons lettering. This dome was gilded in 1946, shop lasted until the 1960's. I remember the bike-shop, Tower Cycles, took it's name from the dome of course and stood there at one time. (Today above a bakers at the junction of York Road and Erdington High Street there is a dome dating from 1906).
Wrensons the grocers had stone-work in the shape of fruit, still there, and that stonework runs around along the other shops, much of it today covered by the signs of those shops. Although most people only go back as far as Tower Cycles being on that corner (including me) they wouldn't have had fruit stone-work of course. Shaped stonework suggests quite a rich company so Wrensons would indeed seem to have been a chain of stores (another old dome of theirs is on Pershore Road I'm told).
The Co-Op store was Branch 45. Number 178 Gravelly Lane was a hairdressers at one stage (Tower Carpets now occupies 176 and 178). 182 was George Jones Corn And Seed Merchants.
The Co-op way of moving money across the store was via strings attached to the front and back of the store!