Old Oscott

Maryvale Institute is a college of further and higher education, an International Catholic Distance-Learning College for Catechesis, Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education in Old Oscott, Great Barr, Birmingham, England. It specialises in the provision of part-time, distance learning courses to the lay faithful, consecrated religious and ministers of the Roman Catholic Church.

Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School is a non-selective comprehensive state secondary school in Kingstanding; an inner-city suburb of Birmingham, England. It is named after Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman. This school accepts both sexes and accepts both Catholics and non-Catholics.

Fortis Academy is a co-educational secondary school and sixth form located in the Great Barr area of Birmingham, England.

The Odeon at Kingstanding, Birmingham, was a 1930s cinema in the Odeon chain. Though closed as a cinema in 1962, the building survives as a bingo hall, and is Grade II listed.

King's Standing Bowl Barrow or Kingstanding Mound, is a scheduled monument in the Kingstanding area of Birmingham. It comprises the buried and earthwork remains of a bowl barrow from the late Neolithic to the late Bronze Age, lying alongside the Icknield Street Roman road to the South of Sutton Park. It is reputedly the site from where King Charles I reviewed his troops on 18 October 1642, during the English Civil War; from which event both the mound and the area take their name.

Pheasey is a residential area of Walsall Metropolitan Borough in the West Midlands of England, often considered to be part of Great Barr. The area was predominantly developed for housing, as the Pheasey Estate, in the 1930s, but work was not completed until after the Second World War. Barr Beacon, a hill, is a local landmark.

Arena Academy is a coeducational secondary school located in the Perry Beeches area of Birminghamin the West Midlands of England.Previously a community school administered by Birmingham City Council, Perry Beeches School converted to academy status on 3 May 2012 and was renamed Perry Beeches The Academy. On 14 July 2017, Kevin Rogers of Perry Beeches 2 announced to students that Perry Beeches The Academy was going to leave Perry Beeches The Academy Trust and would change to a new trust and would change uniform and name. The school joined CORE Education Trust and was renamed Arena Academy. The school offers GCSEs and BTECs as programmes of study for pupils.

The Moonstones (grid reference SP062949) are a set of nine carved sandstone memorials to various members of the Lunar Society. Made in 1998, and unveiled in March 1999, they can be viewed in the grounds of the Asda supermarket in Queslett, Great Barr, Birmingham, England. They are visible from the highway, when travelling from Aldridge Road into Queslett Road, toward the Scott Arms, and face outwards from the supermarket. They depict nine members of the Society and attributes connected with their work, in order from Aldridge Road round to Queslett Road: Josiah Wedgwood: portrait and three women from a jasperware design Erasmus Darwin: portrait and design for horizontal windmill Samuel Galton: colour wheel William Murdock: steam road locomotive Matthew Boulton: medal with his portrait James Watt: portrait and steam engine Joseph Priestley: laboratory equipment James Keir: crystals William Withering: foxglove, with words from his book An Account of the Foxglove and some of its Medical UsesThe stones also each have a phase of the moon carved on them, with the Watt stone being the full moon. The designs are by Steve Field and were executed by two stonemasons, Malcolm Sier and Michael Scheurmann. The rear of the Watt stone includes a carved panel crediting the artists and sponsors. Great Barr Hall, Galton's home and a venue for meetings of the Lunar Society, is nearby.

Queslett is an area of Great Barr, Birmingham, England. The name (originally Quieslade) has been in use since the 16th century. The first part, from "Queest", means a wood pigeon, the second comes from the Anglo-Saxon "slade", for a small valley. Another old spelling, Queeslet, appears on Victorian maps and postcards. The area was part of Staffordshire until 1928. In 1810, in A Complete History of the Druids, T G Lomax described the area: At the declivity of very pleasingly diversified hills, near Quieslade, is a most delightful lake, by crossing the head of which, the admirer of variegated landscape will be amply rewarded by an agreeable range over the opposite hills, where the High-Wood and Barr Beacon present themselves to view; and by gradually climbing the first of these two summits, the south-east prospect becomes very rich and extensive; and the latter presents an unbounded panorama into fifteen counties, which PLOT, in his History of Staffordshire, has specified. (the later being a reference to Robert Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire). The area was mostly developed with private housing from the 1930s onwards, and is centred on the A4041 Queslett Road between West Bromwich and Sutton Coldfield, overlooked by Barr Beacon. A former sand quarry, on the site of William Booth's farm, was subsequently used for landfill. One half of the site is now Queslett Nature Reserve. The Moonstones, an artwork commemorating The Lunar Society, who met at nearby Great Barr Hall, stands in the grounds of a supermarket, on the site of the quarry's former office.

Perry Beeches is an area of Great Barr, Birmingham, England, within the parliamentary constituency of Perry Barr. Previously agricultural, with some sand and gravel quarrying on the site of Asda Queslett; it was developed as a residential suburb of Birmingham immediately before and after World War II. Many of the houses in the Thornbridge Avenue and Booth's Farm Road areas were constructed before the outbreak of war, while the remaining part of the estate (between the Beeches and Aldridge Roads) was completed after 1945. The Perry Beeches area is bisected by the M6 motorway, constructed in the early 1970s. The housing in the southern part of Perry Beeches -in the Thornbridge Avenue area and at the eastern end of the Beeches Road (formerly known as Brick Kiln Lane)- was built by Henry Boot of Sheffield for the 'First National Housing Trust' - who also built a similar estate, albeit with houses of a slightly larger floorplan, at Pheasey. This is located to the north-east of the Beeches Estate on land that was part of Aldridge Urban District Council and now part of Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council. Most of these houses were built in blocks of 4-6 with some blocks of 2 semi-detached in a similar style where space would not allow for larger blocks, or where the land was too steep for these blocks - notably in Holmesfield Road; that was built on a steep hill. While many residents have now bought these properties and made many alterations, the original floorplan for most houses consisted of a hallway, front room and then a rear kitchen with pantry, coal hole and a downstairs toilet. As these houses were originally rented, they had identical wooden doors and windows painted cream, with either dark green or brown doors and outer frames. Wooden fences with a garden hedge were also placed around every house. The houses to the north of the area (north of the Beeches Road between the Walsall and M6) were by contrast privately owned. These are mostly blocks of semi-detached houses with generally more decorative features, including large circular bay windows on the upper and ground floor, stained glass front doors and windows, and in most cases both a front and back reception room. At the rear of most houses in the Walsall Road and Booths Farm Road area, the houses were built with long rear access 'right of ways'. These proved useful as more people owned a private car from the early 1950s onwards and were able to build a garage on the bottom part of their back garden plot opening onto these 'right of ways'. They also made good short-cuts. In recent years, however, these became good access routes for thieves breaking into garages and houses. Due to this, many now have large padlocked gates at their roadside entrance and are only accessible to residents. There are a number of primary schools around this area and two secondary schools with one being directly located on the Beeches Estate. Secondary education is provided at Arena Academy.

Perry Barr Reservoir is a covered drinking water reservoir, in north Birmingham, England, operated by Severn Trent Water. Built for the then Birmingham Corporation Water Department, on the site of the former Perry Barr Farm, it is not, despite its name, in the modern Perry Barr area, but nearby Kingstanding, at grid reference SP083951. The reservoir is supplied by gravity from The Elan Valley, via Frankley Water Treatment Works and the trunk mains system. The reservoir, completed in 1942, has a concrete dam and holds 84 million litres of water. It supplies areas such as Kingstanding, Perry Barr, Great Barr and Witton. There are two old, matching signs at the entrance. One reads: City of Birmingham Water Department the other: The water in this reservoir (capacity 18 million gallons) has flowed 86 miles, without being pumped, though tunnels & pipes from the mountains of mid-Wales. In August 2013, Severn Trent launched a £2 million project to build a 2.5 miles (4.0 km) pipeline linking the reservoir to South Staffordshire Water's Barr Beacon Reservoir, to allow for the exchange of water in emergencies such as severe droughts.

The death of Helen Bailey is a British child murder case dating from 1975 in which an eight-year-old girl's death was originally classified by a coroner as being due to undetermined causes and potentially sourcing from an "accident or [a] practical joke gone wrong" despite the fact the child was found in a secluded area and that her jugular vein had been severed.Despite intense police efforts, Bailey's killer was never identified, although several investigators strongly believe the child was murdered by a suspect who is known to have confessed to have strangled, then cut the child's throat in the late 1970s—having also contemporarily divulged forensic details of the child's death not revealed in the original 1976 inquest into her death.Officially, Helen Bailey's murder remains unsolved. Contemporary media accounts dubbed Bailey as "Little Girl Blue" due to the fact the child was dressed entirely in blue at the time of her death.