A quick chat about our meetings....
Our Midlands Branch meet regularly from 7 – 9 pm at Cofton Hackett Village Hall, Barnt Green Road, Birmingham, B45 8BN. It is an excellent venue with easy access to many motorways
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A look into our archives.....
Midlands Branch was, at first, part of the Cameric Cigarette Card Club, and it was founded in 1956, so it had been in existence less than ten years before that club merged with the Cartophilic Society.
You can read of that decade at https://csgb.co.uk/about/branches/midlands-1956-65.
This section of their story starts with the first ever edition of the newly created "Cartophilic Notes and News" magazine, January/February 1965, Volume 1, Number 1, where, on page 19, you will find the following announcement :
- BRANCHES. Members who were not previously members of the Cameric Club are, of course, now entitled to attend any Branch Meeting of the Cameric and are assured a very hearty welcome. If you live anywhere near London, Leeds, Manchester or Birmingham, do go along and introduce yourself. You will find them a friendly crowd. Spend an enjoyable evening and acquire a few cards for your collection."
The branches given here were slightly confusing, for it referred to their meeting places not their proper names, so "Birmingham" was actually the Midlands Branch. At the back of the book, inside the back cover, is published a list of dates for each of those four branches, which reads, in our case :
- MIDLANDS BRANCH.
Secretary : Mr. L. Higgs, Castle Bromwich, Birmingham
MEETING DATES.
Thursday, 18th Feb.
Thursday,18th Mar.
Thursday, 15th April
Thursday, 20th May.
Thursday, 17th June.
Thursday, 15th July.
Thursday, 19th Aug..
Thursday, 16th Sept.
Thursday, 21st Oct..
Thursday, 18th Nov.
Thursday, 16th Dec.
All at 7 p.m. at Arden Hotel, Birmingham.
We know quite a bit about Mr. Leslie Higgs, who joined Midlands Branch when it was aligned to the Cameric Cigarette Card Club - and you can read that at https://csgb.co.uk/about/branches/midlands-1956-65 too.
This line of dates tells us that they met monthly, and on the third Thursday of the month. However, there is a slight problem with the location as the Arden Hotel seems not to have been in existence in 1965, it only started in 1968. Before that it had simply been a cafe, called The Arden Grill, though it did have a few bedrooms on site, which were seldom used as, at that time, it was still part of the outskirts of Birmingham, or, more correctly, in the countryside. However, shortly after this, especially with the coming of international flights at Birmingham Airport, the building of the M1 Motorway, and of the National Exhibition Centre, the city began to expand.
Not so long after this there was sad news, with the death of Mr. Alan Willis, the Branch auctioneer, on the 22nd of April 1965, not so long after the death of his wife
By May 1966 meetings were still being held on the third Thursday of every month, but they had relocated to the Crown Hotel, in Corporation Street, and now started half an hour earlier, at 6.30 pm. It appears that the move, in January, had been due to a rent rise at the former premises, and that the Crown was actually cheaper than the Arden had been before the rise.
In July 1966, at the AGM, all officers were re-elected, which is how we know that they were Mr N.J. Allcock as Chairman, Mr Leslie Higgs as Secretary, Mr F G Baker as Treasurer and Mr J.J. Powell as Auctioneer. Mr. W.A. Wilson dealt with new issues. Average monthly attendance was fifteen per meeting, and at that meeting two new members were recorded, with two coming shortly after.
In 1967 the 129th meeting took place; 16 members attended plus a Mr. Walton from Aldershot who happened to be in Birmingham (and would go on to become Cartophilic Society President) and a Master Laker, a junior member (who would go on to work for the London Cigarette Card Company). Master Laker had brought along a school friend who also hoped to join the Society (but sadly I do not know who that was). There was an auction, with material contributed by the chairman Mr. Allcock, and he also gave one or two items to all the junior members.
The first Midlands Branch Rally was in 1968, at the Crown Hotel. However the Birmingham Rally of Saturday 11 April 1970 was at the Oliver Bird Hall, Church Hill Road, Solihull, about 4-5 miles from the Birmingham City Centre, with lunch being arranged at a local hostelry. There was an exhibition of silks and fabric issues. Sadly this was not very well attended, maybe because they had been forced to change the date at short notice because of alterations to the FA Cup Final; it was now the 2nd of May. There was a buffet at the Rally, 15/- a person and it would be arranged by a firm of caterers. I have the menu! As a postcript to this the date of 2nd May was then found to be the same as the North West Branch, who had also moved their date because of the Cup Final, but they agreed to switch theirs to the 9th.
Dr. J.H. Millen died in 1970. At his first ever meeting, all those years ago, he had met Cyril Marsden and the two had become good friends; strangely the passing of Cyril Marsden was reported in the very same issue of the Society magazine.
The 1970 Midlands Branch AGM was held on 16 July, seventeen members attended including two visitors, E.C. Prior and T.F. Halford. The Chairman hoped the rally in Solihull would be repeated in 1971. The treasurer F.G. Baker said the Branch was in a healthy state, though the Rally had eaten into its finances. A decision had been made, perhaps because of this, to introduce the club book round and W.Preece again agreed to organise it. The meeting concluded with a small auction of material contributed by Ted Prior.
The 1972 Rally was still at the Oliver Bird Hall in Solihull, on 20 May, but advertising of the time stresses that there was to be no buffet, owing to the difficulty of estimating the correct number of prospective visitors, the two preceding luncheons having made a loss for this reason.
Between 1973 and 1976 the Branch was meeting on the third Friday of every month, from 6.30 pm, at Crown Hotel in Corporation Street, Birmingham; the secretary was listed as Mr Follard of West Bromwich.
In 1980, the Rally was held at Womborne Youth and Community Centre, near Wolverhampton, and the branch AGM was also held there on 28 June.
At the Branch Rally on the 29th of March 1987 a set of twelve cards were issued, showing “Branch Personalities”. Some sets can be found with a hand stamp to that effect, but other sets are not stamped and these were presumably sold off after the event.
Then, in 1991, a second set was issued. This is larger in size and in the fact thay there are twenty four cards. It is entitled “Silhouettes of Veteran and Vintage Cars”. Nobody seems to know why this subject was chosen, I thought it might perhaps mark the opening of the Birmingham Motor Museum, but that was not until 1993.
Some time after that the Branch moved to Selly Oak Methodist Church Hall, and meetings lessened to the third Friday of alternate months, though they kept to the 6.30 pm start time.
In the year 2000, they then moved a short distance away to Cofton Hackett Village Hall, where Midlands Branch still meet.