Today’s Friday photo is Pype Hayes Hall, which is a grade II listed mansion house in Pype Hayes park in Erdington. I recently had a family day out to this beautiful park and came across this building which led me to do a bit of digging.
The building is Jacobian in origin and was built circa 1630 by the Sir Hervey Bagot for his son of the same name, who married Dorothy Arden (daughter of Sir Henry Arden). The hall passed down the generations of the Bagot family, who all left their marks. Most notably in the 1820’s Rev Walter Bagot completely remodeled the hall in the Georgian style with a stucco refacing. An additional family wing was also added from the 1850’s. The hall finally left the Bagot family when it was sold to James Rollison, a local manufacturer, who resided there until 1919. In that year the Hall was then sold to the City of Birmingham Corporation for use initially as a convalescent home, then during WW2 it became a 24 hour nursery that offered childcare for mothers working for the war effort. The building continued to be used for social services until Birmingham Council decided to sell the building in 2011. It has only recently been purchased by a local investor (Bromford Mill Properties) who plan to transform the house into 60 bedded hotel, spa and banqueting facility. Over the years due to the many alterations there is little evidence now of the building’s original timber framed structure, but it is rumoured that there is still a secret tunnel that links Pype Hayes Hall to Aston Hall. This was supposedly uncovered during renovation work in the 1950’s but covered up again after!
In regards to the building’s future, I hope that the new owners are sympathetic. It is a shame that they have already applied to demolish some of the listed out buildings even after agreeing on purchase that these would be renovated (this includes the WW2 air raid shelter!). The new owners claim they have to do this to make the main building financially viable. In a similar manner to Great Barr Hall, which I wrote about in a blog last year (view here), it is hard to know what will become of the hall, but it’ll be interesting to see how things pan out.
