Redditch is an old market town a dozen miles south of Birmingham and marginally in Worcestershire. It's also a new town, one of the second wave designated in the mid 1960s, and expanded considerably to create a car-friendly constellation of residential nuclei. I very nearly visited 40 years ago today on a canalboat holiday round the West Midlands, just before tackling the long flight at Tardebigge, but got no closer than nipping off the towpath to buy sausages and a newspaper in Alvechurch. Last week I remedied that omission and visited properly, keen to seek out old and new, and therefore feel qualified to say that this unpromising destination does indeed have stuff worth seeing... needles, mosaics and hard rock included. [Visit Redditch][20 photos][no seriously, 20 photos]
10 things worth seeing in Redditch
1) The old town centre
Ye Olde Redditch, such as it still exists, is based around a triangle of roads at the top of the high street. At the centre of Church Green is St Stephens, a Victorian addition, as are the bandstand and Temperance fountain outside. The east side still has a run of buildings that look like Jane Austen characters could come bustling out, one of which is the base for the local weekly newspaper. But as the street runs downhill the architecture swiftly morphs into a redbrick shopping parade culminating with a very 1970s castellar town hall, all of which are exemplary of the optimism which swept away most of the original buildings hereabouts.
2) The John Bonham Memorial
Most provincial towns include a statue to their favourite son, the boy who went up to London and done good. Redditch has nobody like that pre-20th century so a space on Church Green has been going begging and was only filled in 2018 when fans ganged together to commemorate an artistic colossus. Not Charles Dance, though he is the town's only other figure of similar stature, but rock band Led Zeppelin's original drummer John Bonham. He was born in what's now Redditch in 1948, specifically in the village of Headless Cross, and was already banging on upturned pans before starting school. Led Zeppelin grew from the ashes of the Yardbirds in 1968, now with John at the rear, and revolutionised the music scene with some of the biggest albums of all time before John's untimely death in 1980. Never start the day with quadruple vodkas at breakfast is the moral of that tale. I thought his low-slung bronze memorial was a strange shape ("The most outstanding and original drummer of his time"), and only now do I realise I only properly studied the back of it, not him bashing away merrily on the front.
3) Redditch Local History Museum
Redditch has a proper museum facing Church Green, but organised and run by the community rather than by the council. It has the feeling of a shop unit with a lot of information down the walls, there being a lot of information to pass on, with a burgeoning archive stashed at the rear. But it's only open on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and a £2 admission charge applies (although I don't think that's mentioned on the museum's website).
4) The Paolozzi Mosaics
The Kingfisher Shopping Centre is one of the largest covered malls in the country and was opened by Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1976. It's not especially prestigious but neither is it full of lowbrow stores and empty units, suggesting Redditch is still comfortably part of Middle England. If you keep walking round you eventually reach a small square with a cafe in the centre and a ring of 12 brightly coloured mosaics around the upper walls. These were a commission by the acclaimed artist Eduardo Paolozzi, he who also brightened the tube station at Tottenham Court Road, and they're stunning. The theme is the industrial heritage of Redditch but with a technological slant, hence spacecraft and robots as well nods to needle manufacture, all in a vibrant geometrical melange. Those sipping coffee or passing through on their way to Primark don't give them a second glance, because that's familiarity for you, but if you were to make a one-off visit to the town this might just be your highlight.
5) The National Needle Museum
Needles were once critical to many areas of life and somewhere had to make them, and in the UK that place was Redditch. Hence this is the obvious place to find the National Needle Museum which is based in a former scouring mill down by the River Arrow. The Queen even turned up to open it in July 1983, just after she'd officially unveiled Paolozzi's mosaics. The upper floor of Forge Mill is packed with needles of all kinds, many in gloriously proud packaging, from names like Aero, Milward and Abel Morrall. And the range of products is incredible, not just sewing needles but hypodermics, harpoons, fishhooks, knitting needles, hatpins, gramophone needles, bodkins, crochet hooks and darts. The scouring mill is nextdoor where untreated needles were rolled relentlessly until they were shiny, then pierced at the bulbous end by skilled craftsman called pointers who usually ended up dead by the age of 30 with respiratory illness. A separate floor houses temporary exhibitions, currently international quilting, and I left having had my eyes opened to a process I'd never even considered before.
6) Bordesley Abbey
Redditch's other key historical attraction is about 100m away, or at least the Visitor Centre is, which is convenient because you can get a joint ticket for £6.80. Bordesley was a 12th century Cistercian Abbey, the sole landowner in the area at the time, and kept a dozen monks occupied for 400 years until Henry VIII decided to trash the place and sell it off. Exhibits include a quarter of a waterwheel from the very early days, a rare national survivor, and a christening font from the abbey which has survived solely because a local farmer used it as a drinking trough for his chickens. To see the remains of the abbey head out to the watermeadows where a footprint of excavated stonework remains - that's free - then maybe head back for a coffee at the locally-popular cafe.
(If you were originally thinking ha, I bet there's nothing to see in Redditch, I hope you're thinking differently now)
7) Arrow Valley Country Park
When modern Redditch was created the town planners left a broad stripe along the valley of the River Arrow undeveloped. This continues to provide a green corridor from north to south with riverside walks and cycleways linking haymeadows, woodland and former millponds. The chief recreational hub is at Arrow Valley Lake, an artificial creation formed by relandscaping the Blacksoils Brook, which is prettier than it sounds. One circuit is about right for giving a dog a good workout, and the buzz in the waterside cafe suggests that this is an integral part of the experience. Look out for the motorbike sculpture installed last month depicting a Royal Enfield Bullet, the longest running production motorcycle in the world, although these were actually manufactured near the railway station much closer to the town centre.
8) Redditch cloverleaf
Although commonplace in other countries, England has only one cloverleaf road junction and it's in Redditch. It was very deliberately positioned in the centre of the town, where Alvechurch, Warwick, Alcester and Bromsgrove Highways meet, forming the nexus of the new town's dual carriageway network. It's also entirely surrounded by woodland which means it can't be seen on foot, only from a vehicle or from overhead, although I managed to spy the entrance to one outer sliproad from a bridge near the water tower in Headless Cross. Other junctions tend to feature roundabouts, indeed Redditch was the source of the "calendar of dull roundabouts" craze that kicked off in 2003 (although this year's calendar is Roadworks of Redditch, if you're interested).
9) Redditch's streetsigns
I love these, not just the vibrant blue colour but the fact the design's been used consistently since the new town was created. You can spot the oldest signs because their letters are appealingly wonky, as if not quite aligned properly in the workshop.
10) Where Harry Styles was born
Fans of the former One Direction megastar may flock to Holmes Chapel in Cheshire to visit Harry's childhood home but he was actually born in Redditch, specifically in the Alexandra Hospital on the southern edge of town. When I passed the entrance three police officers emerged and attempted to restrain an adolescent who was skulking outside, which was somewhat unnerving. He may have been a reluctant patient but it is possible that Styles mania continues to attract allsorts to Redditch, the surprisingly interesting West Midlands town, if you know where to look.
