Lickey Hills Country Park
| Lickey Hills Country Park | |
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Lickey Hills Country Park, from Bilberry Hill over Rosehill Road and the Birmingham Municipal Golf Course towards Beacon Hill. Bilberry bushes in the foreground.
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| Location | Birmingham, England |
| Coordinates | 52°22′36″N 2°00′37″W / 52.37664°N 2.01024°WCoordinates: 52°22′36″N 2°00′37″W / 52.37664°N 2.01024°W |
| Area | 524 acres (212 ha) |
| Operated by | Birmingham City Council |
| Awards | Green Flag |
| Public transit access | Barnt Green railway station |
| Website | www |
Lickey Hills Country Park is a country park in England. It is 10.3 miles (16.5 kilometres) south west of Birmingham and 24 miles (38.5 kilometres) north east of Worcester. The 524 acres (212 ha) park is situated just south of Rednal and close to Barnt Green. It is half a mile east of Cofton Hackett. It is one of the oldest parks managed by Birmingham City Council.
The park exists in its current form only through the activities and generosity of the early 20th-century philanthropic Birmingham Society for the Preservation of Open Spaces who purchased Rednal Hill and later arranged for Pinfield Wood and Bilberry Hill to be permanently leased on a nominal peppercorn rent. The society included such prominent and public spirited luminaries as T Grosvenor Lee, Ivor Windsor-Clive, 2nd Earl of Plymouth and several elders of the Cadbury family led by George Cadbury and his wife Dame Elizabeth Cadbury. The society gave the original park to the people of Birmingham in 1888, with further tracts being added progressively until 1933. The park has thus been preserved as a free-entry public open space.
The Lickey Hills immediately became popular as a recreation area and attendance numbers exploded between 1924 and 1953 while the tram service connected with the terminus at Rednal. As early as 1919 as many as 20,000 visitors were recorded on a single August Bank Holiday Monday. The current Country Park status was established with the support of the Countryside Commission in 1971 and today the park still hosts over 500,000 visitors a year. It is considered to be one of the most picturesque public spaces of its type in the West Midlands and is Green Flag recognised.
The first evidence of people settling in the Lickey Hills date back to the stone age when a Neolithic hunter lost a flint arrow head on Rednal Hill. The arrow head is leaf-shaped and made of flint and is certainly over 4,000 years old. Additionally a 3,000-year-old flint javelin point was found lying on the surface by an observant Mr W H Laurie when the Lickey's road-widening was taking place in 1925. A flint scraping tool was found in the area near the Earl of Plymouth monument. The artifacts are on display at the Birmingham Museum.
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