Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

After living in Birmingham for a few years William Foster decided to develop his other major interest – the breeding of Hackney ponies. For use as a stud, he bought Mel Valley, 21 a substantial, two-storeyed house standing in its own grounds, on the Wake Green Road at Moseley. The property, about four miles south-east of Birmingham city centre, appears on an 1883 plan of the area as a large building set back from the road, while there is also a lodge, and much land. He could hardly have chosen anywhere more likely to feed the imagination of his fantasy-prone second son Frank. It was close to the atmospheric Sarehole Mill, so beloved of J.R.R.Tolkien, and overlooked what became Moseley Bog, the site of a reservoir associated with the mill but these days a local nature reserve, partly wooded, with an atmosphere all its own. This writer explored it alone in 2010; and although it is now of limited size, not much more than twenty acres say, it seemed to expand almost to infinity. Archaeological exploration on the site reveals human activity back to the Bronze Age. Tolkien was living only 100 yards or so from Mel Valley when William Foster took it over and knew Moseley Bog as ‘the Dell’, as indeed did Frank Foster. Tolkien would certainly have known Mel Valley after being brought from South Africa and it is surely likely that he drew inspiration from here for the ponies featuring in Lord of the Rings . William Foster became a respected judge of horse flesh, in countries as far flung as the United States and Argentina, and shortly before his death in 1914, aged 61, had supplied a team of ponies to the Vanderbilts in Pennsylvania. Right up to 1915 the Mel Valley string was shown at venues such as Madison Square Garden. William Foster was involved in football, and had been a committeeman with Birmingham F.C. at his death, but his main sporting interest was cricket. Although no record exists of his playing the game, he became a Warwickshire committee member and his sons all played. William became President of Hall Green C.C. and at the end of several seasons raised his own ‘Mel Valley’ team to play them. Oldest son Harry did well for Hall Green, in 1906 taking 60 wickets at less than four apiece. Arthur, for some mysterious reason played once for Warwickshire in 1914, while Edgar played at The Leys School in Cambridge. None however could ever approach second brother Frank, a cricketing genius who had it within him to be one of the greatest ever allrounders. How easy, and boring, would it have been had things run smoothly. 20 The first ‘Foster Brother’ 21 In the 1920s and 1930s, Mel Valley, still occupied by Elizabeth Foster and several servants, was numbered 204 Wake Green Road: the Lodge was 214. After the Second World War, No. 204 became an educational establishment and also an old peoples’ home. There is now no trace of either 204 or 214 but, working from old maps, it would seem that Mel Valley stood a few yards the Sarehole side of the modern St Bernard’s Catholic Primary School. The forbidding presence of Moseley Bog looms and I feel it likely that part of the Mel Valley land now belongs to Moseley Bog and indeed there remain traces of possible stabling on the Bog. Mel Valley first appears in a Birmingham Directory for 1890. Before William Foster moved in about 1898 it was occupied by Mr B.C.Tipper, animal food manufacturer; his son Benjamin Clarke Cecil Tipper played for Worcestershire in 1919. This unexpected cricket connection seems slightly weird.