Network – What Was Pebble Mill?

Carpenter Road

Photo by Roger Davis, no reproduction without permission

This photograph by cameraman Roger Davis is of the BBC’s Carpenter Road premises in Edgbaston, Birmingham circa 1960s. Carpenter Road housed the administration and production staff who were involved in programmes other than news, before Pebble Mill opened in the early 1970s. The outside broadcast staff were also based here. There was also an early television studio here, before the studio at Gosta Green opened. The building was demolished later on, and there is now a block of flats on the site.

BBC Rules – Little Red Book

This gallery contains 12 photos.

Here are some photos of a brilliant little book (a real product of its time – 1938) that Harvey Brown was given by his first line manager (Alannah Hensler) when he joined the BBC in 1997. A very useful book when addressing important people.

BBC PA issue stopwatch

Former Radio and TV production assistant, Caroline Feldon (now Parsons) was going through some of her old BBC stuff and came across the stopwatch which she used during her Radio 3 and TV gallery days. It still works and as you can see has the official number on the back. Solid and reassuring!

Memories of Broad Street

Photo by Martin Fenton, no reproduction without permission. These audio tapes are from Radio Studio 3 at Pebble Mill.

When I joined the BBC in Broad street as a Studio Manager in 1963 after about 3 months training in London, one of my first experiences was as Spot Effects S.M on The Archers. Tony Shryane -Producer- sat at the mixing desk, controlling the programme levels. There was a Studio Manager playing in Sound effects off 78rpm records and also from from recorded tapes- recorded originally on 5″ full track tapes @ 7.5″/sec. on an EMI Midget battery powered tape machine. These tapes were edited and compiled onto 10.5″ dia.tape reels of which at that time there were about 2 dozen. These were catalogued originally in a box file but later on fullscap sheets in a spring back folder.

Within a few months I moved on from pouring cups of ‘tea’, opening and closing doors etc to become the Gram and tape S.M. Agriculture was as ever becoming more developed and this meant more mechanisation and more recordings required. F.M radio was expanding and quality sound effects were also required to replace some of the original 78 rpm recordings.

Another S.M joined the Archers Team-Peter Belham- and between the two of us we increased the Tape library for the programme vastly ,and were recording in Stereo, looking to the future for not only The Archers but Birmingham Radio Drama output. This library of effects moved to Studio 3 at Pebble Mill, along with a Mini Archive of significant Archers episodes. Before this time Tony Shryane had asked me to take over at the Mixing Desk. Peter, was grams SM but also mixed from time to time but was also Mixing Radio Drama. We tended to swop roles back and forth as needed and I was quite often Grams S.M. when Peter was mixing a Radio Play. On Tony Shryanes retirement I felt it was time to move on from The Archers. Some years after both Peter and I had retired Mark Decker moved the effects library to the Mail Box and began the process of transferring it to C.D before his untimely death from cancer.

John Pierce

The Archers studios – the Mailbox

These photos are from The Archers’ studio at BBC Birmingham. It’s interesting to see how many of the props and sound effects are still the same as at Pebble Mill, e.g. the doorbells and Jill Archer’s aga.