Family touch for Julie's old home
The Black Country childhood home of actress Julie Walters has been turned back into a single house after being converted into flats.
The work at 69 Bishopton Road, Smethwick, has been carried out to meet a demand for larger family housing in the area. Jephson Homes Housing Association, which now owns the property, consulted the star's autobiography to fund out how it used to look.
Regional director Phil Green said: "There is a lot of interest in 69 Bishopton Road and people associate it instantly with Julie Walters.
"We know she is interested in what we've done to the property to bring it back into use by another family. We had no plans of how the house used to be before it was converted so our consultants did refer to Julie Walters' autobiography as a point of reference during work."
Julie, who was last week honoured with her own star in the Birmingham Walk of Stars detailed her childhood in the end-terrace house in her autobiography, That's Another Story. She describes it as a "big, draughty, end-of-terrace house" and says it did not get central heating until 1963 so "climbing the stairs to go to bed at night was often likened to scaling the Eiger".
She detailed how the house was on three storeys and described the layout, including the unusual shaped hallway built when it was an electrical shop so radios could be displayed.
Work on the conversion began in July and was completed last month. A new family has now moved into the four bedroom house.
The property was bought by the housing association in October 1981 and had already been converted into two flats. It is one of several buildings across the region being converted from flats to houses by the association.
