Our History
There has been a settlement at Caldmore, barely a mile south of Walsall Town centre, for over 300 years but the suburb we see now became established mainly in the late 1800s and early 20th century and many of the sturdy pre 1919 properties are still in existence. However, by the 1960s many of the properties had fallen into disrepair and a local health survey in 1961 revealed that 70% of the houses in Caldmore were unfit for human habitation. The origins of Caldmore as an organisation date back to 1970 when the Caldmore Residents Action Group (CRAG) was formed out of desperation at the local authority’s failure to respond to the deprivation.
CRAG was funded entirely by subscriptions collected from local residents and the community was kept informed via a residents action sheet known as “the local gossip”, the name we still give to our resident newsletter today. The housing association was formed from seeds sown by CRAG and was incorporated on 12th June 1972 as an organisation to assist the Council in tackling the high levels of deprivation. The Chairman of CRAG was a Mr Bert Blower and his son Barrie Blower became the first employee of the newly formed association, going on to become its Chief Executive up until his retirement in 2002. The first Board of Caldmore Housing association was chaired by Dr Cornwall, the Principle of the West Midlands College of Education and the first two properties were purchased with a loan of just £400.00 from Walsall Council. Our first tenants to be housed were George and Mavis Lane. Regrettably Mavis is no longer with us but George is still a tenant of Caldmore. Melvin Shaw is currently the Chair of our tenant representative panel, Offserve. As a community based organisation we have grown and moved on but we do like to remind ourselves that our origins were rooted in the community and serving those who most need our help remains our top priority.
