Solihull
— — a market town the city grew around without swallowing.
Not only on a wall.
“A town that kept its parish church and its high street while the city pushed up against its edges. St Alphege rises above the older lanes near Touchwood, the spire visible from the Warwick Road approach. Tudor House still stands across from the churchyard. The borough holds the National Exhibition Centre and the airport on its eastern side, and Packwood and Baddesley Clinton in the green to the south. Quiet on a weekday morning. Familiar to anyone who grew up between Birmingham and the Warwickshire fields.
Solihull, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Solihull is a market town and the administrative seat of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, about 9 miles south-east of central Birmingham. The borough sits between the West Midlands conurbation and the Warwickshire countryside, and its population was recorded at around 216,000 at the 2021 census. Birmingham Airport and the National Exhibition Centre lie within the borough's eastern edge, alongside Birmingham International station on the West Coast Main Line. The town itself grew around a 13th-century market charter, with the parish church of St Alphege at its centre and the Touchwood shopping district built around the older lanes in 2001.
St Alphege's Church has stood above the High Street since the late 13th century, with its 168-foot sandstone spire rebuilt in the 15th. Tudor House on the same street dates to around 1500 and still trades as a restaurant. South of the town the National Trust holds two timber-framed houses set in old parkland: Packwood House, with its yew garden of clipped figures said to suggest the Sermon on the Mount, and Baddesley Clinton, a moated manor with priest holes from the Elizabethan period. Both lie within a fifteen-minute drive of the parish church.
The town is easy to reach. Solihull railway station sits on the Chiltern line with direct services to London Marylebone in roughly 90 minutes and to Birmingham Moor Street in about ten. Birmingham Airport, two stops east, handles around 12 million passengers a year and connects to the city by the AirRail Link. Touchwood, the parish church, and Mell Square are all walkable from the station. For the country houses, a car is the simplest route — Packwood and Baddesley Clinton both have National Trust car parks and limited public transport.