'Hidden' City: Fire Office Passage

I have been wanting to write a blog post about Fire Office Passage for ever. It's off New Street if you haven't seen it and signposted very obviously indeed. But bizarrely nobody seems to notice it, and certainly not go up it because it comes across as fairly unsavoury. The illustration is of the actual passage, and it came off t'internet but the source was given as one of those search engines which search flickr - when I went on it I couldn't find the actual source so if it belongs to you please comment on this post or contact me via the contact box.
I'm also afraid I don't really have much that is intelligent to say about Fire Office Passage which hasn't already been said on the Birmingham Conservation Trust's blog:

In searching for inspiration for my next blog, I decided to turn to my own Birmingham ancestry for inspiration.   My fourth Great Grandfather, Enos Edwards was the Chief Engineer for the Birmingham Fire Office working from 1807 until his death in 1862. His son Enos and other members of the family were also firemen and engineers for the company.

The Birmingham Fire Office was first established in March 1805, and in 1808 the company built its stone fronted office in Union Street at the expense of nearly £4000, which also included the engine house, fire-men’s houses, and stables.  The picture below is from Bisset’s directory and shows the regency fire office building in 1808 (1)

My ancestor lived in the fire-men’s quarters which were in Union passage.

By 1839 the Birmingham Fire Office had two engines, one being decorated with wooden battle axes, and iron scroll-work painted in many colours and the other being very plain and drab. William Baddelsky writing in the illustrated weekly journal for iron and steel in 1835, described “if a fire breaks out on premises of the Society of Friends, of which there are a large number in Birmingham, the Drab engine is dispatched to their assistance; but if the goods or chattels of Jews or Gentiles are in jeopardy, the painted engine is brought out.” (2)

During the early days of fire fighting in Birmingham there was no organised municipal fire service like we have today, so people had to buy insurance from the many different insurance companies available of which the Birmingham Fire Office was an early example.  These different insurance companies were represented by agents  and Showell’s Dictionary of Birmingham describes their presence in the city “insurance agents offices are so thick on the ground round Bennet’s Hill and Colmore Row, that it has been seriously suggested the latter thoroughfare should he rechristened and be called Insurance Street. It was an agent who had the assurance to propose the change!”  (3) To this day this area has remained Birmingham’s financial district.

According to William Hutton in his 1835 book The History of Birmingham, the rates of fire insurance varied for properties but ranged from 2 shillings and 6 pence to £100 per annum (3). Once insured with a company a fire mark had to be attached to building as proof of insurance. I actually found a Victorian example of the Birmingham Fire Office mark by chance on a visit to the BMAG’s History Galleries Exhibition, here it is below:

In the early history of fire fighting it was sometimes the case that when a fire broke out several insurance fire brigades would attend the fire, but if the building was not insured or had a rival fire-mark the brigade would return to base, or even try to sabotage the rival brigade.  This often led to persons insuring their property with more than one company to ensure the fire would be put out.

On investigating the sites in present day Birmingham most of the Georgian and Regency buildings have long since disappeared and the only evidence of the old fire office, and any insurance and agent’s buildings now lies just off New Street, where the following sign can be seen.

This passage would have linked up to Colmore Row and Bennet’s Hill the areas described in Showell’s dictionary, so perhaps the aforementioned agent did sort of get his way after all on the renaming of street sign.

My ancestor Enos Edwards attended many Birmingham fires throughout his career and devoted his life to fire fighting in Birmingham. In his obituary in 1862 he was called the “Braidwood of Birmingham” so called after James Braidwood the founder of the world’s first Municipal fire service (in Edinburgh) and first director of the London Fire Engine Establishment.  It is nice to know one of my ancestors played an important role in Birmingham’s history.

Sources:

(1)   Image from: A Catalogue of Commerce and Art: Bisset’s Magnificent Guide for Birmingham, 1808 [From Birmingham Central Library]

(2)   Illustrated weekly journal for iron and steel 1835

(3)   Hutton, W. (1835). A history of Birmingham, edt by Guest, J.  Birmingham.  6^th Edition.

(4)   Harman, T. and Showell, W. (2004)Showell’s Dictionary of Birmingham. A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically Source

 I'm afraid that Fire Office Passage is one of the places which has completely evaded the Hound's attempts to get a glimpse of its life. I have thumbed through Kelly's and found no indication that any individual or business gave their address as Fire Office Passage through the twentieth century, or at the end of the nineteenth century, so sadly this is going to have to be a post where the scanty information is taken (but credited) from elsewhere.
I would surmise a few things though. It is apparent that there wasn't only *one* fire office passage in Birmingham, and while there may have been one or several fire insurance offices based in this passage, they don't seem to have left very much trace of themselves. That said, it has always seemed apparent to me that at one time people would have lived in Fire Office Passage. If you look closely you can see a Georgian house buried in the middle of the rest of the building there, so I would surmise that there were once others and the passage would have been a centre of habitation and business.
I'm hoping still that posting this here will cause the universe to draw other information about old life in the passage to my attention...
Addendum - if anyone can explain why the pictures on the blog post I've lifted and pasted here aren't working, I'd be very grateful.

Hidden City: Anchor Exchange

The video which illustrates this post is now rather dated, since it shows the Central Library (sob...I can't wait for the utterly pedestrian building for which the library was demolished to be finished so that I can be rude about it) and that ridiculous Forward statue which is missed by no-one.
Naturally I haven't been inside Anchor Exchange. Nobody has - it's sealed up tighter than a fundamentalist virgin in a prison full of sexually-frustrated men. I have a feeling it looks different now - it was restored in 2010, as it still carries essential cablage. Naturally I would love to get in but it's not happening: even on the urbex forums it's on the list of places not even worth trying.

Hidden City: Birmingham Street Fighting School

The warren of back streets between Bristol Street and Hurst Street in Birmingham city centre hold a hidden past. Nowadays they are in the area known as Southside. Of course you may want to call it the Chinese Quarter, or possibly the Gay Village, or the Gay Chinese Side, or whatever. The present conflicted name indicates a conflicted history, and in fact amongst other things it is home to the famous 'Rentboys' Corner' on Kent Street, where the baths used to stand, which the council did nothing to preserve from demolition despite being locally listed. The fact that there was a washing baths there indicates that the area of Wrentham, (Lower) Essex, Kent, and Gooch Streets were at one time a residential area and sure enough my First World War-era map of the area shows a warren of back-to-back courts and some industrial buildings.
By the time of the Second World War the area was in a parlous state. In true Brum fashion my source for this post (credit below) is unsure whether the inhabitants were emptied out in a 1930s redevelopment scheme which halted, or whether the houses were destroyed by bombing, but the illustrations I have found show windowless houses with no inhabitants, allowing the area to be used for manouevres by the GHQ Town Fighting Wing, which was the Home Guard's Street Fighting School. Far from the bumbling old men suggested by Dads Army, they were middle-aged men, who were trained very seriously to defend the country in case of invasion, and it was here in Birmingham it happened.
The school was based at the disused Unitarian Old Meeting church at 130 Bristol Street, and the students were housed at the Institute for the Blind on Carpenter Road in Edgbaston (the equipment list indicates they had to take their own mirrors). The courses in street fighting in case of invasion continued throughout the Second World War and culminated in a major exercise, the 'Battle of Birmingham' in 1944.
It is of course a matter of Brummie pride that not only was the area used to train the Home Guard, but that nothing is recognisable in the area from the 1940s photos I have found. In fact, Wrentham Street is still waiting for revelopment...
Credit: I am completely indebted to staffshomeguard.co.uk for the information and also the pictures.

Time Travel: Swallow Street

There was me thinking that this would be a relatively simple time travel post, and you wouldn't believe the difficulty I have had getting to the bottom of this historical mystery. I have even had to resort to a hand job in the library to get to the bottom of Swallow Street - but enough with the innuendo, on with the mystery. My interest was first aroused by Brunel Street, which runs at an angle between Navigation Street and Suffolk Street Queensway; you won't discover a time travel post about that one because I've discovered that it is actually a relatively new street which appeared while Manzoni's boys were joyously going round the city centre with a bulldozer. And what started my interest in Brunel Street was that I remember it from trips to the city centre with my parents. I remember going to Allegro Music and also I remember Gino's, which I thought terribly sophisticated at the time. Anyway, I hadn't noticed then that Brunel Street intersects with a street called Swallow Street which runs between Suffolk Street Queensway and Hill Street. It is not an unsubstantial street by any means; in fact I think I had always assumed that it was one of those empty patches of land left over in the post-war rebuilding of the city, but it is only recently that I noticed it has a proper street name.
Swallow Street on the surface seemed to have gone back a long time without leaving any trace of itself, for some reason. It appears on the 1913 Ordnance Survey map of the city centre, where the characteristic pictures of buildings show that there were some at each end, but it didn't look like one of those tiny passages of higgledy-piggledy slums which formerly marked the city centre, so it must have left some trace of itself. First I looked on the internet. There was no history whatsoever. Nothing. Not even someone whose family emigrated to Nova Scotia (or wherever) in 1904 and whose great great grandmother was born above above a nailmaker's in Swallow Street. Literally the only historical reference was the picture from the 1960s which illustrates this post, and which made me think that really there should have been some history for the street, since it looked as if businesses were operated from the houses.
I turned to my 1967-68 Kelly's Directory and found only two entries for Swallow Street:
Here is entrance to Queen's College ch[a]mbers
Stanford & Mann Ltd. st[a]t[io]n[e]rs
I didn't see this almost complete lack of information as discouraging. I joined up the pieces by assuming that everything in the road except the stationers and Queen's College Chambers had been demolished in between the photo being taken and my Kelly's being published. Of course Queen's College Chambers is still there although its address is given as Paradise Street and it is prestigious apartments; it started off as a medical school in 1828 and was one of the colleges which made up the University of Birmingham. The present theological college called the Queen's Foundation was near there too.
I naively thought that it would be simple to find out the historical residents of Swallow Street. I naively thought that some trace of them would have been left in previous Kelly's Directories. I was naturally surprised on arbitrarily choosing the 1930 one in the library to find there was no record of Swallow Street at all. Nothing. It was bizarre that the street was there on the map of 1913, had houses standing in the early 1960s, apparently inhabited by at least one business in 1968 and yet had left no trace in Kelly's at all. I really began to think that I had imagined the street's existence as I went through successive Kelly's and still found absolutely nothing.
The earliest reference in a Kelly's Directory I could find was in 1962, where there were at least a couple of businesses:
12 O'Higgins and Secondini, tailors.
12 Docker F. dance studio
28 Cutler Bob Ltd. turf comm[i]ss[io]n[ing] ag[en]ts
All three of these businesses had vanished in the succeeding six years. There was no indication what was happening at numbers 13 - 27. Swallow Street looked as if it was determined to retain its mystery.
Then I started going through books of the city centre's history by hand (the Hound is not easily deflected when he wants to get to the bottom of a mystery), and finally found the reason for Swallow Street's elusiveness. The simple fact was that nobody noticed it or was bothered about it:
'Some of Birmingham's byways were built as access roads and had nothing more important in them than the back doors of buildings whose frontages were on more prestigious avenues. SWALLOW STREET first appears on Hanson's map of Birmingham in 1778, having been cut around 1750. It linked Hill Street with Suffolk Street and runs parallel to and to the north of Navigation Street, which it slightly pre-dates. The building of the cuttings into New Street Station divided Swallow Street in half, and steam and smoke can be seen rising [referencing the black and white picture of the street] above the bridge parapet on this bitterly cold Friday, 1 February 1963, as a train passes through the last, short, 20-yard cutting before the railway line disappears into the tunnel built by the London & North Western Railway (LNWR) and out beyond Monument Lane locomotive shed into the Black Country. Opposite the bridge, beyond the covered timber yard on the left and the elderly gentleman struggling along the snow-covered footpath, is Summer Street, which was on the same line as the present-day Brunel Street. On the right, behind the Morris LD 1-ton van, are buildings that had originally been the offices of the Inland Revenue, while Scruton's the tailor's, founded in 1931, occupies part of the rear of Queen's College Chambers. A 10hp Ford Prefect E493A of about 1952, one of Ford's last 'sit-up-and-beg' motors, which was phased out during the following year, is parked on the left. The winter of 1962-63 was particularly bad, and the snow lay from the end of December until early March. Behind the car is the West End Ballroom on the corner of Suffolk Street and Holliday Street, while coming out of Holliday Street is a Corporation Daimler CVD6 double-decker fitted with a locally-manufactured Metro-Cammell body, leaving its city terminus on the 95 service to Ladywood.' (David Harvey: Birmingham Past and Present, the City Centre Volume 1, 2002, p.16, which is also the source for the black and white picture of Swallow Street, taken facing the other way from the colour picture.)
So, mystery solved. The simple reason Swallow Street didn't appear in the directories was that nothing happened there which would have made an appearance. If it had it would have been a collection of rear entrances. Of course the situation may well have been different before the advent of the railway, but Swallow Street by the twentieth century was already a relic of a vanished past.
There remained one mystery. The colour picture shows the back of the Golden Eagle public house (in fact the 1913 map shows a P.H. on that site). The address of the Golden Eagle was actually in Hill Street, and it turns out that in the twentieth century it was an art deco 1930s rebuilding of whatever was there before. It was one of the buildings over which the conservationists tussled with the demolitionists and the demolitionists won (I believe in the 1980s) because there were apparently unrepairable structural faults with it. It turns out that the Golden Eagle was a pub known for its music and many famous bands of the time played there, but that isn't really a part of Swallow Street. Certainly, looking at the remaining pictures it looks as if it would have been a sexy art deco building, which it is a great pity is lost.

Update 21/2/23 Very very gratified that some twat has flagged this post to Blogger as containing adult content. I hope they're really offended.

Image sources include http://www.jlb2011.co.uk/iob/slides03/index.htm and one I didn't make a note of. Sorry.

Hidden City: Castle Street B4

‘Look up’ is the usual advice given if you are interested in finding out the history of a built environment. Granted, digging will usually provide much evidence, but looking up provides immediate evidence as to how buildings and so on have changed over the years. When shops are refurbished, it is naturally much cheaper just to put a new front on them than to rebuild the whole things, and the upstairs stories can provide much evidence. The whole building may not be leased to the same person, and the different floors can show evidence of different current uses, and even previous uses in the form of ghost signs. This practice of looking up can be supplemented in a place like Birmingham, which has had its share of rebuilding and change over the years, by looking at some remnants at ground level, including the many stubs of former streets which have been left hanging by rebuilding. The tell-tale sign of these is often that there will still be a street name, but it may not seem to go anywhere.
The classic example is Castle Street, which is next to Marks and Spencers in the High Street, and cannot really be described as a street in any meaningful sense of the word. This has been raising my historic suspicions for some time, but only this week did I get to the library to investigate. I also read on the internet that it was an actually street right up to the 1990s – I don’t remember it as such myself, and imagine that it must have been one of those passages we take for granted, and also that Castle Street’s demise was caused by the linking of Marks and Spencers to the Pavilions . The giveaway signs that it must have been a recent thoroughfare are the street sign showing the postcode and the sign advertising the salon, which surely nobody would put up in a dead end like that, and which must have been put up in 1995 at the earliest, when 021 area codes changed to 0121.
First stop as always is maps, and I discover that Castle Street is clearly shown as a street in the 1979 A to Z. In fact it is shown as a street as far back as the 1780s, when it must have been a relatively more important thoroughfare in the pre-industrial revolution town. The map which illustrates this post is the 1912 ordnance survey, which shows how Castle Street was a warren of entries and presumably tiny, higgledy-piggledy buildings, before the post-war rebuilding of the city.
I see that one of the buildings is called a hotel, and have read rumours on the internet of there being a pub in that street, so that may be it. To find what these buildings actually were and give a flavour of what life in Castle Street was actually like, the old faithful Kelly’s Directory was my next stop. The latest I have access to is the 1973/4 one, and unfortunately wasn’t that helpful in terms of Castle Street, showing only the Birmingham Co-Operative Society Ltd at no 10.
The 1916 Kelly’s Directory, therefore only a few years after the map shown here, was much more helpful. It gives the location of the street as 42 High st. to Moor street. I will give the businesses occupying the street in full, because they are redolent of a different age:
4 Woolley Tomas F. Manchester warehouseman
5, 6 & 7 Goodman John & Sons, printers
8 Sumner’s “Ty-phoo Tea” Limited, tea specialists
9 & 10 Bromley W. R. & Co. provision merchants
15 Shaw Harry, dining rooms
16 Broberg Soph, prov[i]s[io]n mer[chant]
18 Booth Frank, shopkeeper
19 McCullagh George B. provision merchant
20 Laming W. C. & Co. provision merchants
21A, Eagles & Co. printers
………..here is Moor st………..
Gordon & Lowe, shop fitters
21 Tidmarsh Ambrose, provision merchant
24 Watson & Ball Limited, paper merchants
………..here is High st…………

Once again, I am struck by how this list speaks of a different age. In our retail habits, for example. All those tiny provision merchants under the name of their owners rather than large chains with no individual names at all. Presumably going out shopping in Castle Street meant visiting several little shops, which must have stocked different things. The old photograph shows the Typhoo tea factory when it was in Castle Street, and since it moved well before 1912 the Typhoo name must have been kept for the tea merchants as the single example of branding here. And this list also a different age in terms of the names above. The most foreign-sounding name is Scottish, indicating how different the population of Birmingham was before the multiculturalism heralded by later immigration.
Well before all of this happened, I see that a murder took place at the Golden Elephant pub (or inn) in Castle Street, in April 1888, committed by the landlord’s son:
' Widower [Nathaniel ] Daniels, a printer, was in the habit of visiting Emma Hastings, the daughter of a Birmingham publican with whom he was having an on-off relationship. At closing time on 14th April he called at the back door of the pub, and after kissing her he shot her twice with a revolver. One bullet hit her in the chest, the other blew her brains out. His defence of insanity failed. Sentence of death was carried out in Birmingham on the 28th August 1888.  Daniels was thirty four at the time of the execution.' ( http://www.britishexecutions.co.uk/execution-content.php?key=1361)
So by looking round a corner, as opposed to looking up, the history of this corner of the city has been revealed.
Oh, Inexplicable Device will be disappointed that this post is not about music, but the music I grew up with really is genuinely too embarrassing to post about in any great detail…
Picture credit: http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?40423-Some-great-men-and-women-of-Birmingham/page16

Hidden City: Birmingham History in Street Names

So often the history of a place is just below the surface, even in a place notorious for recreating itself, like Birmingham. This is shown particularly by street names, and I have selected some Birmingham street names which often betray an unexpected history. Unless otherwise stated my source is always Birmingham Street Names, compiled by Joseph McKenna. Birmingham Public Libraries, Birmingham, 1986.

Carr’s Lane. This name is said to be a corruption of ‘Goddes Carte Lane’. The lane is supposed to have contained a barn which housed the mobile stage whereon medieval mystery plays were performed. However there are no known references to any mystery plays or pageants having been performed in the town, as at Coventry or Chester. All we can be sure of is that Carr’s Lane was once someone’s cart lane.

Cherry Street. Named after the cherry orchard which it crossed, one of three in 18^th century Birmingham, which extended from High Street to Temple Row. Originally a pathway across the orchard, it was widened, and appears as Cherry Street on Samuel Bradford’s Plan of Birmingham for 1750.

Congreve Street. This street takes its name from Prior’s Conygree, the rabbit warren belonging to the Priory. The lane which bordered the western side of the former Prior lands was developed in the mid 18^th century. Originally called Friday Street, it was renamed about 1795.

Fire Office Passage. Originated as a party road, and it was here that the engines belonging to the old Birmingham Fire Office were housed.

Holloway Head showing my current favourite derelict building,
currently in the process of being demolished.

Holloway Head. The original road to Worcester, worn down by the heavy traffic until it became a hollow way. Head is another word for summit or hill. The most prominent feature of Holloway Head throughout the 18^th and 19^th centuries was a brick-built tower windmill, commemorated today by Windmill Street.

Ladywell Walk. This street links Pershore Street and Hurst Street; its name is an abbreviation of Our Lady’s Well Walk. The name originated prior to the Reformation. Water from the well or spring helped to fill the moat around the Parsonage.

 Livery Street. Cut across the Colmore estate, it takes its name from Swann’s Riding Academy. This riding school, built prior to 1787, stood near the corner with Cornwall Street.

Needless Alley. A corruption of Needlers’ Alley, being a place where needlemakers worked. It dates from the early 18^th century.

Newhall Street. This follows the former tree-lined driveway up to New Hall, the home of the Colmore family. The house, built during the reign of James I, stood at the junction of the present Newhall and Great Charles streets. It was demolished in 1787.

Sherlock Street. Named after Dr Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of Bangor, and later Bishop of London, who owned considerable land in Birmingham. It was cut in the early 1830s.

Steelhouse Lane. Originally called Prior’s Conygree Lane (the lane leading to the Prior’s rabbit warren) and later Whitehall (undoubtedly a London import), the present name comes from Kettle’s Steelhouses. Erected at the end of the 17^th century for converting iron into steel, they were situated near Newton Street, and were worked until about 1797.

Temple Row/Street/Alley. All take their name from an old brick summer arbour known as ‘the Temple’. These streets came into being in 1715. Temple Row was at one time mischievously known as Tory Row, reflecting the opinions of its residents. Temple Passage has two entrances, one at the top, and one at the bottom of Temple Street. The passage which runs parallel to Temple Street was cut about 1875.

Image credits: Unless otherwise credited below, the pictures are either my own or ones which I have saved from the internet over the years and failed to record the source. As usual, just let me know if I’ve run off with your copyright.

Spirit of Place: A Moat in Birmingham?

Many of the bus routes from the south of the city decant on Moat Lane by St Martin's church, the perfect stop if you're going to the various markets. The name may seem strange, since Brum isn't the obvious place to find a moat, but of course it refers to the moat of the original manor house of the de Bermingham family, & true to form this has provided me with one of those little puzzles which then fall together nicely.

I love the modern slang use of manor to indicate your patch or area where you hold authority, a use it is given by both police & criminals, & ironically very close to the original meaning of the word. The site of the manor is variously given as on the current wholesale markets site or the Moat Lane car park site. The first picture shows the manor with its moat on the 1731 map of the city (assuming the pictures come out in order). The strange thing was that I couldn't find a picture of the manor anywhere online, & eventually found one in the book referenced below.

The manor was demolished & the moat filled in in 1815, & the then Smithfield market was built on the site. The succeeding pictures are two views of Moat Lane looking increasingly recognisable as today's view, & of a commemorative plaque on the previous fish market. Next comes a scanned newspaper cutting of the cleared site in 1973, in preparation for the building of the wholesale market. I have read that stones were removed from the site to Weoley Castle, which were thought either to be from the manor itself or the retaining wall of the moat, but no archaeological investigation was done. Finally, a picture of the market presently on the site, itself mooted for redevelopment in the near future.

(Picture credits: http://mydigbeth.co.uk/historic-digbeth/

http://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=27596

Simon Buteux: Beneath the Bull Ring. Brewin Books, Studley, 2003.)

Hidden City: Underground Tunnel in Stirchley

Picture credit: via http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/78817-GKN-Stirchley-Tunnels-Birmingham-March-2013
I'm liking living - temporarily - in the Stirchley area of the city. It's a very Birmingham place, by which I mean it has the characteristic mix of all sorts of people, & doesn't show all its facets on a superficial glance. Driving through, you merely see another depressed mixed-industrial & residential area.
It is, however, one of the urban exploration centres of the city. Until restoration started the disused baths was a great favourite & there are several disused factories. I didn't know that the mighty GKN had a works here, & particularly didn't know there is a tunnel under the road! Of course I haven't been in: the former car breakers mentioned in the page above is sealed up closer than a straight man's y-fronts. Nonetheless I had to 'reblog' it here as a facet of the hidden city, a hidden city I just keep on discovering!

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Hidden City: Curzon Street Station & Cat

To Curzon Street Station today, on one of the incredibly rare occasions when it is open to the public. It is actually well-known as a landmark, seen from the train as you approach from the Coventry side of the city, a rare glimpse of loveliness for years & years among the abomination of desolation that Eastside used to be. It was Birmingham's original railway station, opened in 1838, & remained so until New Street opened, so that the posh people coming for the attractions of New Street didn't have to see the slums of Park Street. It was designed by John Hardwicke, who also designed the now-demolished Euston arch in London, & is a seriously sexy building. I have been gagging to get a glimpse of the inside for literally decades.
This is a blog primarily about witchcraft, so it can only be expected that my slant on things is often going to be somewhat...unusual. I won't hold back, therefore, from going straight into the weird shit about Birmingham's railway stations. There is an irony about the Victorians moving the main station to New Street. I will grant you that the Park Street area of the city can be a real challenge, in energy terms, as it were. Even the slightest hint of psychic ability allows one to pick up on the resonances of the teeming slum that that side of the city once was. Personally I don't feel this to be related to the grave yard, I feel it is related to the long history of chaotic living & conflict that that area would have known. What you *see* therefore as you come into the city, is almost a battle ground. For a psychic, the irony is that the atmosphere of what is now called Eastside is not half as bad as that of New Street Station. I feel one of the reasons people love to hate Birmingham is what they land up in at New Street is a literal cesspit. Even cowans pick this up: New Street is notorious both for suicides & its hauntings (I have resisted writing an actual spirit of place post about New Street, but see for example http://blogs.sundaymercury.net/haunted/2008/12/ghost-trains-and-haunted-railw.html and http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/birmingham-new-street-station-haunting-179968).
Anyway the result of opening Curzon Street station for an exhibition of pictures of normally-unseen places in the city (ten till three daily, this week only) was a huge crowd of people with cameras. Obviously I'm not the only one who's been gagging to get in there for years. The actual building is all I was hoping it would be, in fact better. It is a seriously sexy building, whose predominating atmosphere is of dignity & solidity. It also isn't half as wrecked inside as I thought it would be: it is certainly in better nick than Moseley Road Baths, also 'looked after' by the council.
One of the reasons people were so snap-happy was that, while the pictures actually featured in some supplements in the Birmingham Post - & may therefore have been missed - the places were in reality a mixture of places you have *some* hope of seeing (such as Perrott's Folly) & places that you actually have no realistic hope of seeing in the near future or ever. These would include the inside of the Grand Hotel (been there, actually I've been asked politely to leave the bar, but it doesn't look like that's reopening any time soon), New Street Station signal box, the famous underground telephone exchange, the ballroom (didn't know about that) at Aston fire station, Steelhouse Lane custody suite (no, I have *never* been there), & the actual Big Brum bells (in the tower of the council house). And all this in a gorgeous building that is *almost* never open to the public. There are a few more sights that I have passively viewed on urban exploration sites, such as the bank on Broad Street - it's been done, it's been done to death. It's open sometimes for things, anyway, & looks...well, the way you'd expect a bank to look behind the scenes. The majority of these places I personally have at least seen pictures of, so I think the main point of the exhibition is to get into the station in person. In fact if you missed them the pictures are on the website related to this exhibition: http://www.hidden-spaces.co.uk/ .
Now you wouldn't know it was me if I didn't somehow turn the sanest of subjects weird, so I have to bring in the Curzon Street cat, surely a hero of this story. I was hoping to meet the subject of such a genuinely old magical practice, but he or she didn't make an appearance & anyway I feel probably would be a terminally pissed off dead cat. Don't try this at home, kids: this is a genuinely old magical practice that you won't find in Silver Ravenwolf or Scott Cunningham. It appears here as an antidote to the naffness of much modern paganism (I was going to write a whole post about the said naffness, timed carefully to coincide with the solstice junket to Stonehenge, but felt I would come across as snarky even by my standards. & rather post about something that interests *me*) & as a reminder that magic, indeed life itself, comes down to blood & bone. Our encounter with that life is what enables us to turn one thing into another.
'Birmingham's most bizarre Victorian relic is on track for a purr-fect journey to immortality.
'A mummified cat – buried alive under the floorboards of Birmingham's Curzon Street train station in 1838 – could have pride of place in the new station to be built in the city as part of the controversial HS2 high-speed rail network.
'The Birmingham terminus – initially linking to London but later to other major cities – will be on the site of the old station.
'And the cat and other curios from Curzon Street could be included in a sale by Birmingham City Council, which owns the site, to the company behind HS2.
'It is believed that the cat was originally placed in the station as part of a gruesome Victorian tradition to bring the building, and its future staff, good luck.
'The custom required a live cat to be placed under the last floorboard, or the final brick in a wall.
'The cat would naturally die, either from lack of oxygen, starvation or thirst – or all three – so the 'lucky omen' was far from lucky for the victim.
'The standard of workmanship in the Victorian era was so high that the floorboard void, or the bricked-in cavity, was airtight.
'So instead of decaying, the corpse mummified.
'The feline remains – and other artefacts – were unearthed by builders carrying out major construction work on Curzon Street Station in the 1980s.
'It was decided to retain the curios and place them in glass-fronted display cabinets set into the walls of the building.
'The mummified cat was a quirky – but little-known – attraction at the former station when it served as offices for several training organisations.
'Birmingham City Council has owned the freehold of Curzon Street station since 1980 and it has been unoccupied since 2001, although a few art exhibitions have been staged there in between.
'The cat, which never appears to have been given a name, was removed for safekeeping from Curzon Street by the city council and it is now in safe storage.' (http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/curzon-street-cat-rise-up-4703773)
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Hidden City: Erdington Abbey

Up to now, most of the Hidden City posts have been based on the city centre, but since I went to Erdington today to do the charity shops, I've been inspired to venture further afield. Just to start with a definition, this is how wikipedia defines the subject of this post:
'Monasticism (from Greek μοναχός, monachos, derived from μόνος, monos, "alone") or monkhood is a religious way of life in which one renounces worldly pursuits to devote oneself fully to spiritual work. Monastic life plays an important role in many Christian churches, especially in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Similar forms of religious life also exist in other faiths, most notably in Buddhism, but also in Hinduism and Jainism, although the expressions differ considerably.' (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monasticism)
Perhaps because of the history the Reformation took in Britain, & the history of RC & Anglican monasteries being founded in country places since then - perhaps Buckfast Abbey is the best-known example - we don't tend to think of a monastic presence in our cities, except as a relic of the past: Westminster Abbey for example. Despite this there has been a monastic presence in Birmingham, although not quite within living memory: in addition to the pre-Reformation Augustinian priory of Birmingham that I posted about before, there is a Catholic church in Erdington known popularly as 'the Abbey', & the reason for that is that up until 1922 there was a living monastery of Benedictine monks in Birmingham. No, seriously.
The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909's article on the abbey reads thusly:
'Erdington Abbey, situated in a suburb of Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, belongs to the Benedictine congregation of St. Martin of Beuron, Germany, and is dedicated to St. Thomas of Canterbury. Driven from Germany by the Falk laws four of these exiled monks went to Erdington at the request of Bishop Ullathorne, O.S.B., and of the Rev. Daniel Haigh, M.A., a convert Anglican clergyman who gave them the splendid Gothic church which he had built and embellished out of his own private fortune, as a thank-offering to Almighty God for the gift of the true Faith. Father Haigh's modest presbytery was the first monastery, and here Dom Placid Walter, Arch-Abbot of the Beuron Congregation, Dom Hildebrand de Hempstine, later Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Order, Dom Leo Linse, afterwards Abbot of Fort Augustus in Scotland, Dom Leodgar Stocker, and a lay brother took up their abode in October, 1876. Dom Placid was the first prior. Two years later, Dom Hildebrand succeeded Dom Placid, and at once set about building a monastery that would accommodate a community large enough to chant the Divine Office in choir. It was finished in 1880, when the number of monks was increased to eleven with three lay brothers.
'Meanwhile Father Haigh had found his last resting-place in the Blessed Sacrament chapel, so the untenanted presbytery was converted into a Catholic grammar school, the first of its kind in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, with Dom Wilfrid Wallace, an English priest who had lately joined the community, as head master. Dom Leo Linse became prior in 1882, and was succeeded in 1886 by Dom Boniface Wolff, who was followed, in turn, by Dom Silvester Schlecht in 1895. On the feast of the Assumption, 1896, the priory was transformed into an abbey by a Brief of Leo XIII, though three years elapsed before it received an abbot. These were years of spiritual and material development. A novitiate was opened and a school for oblates, several members were added to the community, and a large addition made to the monastic buildings. These comprised the abbot's apartments and chapel, rooms for guests, entrance hall, parlours, novitiate, and clericate. They were completed and blessed in 1898. In July, 1899, Dom Ansgar Höckelmann was appointed its first abbot, and he was blessed in the abbey church on 3 Sept., by Bishop Ilsley of Birmingham. Since then a spacious refectory and library have been built, and the community continues to grow.' (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05517c.htm)
The Tablet had this to say in 1898, quoting an article in the Birmingham Weekly Post:
'The Benedictines who accepted the refuge offered them at Erdington were first lodged in the two humble cottages at the roadside, which formed the presbytery. The first Prior was the Right Rev. Dom Placid Walter, now Arch-Abbot of Beuron. From 1879 to 1881 the Prior was Dom Hildebrand de Hemp tinne, now Abbot Primate of the whole Order cf St. Bened,ct, and the first to bear that designation. It was from his designs that the first part of the present monastery begun in 1879 was erected. The present Prior is the Very Rev. Silvester Schlecht. The recent extension—carried out a cost of about £7,000, under the direction of Mr. Haigh, of Leicester, nephew of the founder —has made the monastery a very imposing building. The block nearest the village is the most striking feature. It forms a tower, and is carried to a height of 70 feet. In this are the apartments and a private chapel of the abbot, a novitiate (for the novices) and other rooms. Internally the building justifies its outward aspect. It has a fine entrance hall, with parlours for the reception of visitors. The cloister has been extended along the whole length of the new building at the rear. Recent purchases have bought the area of the abbey property to 14 acres, so that when the leases fall in the whole plot between the road and the railway, from the little wooded hill on the Sutton side to Station-road—with the exception of the Cross Keys Inn, near the corner, and one or two small plots—will be in the possession of the community. Plantations are being made which in time will hide the railway. Though their situation at Erdington cannot compare for picturesqueness and retirement with the homes of their brethren at Beuron, in the valley of the Danube, or at Maredsous, in Belgium, the monks, considering the humble beginning of their community, have already a goodly heritage. But they are looking forward to greater things. They hope to largely increase their numbers, and talk not only of extending the monastery, but of enlarging the church, or, rather of building in addition to it a great abbey church. Much might be written, if that were our purpose,about the beautiful church. Built of red sandstone which has weathered to a tender gray, symmetrical though not formal in its proportions, it has always formed one of the most Charming points in the landscape. Designed in the style called geometrical decorated, which flourished in the early part of the fourteenth century, it is one of the best examples of the Gothic revival. Its tower and steeple picturesquely broken by traceried openings, rise to a height of 117 feet, which is also the exterior length of the church. The south-west porch formerly served as the principal entrance, though it is now cut off from the road by the monastery buildings. It remains, however, an architectural gem, with its fine proportions, its small turret for the sacring bell, and its statue of St. Thomas a Becket and other carvings. The church, outside and inside, speaks eloquently of the devotion of its founder, and of the zeal which his example called forth.' (http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/24th-december-1898/25/the-return-of-the-monks-the-benedictines-at-erding)
This is how The Tablet described the demise of the monastery, in 1922:
'FROM ERDINGTON TO WEINGARTEN.
'NEW HOME OF THE ERDINGTON MONKS.
'Many a diocese and vicariate apostolic the world over, many an abbey and other religious institution, has suffered alteration or destruction during or after the Great War, which has now led to the closing of Erdington Abbey in England, and to the emigration of its Benedictine community. Realizing that there Was no prospect for a steady development of the community, the Abbot cast about for a more prosperous opening, and hearing there was a call from the people of Wuerttemberg for Beuronese monks to revive monastic life in the great abbey of Weingarten, some sixteen miles from Lake Constance, the Abbot recognized this as the call of God. Accordingly on March 13, 1922, the Fathers sang their last Mass at Erdington Abbey in honour of St. Gregory, Apostle of England, and then transferred the abbey and the parish, where they had laboured for two generations, to the Redemptorist Fathers of the English province. On the same day negotiations were concluded with the Government officials of Stuttgart, capital of Wuerttemberg, and the historic Abbey of Weingarten was placed at the monks' disposal.' (http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/10th-june-1922/28/from-erdington-to-weingarten)
A fuller exposition of the history can be found on the Ampleforth Abbey library website: http://www.monlib.org.uk/papers/ebch/2001hodgetts.pdf
Of course monasticism is not limited to Christians & there is presently a Buddhist monastic presence in the city: http://www.bbvt.org.uk/Resident_Monks.asp
Oh, the pictures are of Dom Leo Linse, one of the original monks, when he was subsequently Abbot of Fort Augustus Abbey, & an unfortunately small picture of the community, which I found on the parish website of St Nicholas Boldmere.
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Hidden City: Moseley Road Baths

Yesterday I went to the Friends of Moseley Road Baths open day. You may be asking what this has to do with hidden city when the baths are this whacking great Edwardian edifice for all to see on the Moseley Road, but the point of the open day was that the great unwashed (at least unwashed since the washing baths closed as late as 2004) got to see parts that are not normally open. I have been wanting to see the things here literally forever and now have - my one sorrow is I never went there for an actual bath before the washing baths closed. The quoted text in this post is from the handout they gave us yesterday and their website has more information and the story of their campaign. I was pleasantly surprised to find the building was less f*cked than I thought it would be inside: I gather some parts are more or less derelict but the bits we could see yesterday were in better nick than I expected by the state of it outside. The baths are also a target to lead thieves, who also knock tiles off, and anyone who thinks it might be fun to get up on the roof.

Evidence of neglect

Moseley Road Baths was designed by William Hale and Son, built by W.J. Webb & opened on October 30th 1907. The large City Coat of Arms & Supporters was by Benjamin Creswick & is believed to be the largest in Birmingham. The frontage is mainly red brick & terracotta. Note the three entrances: Men's First Class, Men's Second Class & Women's. Behind the first floor windows is the former staff flat, whilst also visible are the two decorative terra cotta octagonal ventilation turrets, which expelled steam from the private washing bath departments. The date 1906 above the Men's First Class Entrance refers to the year construction commenced.

Hidden City: Dingley's Passage & The City Under The City

This is a post about an apparently insuperable problem in the history of my personal Hedge: it isn't solely an excuse to make rude remarks about getting to the bottom of Dingley's Passage if it kills me, so I'll get that out of the way right at the start. I discovered this place purely by chance on the way somewhere else: surely the best way to find somewhere, although I can see, like the hound I am, I'm going to have to annoy this one 'till I get to the bottom of it.

You see there's a particular difficulty in the exploration, history, & psychogeography of Birmingham, which is caused by the spirit of place itself. A Birmingham 'thing' is the mania for demolishing whole areas of the city every few decades & rebuilding them in the fashion of the time. This is not even something confined to the post-Second World War reconstruction, although that is perhaps the most apparent example. Another example would be the flattening of a whole swathe of city to create Corporation Street in the nineteenth century. A more minor example is the current relaying of lines for trams. I say relaying because actually they're being put down where the trams used to run anyway, before the rails were taken up on the perfectly reasonable rationale that things that run on rails are inflexible to say the least. The Hound's prediction is that in around a decade the present disarrangement of public transport (in bus form)  to several stopping points around the edges of what was the city centre in the days of the inner ring road, will be decried as ridiculous & buses will run down Corporation Street again.

The point of this lengthy digression from Dingley's Passage (it's not over yet, I somehow can't break myself of the habit of only getting to my actual subject in the last paragraph of a post) is to make the point that as a rule only the most recent reincarnation of the city is visible. Not that there is nothing old here: the soil under the Eastside Park has been analysed & shows evidence of deer farming in the Middle Ages. Even at the height of the concrete jungle days you just had to know where to look to find the history of all sorts of times. I suppose this inverts the 'witches look up' motif, to make it 'witches look down' or perhaps even 'witches look beneath'. This is necessary because in the case of Birmingham, there are frequently *no* indicators of what was there before (Dale End is a good example of this, see http://peteashton.com/2007/01/before_the_concrete_collar/ which has links to a further good collection of before pictures). The only other place I know of that changed so much is Sheffield: I can't think of anywhere else with such a new building mania. Coventry doesn't count because it came from necessity rather than a local tradition of frequent demolition & rebuilding.

In the case of the place I'm writing about today, it isn't the place that's hiding, it's actually any history or origin. The first picture shows the actual place - it's just an open space, beside a car park, leading to nowhere, but tarmaced & signposted with a very new-looking sign. It's on the corner of Moor Street & Albert Street: Albert Street shows its Victorian origins to a tee, & I was hoping Dingley's Passage would prove to be one with a history, like Christchurch Passage. But I was to be disappointed. The first thing I did was to search on Google: the passage appears on Google Maps, but nothing. No evidence of any history at all, just people wondering online the significance of Dingley's Passage. Exactly as I am doing here.

So I went home & looked on my 1901 Ordnance Survey map of the city centre (Witches look things up). It's not there. So, heart sinking, I went to the Library of Birmingham (Witches will not beaten by a mere street name). Anyone who's seen the local news recently will know that it's still not up & running ('Shambles...' Thundered the headline in the Birmingham Post), the staff are few & far between, etc. So I did something that normally never fails - picking books on the open shelving that looked hopeful & looking in the index for Dingley's Passage. Nothing. Their larger scale maps (for 1887, a snapshot of that corner is the second picture) also do not show it. It isn't even as if that corner has been too much altered: the inner ring road was right there, but I believe the road plan just there to have remained unaltered.

So then I had to tell the woman (who clearly normally works in a different department) that I needed Kelly's directory. Once she'd shown to the ones for Dundee & I found the Birmingham ones myself, I made the unsurprising discovery that Dingley's Passage does not make an appearance (I picked the 1958 one at random).

I do, however have a tentative theory. What appears on the 1887 map is one of the old courtyard buildings (they've all gone now except the National Trust one). My theory is that Dingley's passage could have started life as the passage marked under Victoria Buildings or the one into court 23. I wouldn't go to the stake for this theory, since Dingley's Passage seems to go at a different angle to either of those. It retains its mystery as to its origins & the reason for its continued existence.

There is a possible connection (quite likely, given the unusual name) between the Passage & a hotel that stood on Moor Street called Dingley's Hotel. Phyllis Nicklin's photograph of it in 1960 is the third picture. Memories abound of this hotel - it was dead swanky, frequented by businessmen & the great & the good. It is said to have been built c.1745. The memories of it may not quite agree with the reality - I notice from the Birmingham Post Year Book & Who's Who of 1960-1 that it had only 16 bedrooms - the second smallest of the twelve hotels in the city centre - & was recommended by neither the AA or the RAC. At the other end of the scale the Grand Hotel had 220 bedrooms & was recommended by both.

I am therefore forced to consider the name Dingley by itself. They are obviously quite some family locally: even today there are no fewer than nineteen professionals with this relatively unusual name on linkedin in Birmingham (I can't reference this, I can't get on the site, but that came at the top of a Google search for <Dingley Birmingham>). There is or was also an award & badge manufacturing firm in Warstone Lane.

On the principle of the most simple explanation being the most likely, I'll have to postulate that one or more of the Dingley family/ies either owned land around there or was even a leaseholder on the buildings. I'm fully expecting now that the history of this place will in the near future leap into my lap - maybe even from a visitor to this site - purely because I've dug down below the surface, so have no doubt I've disturbed whatever is down there.

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Hidden City: Christchurch Passage, New Street

It's been a funny old day. I set off for a classic drift, themed on letting the alleys & passages that so often betray a city's history, bring themselves to my attention as I wandered. For a start a local character, known as Lawnmower Man, seemed to be everywhere I went, to the extent that I began to suspect he was actually stalking me. I think he's a Bearwoodian - I have seen him drinking Lambrini out of the bottle outside The Bear, & am informed he's banned from that pub. Today he was drinking outside The Square Peg, bless him. I wanted to go to the Chinese quarter, & decided the easiest way is through the station, & was astounded to find the lawnmower already outside the other side of the station when I got there! I think he beat me there because I was genuinely wandering slowly, but also bought some trackie bottoms from the Heart Foundation shop. I explored various passages: I was thinking of a broader passage-based post, but googling Christchurch Passage astounded me as to its history.

I knew that there had been shops along it at one time, but didn't know there was a church, until 1895, & from which the passage takes its name. Nowadays the oldest things round there are the Town Hall & then the rather dominant Council House, so it's also easy to forget that for much of Christ Church's life the Council House wasn't there. Of course the irony is that where there was once a church, there is now the statue popularly known as the floozy in the jacuzzi: today a pigeon rested on her head as I went past. Perhaps the floozy is a better image of the spirit of the city than any number of churches.

'Built in 1805 by public subscription at a time when seats in most churches were rented, leased or even held freehold, it was built to alleviate the shortage of free seats in the town. With all the ground-floor seats free and only the galleries reserved for rent it was long known as the Free Church.�

'The land was given by a local landowner, W P Inge whose ancestors had given the site of St Philip's Church just down the road. Set in the angle between Colmore Row) and New Street, the church stood above the level of New Street and was approached by a wide flight of steps at the west end. At that time this was the north-western limit of the town.

'Christ Church was a stone building designed in a neo-classical style with a small apsidal chancel and a west portico of three bays supported on Doric columns.�

'The square west tower was surmounted by an octagonal belfry with Ionic pilasters and a balustraded parapet, above which was an octagonal spire. The tower, originally been designed with a cupola rather than a spire, was not completed until 1814, the year following its consecration.�

'The design was by local architect and sculptor William Hollins, but the work was carried out by the Birmingham builder and surveyor, Charles Norton. King George III was to have opened the church, but due to his indisposition, the ceremony was performed by the Earl of Dartmouth. Nonetheless, the King gave �1000 towards the completion of the building.

'The cost of building turned out to be more than anticipated, so the trustees applied to Parliament for permission to convert the arches under the church into catacombs. They proposed selling spaces for �4 each and they themselves bought one third of them. However, up until 1818 only two corpses had been interred there. It was hoped, �that when the inhabitants are familiarised to that mode of sepulture, they will prefer them to the present custom of erecting vaults, which are attended with considerably more expense.��

'In 1865 a parish was assigned from those of St Martin's and St Philip's.

'As the City Centre turned increasingly to business and commerce, the central population moved to districts immediately outside the City Centre. The congregation fell to unsustainable levels and the church closed in 1897 and was demolished two years later. The parish was merged with St Philip's The proceeds from the sale of the land helped to fund the building of St Agatha's Church in Sparkbrook.

'Burials from the catacombs beneath the church were transferred to the Church of England Cemetery catacombs in Warstone Lane, including the remains of John Baskerville. The Angel Fountain of 1850 was moved to St Philip's Cathedral.' (http://ahistoryofbirminghamchurches.jimdo.com/birmingham-st-martin-in-the-bull-ring/christ-church-new-street/)

A comparison of the then-&-now images show that actually the handrail has remained unchanged: an interesting survival, given the almost complete change in that area.

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Spirit of Place: Paradise Place

It is axiomatic that if a place has a name containing such words as paradise, heaven & so on, it is going to be awful, & Birmingham's Paradise Place, which is actually underneath the not-so-bad-in-comparison Paradise Circus, is no exception. I went there fortuitously, since I actually meant to write a post about ghost signs today, & thought the Jewellery Quarter would be an ideal place to see some. On the way there on the bus I realised that I'd never explored the area just to the right as you look at the back entrance (on Great Charles Street Queensway) of the museum & art gallery, so made a mental note to do so if my search for ghost signs should prove fruitless which it did.

This is going to be a picture-heavy post, with a mixture of archive pictures & my own, but remember that in the next couple of years *nothing* on this post will be there any more. The central library is exempt from listing until 2016 so it's got to be demolished before then, unless the council want to be saddled with it for eternity, & with it will go the rest of that 1960s development that went horribly wrong. You see, this is the point, that this is part of a plan for that side of the city that is not what was planned. The first picture shows city architect John Madin with the model of the plan for that part of the city. Even that wasn't the first uncompleted plan, an earlier plan had fallen through, leaving Baskerville House & the Hall of Memory the only parts of it ever built. If you are a brutalist architecture & want to see John Madin's work, you'd better rush to Birmingham soon, because his buildings have a strange habit of getting demolished. As you can see from the picture there was a huge leisure & commercial plan for that whole area. All that was completed was the library in the centre, with on one side the school of music & a shopping arcade, leaving the gap under the inverted ziggurat empty. Apparently for some time after the central library opened in 1974 there was only a scaffolding bridge from Paradise Circus over the road to Broad Street. The gap was glassed in & shops constructed in the 1980s: this is bemoaned only by the hardcore fans of brutalist architecture. The second picture shows it 'before', & also shows an example of the concrete staircases so beloved of 1960s architects.

On the other side of the library is the bit where it went horribly wrong & was not really capable of being papered over in any way. Naturally service routes into the development had to be provided, there was even a plan for an underground bus station (presumably just as horrible as the one in the Bull Ring). I suspect that where I went today was what would have been part of the bus station. I feel it also explains why coaches have always stopped on that strange island near the college of food: because it was going to be a public transport hub that never happened.

The third picture shows what you see of Paradise Place as you go past on Easy Row, & another brutalist staircase. I have always always wanted to go up it & see where it went. Presumably a lot of other people have also wanted to since it's fenced in with wire, & the opening at the bottom is securely boarded up. I have seen the building that goes over the road there described as the council house extension (the fourth picture is a newspaper cutting about the construction of that area): whatever it is it looks grim, dirty, & semi- or even unused.

I entered Paradise Place by the staircase (fifth picture), which is what attracted my attention in the first place. I love the way there is a sign telling you what this part of the city (where nobody but the curious & homeless go) is called: ironic really to tell you to come to Paradise, invite you, then find it such a dive. A long concrete bridge thing (sixth picture) takes you behind the staircase I would so like to explore to an area (seventh picture) where apparently there used to be fountains in the seventies, but they're long gone & the area is now simply grim. It is evident that homeless people sleep there (& further down). Now here's a strange thing, since this is a spirit of place post (I hadn't forgotten), I never once felt threatened in Paradise Place, even though it's exactly the sort of place (underground, dark, neglected, hidden corners) that ought to be terrifying). Perhaps it's simply that nobody goes there, but it seems I'm not the only one to perceive it as unthreatening, as witnessed by the homeless people sleeping there. The sense of seclusion is increased by a nearby subway being gated off (seventh picture): I'm sure I have passed by that gate on the other side with no idea that it was accessible from both sides. Conversely there also a sensation in Paradise Place that it is somewhere you 'shouldn't' go, or rather it gives out mixed messages about its status. There are optimistic signs giving its name even in the completely dark part (eighth picture), presumably a legacy from when this place was intended to be part of a bright new development. Perhaps that's it, Paradise Place gives out mixed messages because it was intended as an optimistic 1960s development, it was intended for public use. This bright new 'spirit of place' was cut short by the fact it was never completed as intended: those kind of buildings always has a sad feel about them, & remain as monuments to (often) one person's grandiosely impractical vision. As the seventies & eighties progressed & fashions changed, Paradise Place's fortunes would have fallen further. I mean, the reason it's still there is nobody goes there, so the land owner (presumably the council) has never been embarrassed enough to rehabilitate it. Interestingly, though, its fortunes have never fallen far enough for it to be abandoned completely. Access was easy today, although it's bollarded off from the road, yet there were cars there - I'm not sure how they got there, frankly, it's a very confusing area! It actually feels as if you've strayed into a private service area, you look for signs saying it's private but there aren't any.

The remaining pictures are of sights to thrill any fan of brutalist architecture. I didn't take any pictures of Paradise Place's inmost section, I mean I wouldn't want strangers tramping through my bedroom & publishing the pictures. I also felt a strange impulse to record the existence of Paradise Place before it vanishes completely (there's very little on the internet except a thread on skyscraper city saying what a disgrace it is). I felt sorry for it, I have no recollection of walking that way before although I feel I must have done when I was much younger, when its fortunes were perhaps at a slightly higher ebb. I suppose I want to record... A brave attempt to 'improve' a city? A hidden-away planning disaster? The area even incites mixed motives.

As for Madin himself, I only get a sense of sadness: how unfortunate for an architect to have his buildings reviled & demolished in his lifetime (he died in 2012)! This seems to be the lot of all the brutalist architects of the 1960s - the architect of Cardross Seminary has spoken about how it seemed his building was deliberately destroyed by the Archdiocese of Glasgow (I suppose because it was a memorial to their doomed 1950s triumphalism). Madin's obituary in the Architect's Journal quotes Bob Ghosh of Birmingham-based K4 Architects:

�Madin was a serious architect, who understood form, space and material, unlike many of his contemporaries. [Yet] due to the pace of change in our city, many of Madin�s buildings have now disappeared. Some should have been retained, most notably the Post and Mail building and plaza, which had more than a subtle reference to Mies.�Had he ultimately realised the ambition of building the inverted ziggurat form of the Birmingham Central Library in shimmering white stone, then perhaps it would have been listed, rather than being condemned as another example of concrete Brutalism. The more I see of Mecanoo�s new replacement Library of Birmingham, with its highly stylised form and its frivolous envelope, I can�t help questioning whether we�re doing the right thing.�Nevertheless, we did need a new library for the 21st century, and Argent and Glenn Howells will replace Madin�s building with something of extraordinary quality and address the dysfunctional spaces around it.' (http://m.architectsjournal.co.uk/8624761.article)

A list of his buildings (as I say, look quickly, they have a short life span) is here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_John_Madin_buildings

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