• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team
  • HI folks the server that hosts the site completely died including the Hdd's and backups.
    Luckily i create an offsite backup once a week! this has now been restored so we have lost a few days posts.
    im still fixing things at the moment so bear with me and im still working on all images 90% are fine the others im working on now
    we are now using a backup solution

King Edward's School, New Street 1838 - 1936

ChrisM

ChrisM

Super Moderator
Staff member
Links to other King Edwards Schools in the Birmingham area are below


Edgbaston

King Edward VI School Edgbaston 1936

Links to other King Edwards Schools in the Birmingham area are below New Street https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/king-edwards-school-new-street-1838-1936.9441/ Five Ways...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

King Edward High School for Girls Edgbaston Park Road

Hadn't realised this but the building was once King Edward's High School for Girls - Edmund Street. Postcard dated 1904. Viv.
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

Five Ways

King Edward VI School, Five Ways 1883 - 1958

New Street https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/king-edwards-school-new-street-1838-1936.9441/ Edgbaston https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/king-edward-vi-school-edgbaston-1936.57135/#post-811091...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

Camp Hill

King Edwards Grammar School Camp Hill

His university education was interrupted by war service. After demobilisation in 1946, he completed his M.A. and teacher training. His first teaching post was as classics master at Raynes Park School. In 1955 he was appointed as headmaster at Rastrick Grammar School in Yorkshire, and then in...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

Handsworth
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/for...dwards-girls-grammar-school-handsworth.16714/

Handsworth Grammar King Edward Boys' Grammar Grove Lane

Here are other links to King Edward's Schools in the Birmingham area: Edgbaston https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/king-edward-vi-school-edgbaston-1936.57135/#post-811091...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

Aston

King Edwards Grammar School Aston 1883

Links to other King Edward's Schools in the Birmingham area are : Edgbaston https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/king-edward-vi-school-edgbaston-1936.57135/#post-811091...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------








Could anyone give me, please, a bit of information about Barry’s King Edward’s School building in New Street?

I assume it has wholly disappeared and if so, where precisely did it stand and when did it go?

I am frustrated that my various childhood memories of Birmingham city centre from the early 1940s do not include it (even though my father was a pupil there in the 1910s and probably his father and uncle before him, so that it must have been pointed out to me).

Thanks

Chris
 
Last edited by a moderator:
chris
don't know if this link will help in any way.
https://www.pugin.com/pugbirm.htm

also if you type in king edwards school new street in google search and images. there are lots of info and photos.there is a blue plaque in new street where it was.where the yard of ale/tavern in the town is.
 
Thanks, billc, a very helpful start.

The virtualbrum picture presumably specifies the site. Trouble is, my knowledge of modern Birmingham is sketchy and I’m not sure where that modern building is, either. (My clearest images are from the early 40s to the mid 50s and that's still my mental geography, unsullied by Rotundas and pedestrianised streets!).

The building has clearly gone, totally, with just a few relics transferred to Edgbaston. From what I can see from the pictures it was a magnificent structure, outside and within. On the face of it, it appears that for a century or so Birmingham had a mini-Palace of Westminster in its midst and that its destruction, whenever that occurred, is one of the better examples of civic vandalism.

Chris
 
CHRIS
I DON'T KNOW IF THIS WILL WORK.BUT IT SHOULD BE AN AERIAL VIEW OF NEW STREET.THE SCHOOL WOULD HAVE BEEN THE BUILDING WITH A RECTANGLE SHAPE ON THE ROOF AND NEW STREET STATION BEHIND IT. IT'S FROM LOCAL.LIVE.COM IT'S THE BUILDING WITH THE RED VIRGIN TRAIN BEHIND IT.THERE IS A OLD TYPE BUILDING BEHIND THE WHITE ONE,DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT COULD HAVE BEEN.IT MAY BE THE ARCADIAN /ODEON CINEMA.

https://local.live.com/default.aspx...t=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=7447047&encType=1
 
Thank you also, Cromwell, that pins it down nicely – in my geographical terms, virtually opposite what is (was?) Marshall & Snellgrove’s.

I have a vision from 1942/3 of standing waiting for a bus, looking out over New Street to a battered Horne’s outfitters opposite, Marshall & Snellgrove’s (burnt out) to the left, Big Top to the right. Behind me, to my right the Odeon seems to exist. What is exactly behind me is the building in question, I can only assume, if it hadn’t gone by then. Whatever was there was certainly a tall building; I have a vision of a little snackbar at street level but that might have come later. If only I had taken more interest…… but at the age of six or seven, who is interested in the past?

Did it last until the 1960s?

Chris
 
Works well, billc, and thanks for it. Not much evidence of Charles Barry's work!

Chris
 
Chris... regarding the building in New Street... as a school girl I used to wait for my Midland Red Bus outside Littlewoods.... I bought a bag of sweets on the way home from there. Georgie Garrett
 
This link takes you to the original Free Grammar School erected on the same site on New Street and was demolished to erect the Charles Barry building.
We have lost so much in Birmingham over the years. The replacement King Edward School on New Street designed by Charles Barry looks as though it was a GEM. Many of the fine oak panels from the King Edward New Street Grammar School were used to build the interior of the Chapel at the "new" site. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:KES_Free_Grammar_School_original_without_tower.jpg
The other site with a few details is about Charles Barry is:: https://www.pugin.com/pugbirm.htm also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Barry An impressive list of the buildings he designed and also some of his sons followed in his footsteps.

The good thing about all this is the fact that we can still look at these
heritage buildings on the Internet and read about them also.
 
Thanks for all the helpful further comments.

The links suggested by jennyann certainly indicate that it was indeed a gem. I am still trying to find out when it met its end. The move of the school out of it is variously stated as 1939 or 1941 when it was being regarded as a fire risk. Was it damaged in 1940/41? How long thereafter did it survive? What was it used for in the meantime?

Georgie – roughly what era are you talking about? I’m so out of date that I don’t have an idea where Littlewood’s is but from what you say it’s somewhere between the Odeon and Stephenson Place.

I have in front of me a book on zoology presented to my father as a prize for physics in 1914. I suspect that it represents a more tangible memento of the school than anything to be found in the New Street of 2007.

Chris
 
Chris, I am looking on the local.live site that "billc" gave you.... On this you have the Rotunda...(on your left and looking along New Street ) small square building, then long building with about 13 windows along the length of building...(Littlewoods must have been on the ground floor of this building right by the Midland Red Bus Stops) a passage way between. (? no name)... a building on the corner that leads down to New Street Station. On the opposite side of the road to where Littlewoods was you have Union Passage.

This was about 1961... my school.. Pitmans College had just moved from Corporation Street (nearly opposite Rackhams) into Norfolk House in The Bullring... From my old classroom I watched Rackhams being built! My school was over the shops and on the corner of Union Street and Corporation Street. Now demolished and on the local.live site is now a building with turrets up the sides of it.

I can hardly recognise Birmingham... just about made out the old Lewis's! Not sure if any of this helps but it has bought back so many memories for me.. Georgie Garrett
 
More about the street than the school

Georgie..

Thanks for that. The mention of Union Passage pins it down nicely. I think we must be talking about almost the same bus stop!

You’ve prompted me to go off my own thread a bit. In another subforum there has been a link to a wonderful website which contains images of central Birmingham in the 1950s and 1960s. One of these, of New Street, caused me dredge up my memories of the centre of Birmingham at a still earlier time. They are too long and turgid to try the patience of Rod or forum members by posting them in this forum and so, for that reason alone, I have created a special page for them within my own website (one which otherwise deals with information and reminiscences relating to the Home Guard). They can be read there in the unlikely event that anyone is interested in them apart from me.

So, for a child’s view (in words, not images I am afraid) of New Street and the city centre in the middle of the war, please use this link:
https://www.staffshomeguard.co.uk/DotherReminiscencesL1staffshg
(It is quite safe and there is an easy link straight back to this thread).

Needless to say I am still interested in any further comment and information on the King Edward’s building.

Chris
 
Last edited:
I will ask my friend about King Edward's school... she says her father went there! He is now in his middle 80's. Thank you for the information... I can't wait to have a look. :) Georgie Garrett
 
Thank you for the information on the commemorative medal, jennyann.

Within the noble building we are discussing were presented, with no doubt some ceremony and 60 years apart, two school prizes. Here they are.

The green one, "Zoology" by E. Brucker, was given out for Physics to a fourteen year-old pupil in 1914, probably a few weeks before the outbreak of the Great War. A cautious little book, it has never ventured farther than 50 miles or so from New Street.

The second, brown and dated 1854, entitled "English Forests and Forest Trees", has however been rather more adventurous. In the 1870s it survived the arduous journey under sail to Australia. There it still resides and is handed down from eldest son to eldest son, again no doubt with due ceremony. Its present custodian represents the fifth generation.

Chris
 
The May 7th 1936 issue of The Times contained a report of a large fire at King Edward's within temporary buildings including 23 classrooms, presumably located at the new site in Edgbaston (or were they?). This fire which occurred on May 6th was attended by 14 appliances and 70 firemen under the command of Chief Officer A.R. Tozer. The report includes the following:

"The schools are being removed from the centre of the city to a much larger building abutting on the Bristol Road. Barry's building, one of the most distinguished architectural features of Birmingham in which King Edward's School had its home for 100 years, is now being demolished. A new school has yet to be built."

1930s vandalism rather than 1960s, it seems.

Chris
 
King Edwards schools

I have a leather bound book all about King Edwards Schools title
Six King Edward Schools 1883-1983 lots of info and a few pictures of buildings teachers and pupils + school lists
 
I now have the definitive answer to the question I originally posed - when did the King Edward School building by Charles Barry disappear from New Street? - and post it here for the record.

The building's life was from 30th January 1838 when the School first occupied it to March/April 1936 when it was demolished.

The School had moved out on an unspecified earlier date to its new site in Edgabston. There the permanent replacement buildings had not yet been erected and so the School was housed in temporary accommodation. One of the reasons for the move, it has been suggested, was that the Headmaster had deemed the old building to be a fire risk.

It is a delicious irony that on 6th May 1936, just a few weeks after the demolition pictures were published and certainly before the site had been cleared, it was not the risky old building which caught alight but rather the School's temporary accommodation. The latter was burned to the ground in a conflagration which exercised the attention of 70 fireman and 14 appliances. I expect that the cause was identified as an "an electrical fault". But one might like to think of it as an act of divine retribution for the act of vandalism which had been taking place in New Street. Or perhaps an ancestor of a birminghamhistory forum member had an outraged sense of history and a handy box of matches.

I have some images of varying quality which show what was lost and the work of demolition. These would overload this thread and so I have put them up in a temporary website page here, if anyone wants to look at them.

Chris

(Source of this information and most of the linked images to whom grateful acknowledgement is made: AW, Foundation Archivist, The Schools of King Edward VI in Birmingham).
 
Wonderful information and photographs, many thanks for all the research and photographs. The old building reminds me of the Corporation Street Law Courts ('high gothic').
I just hope it was one of MY ancestors that set fire to the temporary buildings!
 
Thanks, Charlie.

The Law Courts - my mother used to work there from 1917/1918. (Typed for a solicitor named Norman Birkett who went on to GREAT THINGS!) That at least has survived - possibly because it has been in continuous use and there was never a good excuse/opportunity to "improve" the site by demolition and replacement with concrete and glass.

Chris
 
Thanks for the update on the King Edward's School in New Street. It was certainly there for a long time and sad that it had to be demolished. WW2 changed New Street for ever only a few years after the demolition of the school. I was at school in Corporation Street in late l953 and am I the only one that remembers Stephenson Place as it was then with the beautiful Exchange Building ,the New Street Station offices and entrance to the station, which was not impressive at all, a mere walkway above the platforms that came out in Market Street. The Queen's Hotel which was also an amazing building and a hive of activity in the lobby especially when the London trains arrived brining famous people to the city for functions and famous actors
to appear at the Rep, Alex, Theatre Royal and the Birmingham Hippodrome.
not forgetting the Midland Bank building which is now a Bookshop but at least preserved.
 
Jennyann...

Apart from the station - a route to the parts of Birmingham beyond, over the passenger bridge - my main memory of Stephenson Place was of a restaurant on the left hand side as you faced the station. Was it The Exchange? I was taken there on the odd occasion in the later 1940s as a special lunchtime treat, perhaps if my mother and I met my father in the city centre. All basic fare, fish or roast, not a sign of pasta or prosciutto or cafe latte or sun-dried goodness-knows-what - all unheard of and even if it hadn't been it would have been regarded as downright unpatriotic!

Except for that I don't remember much of Stephenson Place in the 1940s - I give it only a brief mention in my 1942/3 memoir of New Street - but I must have been dragged up and down it dozens of times. How one wishes one had absorbed more. Or could remember what one did absorb at the time.

Chris.
 
Just to the rignt of the Bank facing the station, on New Sreeet was a shop that I bought drawing instruments from and a Faber Castell slide rule that I still have to this day. I may have bought my Machinery,s Handbook there also in 1959; still on my shelf above my head. A little further along New Street was an interesting passage down which was a barbers shop, lots of marble and mirrors in there and big white porcelain sinks for leaning back into for hair washing if I remember rightly. There was traffic on the streets then. I wonder if removing the traffic has somehow made the place less as an experience.
Since everything CAD/CAM now and no one reaches for a slide rule any more; the only item that is pertinent now is, strangely, the well thumbed Machinery's handbook. There is still resistance to metric in North America. Hmmm 88/- more than a weeks wages back then.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top