Great stuff.....here's a little reminder of it's long history....probably by Carl Chinn...cant remember.....
Pinfold Street
In the Middle Ages and afterwards each settlement had a pound in which stray animals were kept until they were redeemed by their owners who had to pay a fine. Such a pound was often called a pinfold and it was placed at the end of Peck Lane. Called Pynefold Lane it is noted in a lease from King Edward's School in 1656 and in 7131 it is shown on Westley's Plan. Two years later the junction of the two streets became the site of an unsavoury building - the town dungeon. Called Bridewell House it replaced the former jail, a dry cellar in a house. According to Hutton of all the bad places the Bridewell was the worst, for it was 'dark, narrow, and unwholesome within; crowded with dwellings, filth, and distress without, the circulation of air is prevented'. In 1757, the three houses fronting Peck Lane were taken down to enlarge the prison, and it remained in use until a new prison was built in Moor Street in l795. Eleven years later the Bridewell was knocked down in 1806
but as Dent put it, the building 'has been immortalised in a sarcastic triplet relating to one of the latest wakes and bull baitings when the authorities of the day:
"Spoiled the wake, And stole the stake,
And took the bull to the Dungeon".'
An article in the Birmingham Post in 1934 stated that in the nineteenth century townsfolk talked of going to the city when going to Pinfold Street. Today the street goes down from Victoria Square only as far as Navigation Street, because its lower section disappeared in the 1850s for the building of New Street Station. This also did away with Peck Lane. Spelled as Pecke Lane, this is mentioned in 1565 in a lease from King Edward's school, which disproves the entry in Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham that it was originally named Feck Lane. It may have been called after the Peck family, as an Elizabeth Peck is mentioned as a property owner in a deed from 1715.
In the eighteenth century Joe Lindon's Tavern in Peck Lane was the favoured meeting place of the 'Twelve Apostles', a group of dyed in the wool Tories opposed to the Jacobins, a group of twelve reformers led by Poet Freeth (see Freeth Street). It was a time of turbulent political debate, for the French Revolution in 1789 had polarised opinions. Over the fireplace of the room in which they assembled The Apostles had a notice declaring was printed, 'No Jacobin admitted here'. On one occasion one of the Jacobins called in at the Tory house. He was James Bisset who compiled the Magnificent Directory in 1808 and he was not welcomed, as Dent explained: one of the company puffed a volume of smoke into his face. Bisset had already suffered many petty annoyances and insolent remarks aimed at him, but this direct and gross insult roused his indignation, and with one blow he felled the offender to the ground. There then ensued a general melee, in which most of the jugs and glasses came to grief, and Bisset was forcibly ejected from the house. The unlucky 'apostle' was sued in the Court of Requests for breakages, amounting to nearly £5, and doubtless learned by bitter experience to abstain from putting in an appearance at Joe Lindon's in future.
By the early years of the nineteenth century Peck Lane had become one of the poorest streets in the town. Langford made plain his distaste, asserting that 'the Jews' Synagogue used to be in that very questionable part of the town at the back of Peck Lane, known as the Froggery. The New Street Railway Station occupies the site of both of these once infamous localities, and their names are, happily, all that remain of them'. However, Joe McKenna points out an interesting survival. The site of the station was sold with its rights of way by the Street Commissioners, before that body
was dissolved in 1851. Eleven years later the Town Council petitioned unsuccessfully for the return of the right of way that had been Peck Lane. Still the London and Birmingham Railway Company did place a footbridge over the station as a voluntary concession and through constant use over 100 years it became a right of way again. When the modern station was built in the 1960s this right of way was maintained although in a more circuitous manner.
