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Moor Street and its Historic buildings and pubs

Dennis Williams

Dennis Williams

Gone but not forgotten
I do miss Moor Street as it was. The new version just doesn't cut it for me. There have been many individual and collateral photos posted on this forum of buildings and stuff, I just thought I'd put a few together to emphasise what a great Street this was to me in my youth and maybe stir a few memories from others. Happy memories for me of the 'haunted' looking Station, the Outrigger, the Corner Pub....And anyone remember this historic building, the Prison?
 
I have seen many mentions of the Moor Street Prison but never a picture - crackin. Any idea what Public Office means?
 
According to Glll's History of Birmingham, the Public Office came into being as a result of the (1801) Third Birmingham Public Improvement Acts. It was built as a home for meetings of the Street Commisioners, and for the Magistrates
Mike
 
Looking at the first picture of the Moor Street terminal platforms the last train from those platforms was in 1987 and it was hauled by 7029 Clun Castle, a steam locomotive from the Tyseley collection.On December 11th. Chiltern Railways will be operating the first Moor Street to Paddington service and this will be hauled by another Tyseley collection locomotive 5043 Earl of Mount Edgcumbe a sister loco of Clun Castle. A little bit of history in the making.
 
My memories of Moor Street go back to just before the war, my Dad was a GWR carter, working between Park Street Stables and the station.Very rarely during the school I was allowed to go to work with him, he used to catch the first 13A ,05.03 into town. The Market area
was a hive of actifity very eary in the morning, all the cafes and pubs were open, and busy. My Dad "Big Joe" was well known in the Market, he
was about 6ft 5, and used to carry a cwt; of taters on each shoulder, he used to drink rough cider, he died in 1950, age 59. Bernard
 
Dennis (and other forumers). It all depends on how my downloading expertise matches my intention but here's an attachment which should be right up everyone's street. Its an aerial view of Birmingham taken I understand to record for posterity Moor Street as a focal point in the then massive changes in the throughput of traffic from north to south via the various expressways. Picture taken immediately before the bulldozers went in. Maybe I can discover later the exact date for it. Try clicking on the attachment MORE THAN ONCE and you hopefully can get an enlargement to pick out every building in detail.View attachment 59765
 
I worked for a short while before the army at Lawley Street station goods yard loading those 3 wheelers some times we had to go to Moore street sad to see it so abandoned.
paul
 
Fashionz said:
I never knew there was a prison anywhere in town.
Click to expand...

Well Fashionista Girl, there must have been many naughty boys before I caught up with a few at the Cedar Club and Prykie's Moat House in the 60s, so I would guess they had to be incarcerated somewhere for their sins.

Consider this piece from my old school hero Vivian Bird, from his very readable “Portrait of Birmingham (1970)”

"When Leland visited Birmingham in 1538 he approached from the south, and would have been traversing the parish of Aston in the hamlet of Bordesley and until he crossed the Rea, for Aston circled eastward of Birmingham, and even in the 19th Century it had a goal in Bordesley behind the Brown Lion Inn. The goal, consisting of only two cellars, was known as ‘Brownell's Hole’ after W.D.Brownell, the goaler, whose wife Jemima kept the Inn.” Anyone got any more details?

That is well before the Moor Street one, and the Digbeth Police Station (which was built on the site of a Pub of course) and the Steelhouse Lane lock ups.

There is lots on this Site about these old Prisons, most notably the old Peck Lane prison now gone somewhere under New Street Satation. This site is a treasure trove of fascinating History on that AND this building. Read and enjoy...

https://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php?t=32462&highlight=Peck+lane
 
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Bernard67Arnold said:
My memories of Moor Street go back to just before the war, my Dad was a GWR carter, working between Park Street Stables and the station.Very rarely during the school I was allowed to go to work with him, he used to catch the first 13A ,05.03 into town. The Market area
was a hive of actifity very eary in the morning, all the cafes and pubs were open, and busy. My Dad "Big Joe" was well known in the Market, he
was about 6ft 5, and used to carry a cwt; of taters on each shoulder, he used to drink rough cider, he died in 1950, age 59. Bernard
Click to expand...

Nice one Bernard. He sounds like someone I would loved to have met. I couldn't lift a cwt off the ground with three hands. I bet he could tell a tale or two about the Bull Ring characters. Which pubs did Big Joe use may I ask? The Greyhound was my rough cider treat in Holloway Head, or if we were flush, we would get the Midland Red to the Shoulder of Mutton in Bromsgrove...proper cloudy scrumpy. Four pints and I was anybody's...I'd love to say happy memories, but I could never remember anything the next day, just the headache.
 
A bit more gory stuff from Showell's dictionary on the Prison motif before moving on...seems like it was Tarte's hole or Brownell's hole, take your pick, but neither sound much like Butlin's..sorry but they are not in sequence. Doh! Must try harder...
 
Having studied the paper cuttings for awhile Dennis, it doe's sound quite like a holiday camp, I once stayed in.
paul
 
paul stacey said:
Having studied the paper cuttings for awhile Dennis, it doe's sound quite like a holiday camp, I once stayed in.
paul
Click to expand...


Yeah. Prestatyn's did it for me too Paul, after re-reading it....

Anyway, to the batpoles..

The derivation of Moor Street is a bit of a conundrum. There are numerous theories as to how this important thoroughfare came to be named. Carl Chinn outlines the most favoured one. He writes “ It probably was cut with Park street by the end of the 13th Century, or at the very least before 1437 when a lease of tenement and land in “Mowlestrete” was granted by John Belle, Master of the Gild of The Holy Crosse . Another lease in 1684 mentions “Mole alias Moor Street”, as do documents from 1715 and 1738. “
More importantly, as O.C and Rupert and his avid researchers have brilliantly documented in the fascinating long running ‘Mills of Birmingham’ thread, watercourses were essential for the purposes of establishing Birminghams’ growth as an important trading and working city. Carl continues “One was called ‘Hassan’s (Lord’s) Ditch’, which appears in deeds relating to Moor Street from 1341 to 1638. It ran along the WOOLPACK Hotel, which replaced the GREEN TREE hostelry. In the mid 18th Century, John Baskerville frequented it, as did others who believed in bringing about a reform of Parliament. Along with other notables, he actually lived in Moor Street for a while, as did William Lench, of ‘Lench’s Trust’ fame, the Colmores, and the Smallbrooks. It also boasted the WHITE HORSE, the HQ of the Warwickshire Militia, and THE PLAYHOUSE. Built as a theatre in 1740, it was later rented by followers of the charismatic preacher John Wesley – who opened it as such in 1764.”
And we all know the GWR Railway Station now covers the site of the aforementioned Public office and Prison. Quite an important Street in our history, and I would kill for better pictures of any of these buildings…


https://forum.birminghamhistory.co.uk/showthread.php?t=3444&p=354597#post354597
 
Interesting name for a Hotel - the Woolpack in the first picture - I wonder if it dates back to much earlier when Drovers (from Wales?) may well have frequented it on the way to/from market.

The poster on the second pic is also of interest - no not the Guinness one, the one that headlines Vic Damone. I assume this is Vito Rocco Farinola whom Frank Sinatra said had "the best set of pipes in the business" and starred in many a musical?
 
Aidan said:
Interesting name for a Hotel - the Woolpack in the first picture - I wonder if it dates back to much earlier when Drovers (from Wales?) may well have frequented it on the way to/from market.

The poster on the second pic is also of interest - no not the Guinness one, the one that headlines Vic Damone. I assume this is Vito Rocco Farinola whom Frank Sinatra said had "the best set of pipes in the business" and starred in many a musical?
Click to expand...

Ah, andiamo Aidan my friend. I noticed that too first! Go to the top of the class and give outta de Issacreemazzzz. Loved old Vic. Good for the chesty cough too I remember.
 
Another Birmingham historian Vivian Bird has a slightly different explanation of the name game. He postulates:
“In Tudor times a William Colmore, a governor of the Free School who also created a dole for the poor of Birmingham, was a mercer with business premises at 1 High Street on the corner of Molle Street, as Moor Street was then know. From there, their land extended to ‘Tanter Fields’, otherwise ‘The Butts’, where the yeomen practiced archery – nowadays (sic 1970) Stafford Street. The Family (Colmore) crest of a moor’s head was a rebus, a heraldic pun. The moor obviously referred to ‘more’, while the ‘col’ came from the moor’s neck (French ‘col’). So it is not impossible that Moor Street got its name from the crest of the family in the corner house. “
So there you have it. No. I’m not sure either…

Hey Aidan, I read that one of your favourite Brummie Poets Mr Freeth lived or played around here in Moor Street...in a pub, naturally. Which one?
 
The name of a pub-The Phoenix-I've come across a Birmingham un-named street on one of the photo-sites.

If there was a Phoenix on Moor Street, near to the station maybe, then I can make a useful posting.
 
An everyday story of country folk and Moor Street...


Extracts from the Birmingham Gazette -1883
Attempted murder of wife in Birmingham
Yesterday evening a man named Thomas Clarke [32] living at 8 House, 2 Court, Garrison Lane, was lodged at the lockup in Moor Street in charge of murderously assaulting his wife Erma Clarke with an axe, inflicting such serious injuries on her that late last night her injuries were considered critical in the extreme. The circumstances of the case are of such an extremely painful character. The parties having been married only a week. Clarke who was a stoker for several years ago tempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat.
Thomas Clarke is described a man with a rather intemperate habit. Last week Clarke was seized with severe pains in the head which rendered him unable to work. He remained at home for the week procuring some medication to alleviate his suffering from a chemist in the neighbourhood. Yesterday he appeared no worse than he had been on the other days of the week.

Yesterday between 5 and 6pm, after the tea things had been cleared up Mrs Hart, the mother of the injured woman with whom they had been living with had left the house intending to call on her neighbour. Mrs Clarke was tending the fire. Clarke was in a recumbent position on the sofa no-one else was in the house. It would appear that moments after Mrs Hart had left, Thomas Clarke jumped up from the sofa and rushed at his wife, according to a statement she made to some of the neighbours, before she passed out. He first of all knocked her down with his fist, then jumped on her. The door of the coal place had been left open and in there was an axe.

Clarke noticed the axe and seized it and struck his wife who was then prostrate on the floor with a terrible blow on her head. She screamed out. Her cries caused Mrs Hart to go back to the house. On opening the door Mrs Hart saw Clarke again hit his wife on the head with the axe. Mrs Hart saw three terrible wounds on her head from which the blood gushed out in copious streams. Before Clarke could administer another blow which, had it been struck in all probability would have killed the woman almost on the spot, Mrs Hart and another woman named Bradley seized him by the shoulders and managed to push him to the other side of the apartment and relived him of the axe.


They then directed their attention to Mrs Clarke. The unfortunate woman was found to be in an almost unsensable position. The upper part of her dress was red from her blood as was the whole of her face. The small mat on which Mrs Clarke's head was being rested on was also covered in blood. Efforts were being made to stop the flow of blood and her face washed and a blanket wrapped around on which she was taken to a cab to the general hospital having by this time to be totally unconscious. She was examined at the hospital by Mr Bartlett the house surgeon who found she sustained a compound depressed fracture of the skull. There were 3 wounds to the head, one of them being over the left ear being 2.5 inches long, the other two not so serious. A slight wound over the left shoulder was supposed to of been caused by the axe gliding off the head and catching the shoulder.

An operation was performed subsequently to the injured woman. Late last night she had not recovered consciousness.

Clarke hurriedly left the house on realising what he had done not withstanding that he was only partly dressed he rushed along Garrison Lane into St. Barn Street and into Alcester Street where he encountered P.C Bertie, R 68, and throwing his arms around the officers neck he exclaimed, "I`ve murdered my wife", and then he fainted away.

Thinking he was in a fit, P.C Bertie and another officer carried Clarke into a adjacent house in the street. When Clarke came round, P.C Bertie questioned about his statement. He repeated that he killed his wife and gave his name and address. The officers took him to Moseley Street Police Station. Sergeant Shepard and another officer visited the house which they found crowded with neighbours. No traces of blood were found on the floor but numerous clothes saturated with blood were lying around the room.


Clarke was quite sober at the time and at this stage it is not know why he assaulted his wife but later in the evening he was moved from Moseley Street to the lock up in Moor Street.

Birmingham Gazette - Monday 19th November 1883
 
Some interesting pictures from the inimitable Phyllis Nicklin collection showing the clearing of Moor St. The Phoenix in Park street can be clearly recognised..
 
Another famous old Moor Street favourite. The Dingley's Hotel, corner of New Meeting Street. Began life as 'The Board' under landlady Mary Ann Dingley. There is a tale of the eccentric manager, John Millward who evidently only ever ate off Silver plates, and if he didn't like the look of you, refused to open his Rooms. Funnily enough this custom has partially survived, as I get a lot of that now from shops and stores who choose to stack shelves or chat rather than take my money for their goods....
 
Been on to Dave Cross this morning from Birmingham Police Museum. He confirms the existence of 'Brownell's Hole' and told me it was under the old Lamp Tavern in Bordesley. Better than that he has a great story of how he 'unearthed' them and took lots of photos. I won't spoil his fun now, as this tale is shortly to be told in the Evening Mail.. meanwhile here is a photo of the Pub.
 
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