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The Midland Hotel (Burlington Hotel)

B

Boaman

Guest
I am trying to find any information about The Midland Hotel prior to WWI. One of my wife's family married a man believed to have been German or of German origin. He worked at The Midland Hotel and was high up in a management or Head Chef position. He emigrated to Chicago or other US City prior to war breaking out in 1914.

If anyone has any information or knows where I might be able to look - please get in touch.
 
Great sketch of this hotel. A different perspective of Stephenson Place...New Street corner would be at middle of right side of picture?
 
I think the sketch shows the two phases of the hotel development too. When it was built in 1874 it could accommodate 50 guests. So the section to the right of the picture must have been the first phase (and further along to the right was the back of Midland Bank, now Waterstones). Then the second phase to expand to 145 guests must have been the building to the centre left of drawing (which winds round into Temple St ?). You can see the two different 'Midland Hotel' signs above the ground floor level of each building. The drawing seems to make that row of buildings much larger than they actually are (or at least as I remember them). It's also interesting that on the opposite side of the road would have been Queens Hotel. Just shows how big an impact the development of the railways had. Viv.
 
This view of the Midland has the caption 'Re-Construction of the Midland Hotel" . This is the view on Stephenson Street, a view that's lost today as it's overshadowed by the station. Viv.


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Here's a page taken from the 1911 census of the Midland Hotel, New Street, Birmingham. It shows the names of several German workers

1911 census Midland Hotel Birmingham.png
 
hi bewdley i would be interested to see that 1911 but when i click on it the page goes dark and the image does not enlarge...

lyn
 
Lyn
That is because it is a png file, which the forum does not handlw well. If you click to open in new window it should come up as "save as" (or it does in my computer). If you save then open the file , you should be able to read it. Hope that's not too complicated !
 
thanks for the tip mike and thanks janice...up until now i had always thought it must have been quite rare to have german folk living in brum at those times but now i am beginning to wonder... looking at that 1911 census of all the young men listed could they have fled their native germany to try to escape being dragged into ww1...it is possible that they knew a war was on the cards....

my interest is because one of my harrington rellies married a german man in 1915 address cook st nechells..on the 1911 he is living in bridge st west as a boarder...this must have been a very brave thing to do right in the middle of ww1 i have often wondered how their marriage survived what with the stigma of marrying a german lad and all the twitching of the curtains and whisperings but it did and they never moved out of birmingham either...without checking my notes i think they were married for a good 60 years...

lyn
 
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Thanks for the tip too Mike and for putting the image on Janice and apologies to you Lyn that you couldn't read it.

I found the census in the FMP address search so that could be why it had saved as a png file - whatever that is!!

bewdley
 
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I used Ancestry so I am not sure. PNG and JPEG are, I think, just different ways of saving an image.

Lyn - I was fascinated by the different nationalities on that record - Swiss and Italian as well as the German. I wondered if they just came to escape Europe or if they just came for work.

Janice

i was also fascinated janice...i guess we will never know for sure why they came to england but to escape europe is one reason

lyn
 
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There are lots of photo formats . If you want to convert them Irfan view (free download) caters for most of them and you can then save in the one you want. The main differences are whether you lose detail or not. With jpg or jpeg files, if they are repeatedly copied they slowly lose detail over time. This is so as to keep the file size down, which used to be very important when the cost of storage space was much higher than now, and is still of some importance for forums etc with limited storage capacity (or who wish to keep cost down). Tiff or png files are larger but you do not lose any detail with repeated copying. So on your own computer you should really store as png or tiff files (there are others also) , but post as jpg. Having said what I oght to do, I admit I don't usually
Mike
 
I have seen a photograph of Stephenson Street looking at the Queen's Hotel and station. The street looks fairly wide so would this pre-date the hotel and therefore was the street wider and the hotel encroached on it?
 

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There was always an area in front of the old hotel , presumably for taxis etc. This is the area shown on the left of the island (nearest hotel) in the photo. Stephenson st is the area to the right of it, which is not that wide. The former area disappeared on bulding the new station
 
Boaman said:
I am trying to find any information about The Midland Hotel prior to WWI. One of my wife's family married a man believed to have been German or of German origin. He worked at The Midland Hotel and was high up in a management or Head Chef position. He emigrated to Chicago or other US City prior to war breaking out in 1914.

If anyone has any information or knows where I might be able to look - please get in touch.
Click to expand...
I too have a family connection with the Midland from around that time - my grandparents met while both working there. My grandad, Ralph Browne, was an accountant and my grandmother, Doris Rowley, was working as a chambermaid.
 
I am looking to see if anybody has any images or archives on the Midland Hotel Birmingham, what is now the Burlington Hotel? I currently work at the Burlington and would be great to share the buildings iconic history with my colleagues
 
There is a thread about The Midland Hotel:

The Midland Hotel (Burlington Hotel)

I am trying to find any information about The Midland Hotel prior to WWI. One of my wife's family married a man believed to have been German or of German origin. He worked at The Midland Hotel and was high up in a management or Head Chef position. He emigrated to Chicago or other US City prior...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
 
Hi there I am new to the site and finding this thread very interesting as I work at the Burlington/Midland Hotel. Mostly now it has been refurbished but there are a few beautiful things left from when it was the Midland. I loved seeing the 1911 page of the census for the staff. Does anyone have access to the other pages as I am guessing there were others working there? And does being a Census mean they would have been living at the hotel?
Many thanks if anyone can help.
 
Welcome Guyking. I hope you enjoy the forum. The census (is supposed) to record who is present at the time of the census, whether they are living there, working, or visiting. As it depends on the person filling it in , then this may not always be what is recorded.
 
mikejee said:
Welcome Guyking. I hope you enjoy the forum. The census (is supposed) to record who is present at the time of the census, whether they are living there, working, or visiting. As it depends on the person filling it in , then this may not always be what is recorded.
Click to expand...
Agreed - although my grandfather was working at the Midland at the time of the 1911 census he was recorded as being at home in Erdington.
 
Found this in the British Newspaper Archives. The article appeared in the Birmingham Post on May 6 1963. Photos are not great as they’ve been scanned, but it gives a little snippet of Midland Hotel history. Viv.
 

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A few more. These have been posted in threads elsewhere on the Forum. Viv.

A sketch - sorry no date for this one.
D47E7F3E-0CA0-4C06-B01F-726E80B9E0FF.jpeg

The Midland is the building with the substantial canopy. Sorry no date again.
487DB42B-3B92-4F78-B017-573191B57374.jpeg

This is 1955, the entrance canopy having, by this time, been removed.

1550F57C-0B86-4531-8A76-AD4CF33CCF4C.jpeg
 
A view in 1890s. It shows how wide the street was in front of the Hotel combined with New Street Station gated frontage to the right. A very different road today which is much more enclosed. And a little glimpse of The Exchange building at the end of the road. Viv.

C9184F32-2374-435F-85CD-DCBCF842A638.jpeg
 
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