Automatic Parcels and Letters Sorting Office (1970)
Suffolk Street, Severn Street, Blucher Street and Commercial Street.
Architects: R.H. Ouzman, Senior Architect, Ministry of Public Buildings and Works (project architect, H. A. E. Giddings) in association with Hubbard Ford and Partners (project architect, E. Winters, site architect, R. Lee)
The largest mechanised letters and parcels sorting office in the country with a floor area of 20 acres and a tunnel to New Street Station. It was built by the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works for the Post Office and uses the largest electronic sorting equipment to handle the post from the West Midlands conurbation.
The main entrance is at the end of Blucher Street beneath a tower set between a square block for parcels on the left and a lower block for the letters sorting office on the right.
The structure consists of a steel frame on a 40 ft square grid with light-weight pre-cast concrete floor slabs and reinforced concrete retaining walls and sub floors and is clad with cast glass troughs and exposed aggregate panels. Ventilation is by air-handling units which draw air into the building at the temperature required and there are extract fans on the roof. Background heating is by hot water radiation.
The elevations, though mainly glazed, have a strong sculptured quality achieved by the extensive use of cast glass slabs which read as wall and by the introduction at intervals of recessed windows and projected air handling units.
Most of the Mailbox complex (it seems to have grown like Topsy to me) was on the site of the old Midland Railway goods depot, which was vast. It was connected to the railway by a tunnel to a point near Five Ways Station, and the tunnel certainly still exists - you can see it but can't get into it legally. The goods depot opened in 1887, two years after the main line connection at a lower level into New Street. Before that the main railway from Birmingham to Worcester and Bristol went via Camp Hill and Kings Heath, first opened in 1840, and the 'West Suburban' line was conceived as a single-track suburban line terminating at Granville Street, to avoid the expense of bridging over or tunnelling under the Worcester canal near the Mailbox building. It opened in 1876, but five years later the Midland Railway company obtained powers to extend the line under the canal, to reach New Street station, aqnd the new link opened in 1885. The picture below was taken two weeks ago, looking north from Islington Row. It shows showing the passenger line to New Street on the left (with overhead wires), and the derelict tunnel used for access to the old Central Goods Station. The big building on the right and the land with trees are on the site of the second Jewish Cemetery, which was steadily acquired by property developers after the railway companies had finished with it, but last winter I saw that there were still the remains of some memorial stones, which are covered over by foliage for most of the year.
The railway and the Jewish cemetery make interesting stories.
Peter
I think there is a large Jewish community in the same area now,in between Broad St and Bath Row ,and then over in to Pershore RdDon't hold me to this but I heard that the area between Bath Row, Broad Street and what is now Suffolk Street Queensway was home to a large Jewish community. Quite obviously, it has shrunk enormously but a recent programme (I think it was Holiday 2007 or something with Lawrence Lewyn Bowen) showed that a lot of the Jewish history in Birmingham is alive, albeit behind the doors of seemingly normal buildings.
Where exactly is it? (I know the Mailbox and have often walked through it to the canal at the back).polly
That is where it is, at the "back" of the Mailbox.
The first picture below is one I took a month or so back. I am standing right at the back of the Mailbox, and the various canal side restaurants are on the left.
Hi, do you have any information on the Jews on blucher street as my grandparents lived on blucher street my father was born there in 1932, I’d like to find out more, my grandmother was a jewess she married my grandfather, im trying to trace my ancestry but it seems to stop with my grandparentsThe Jewish cemetary link and community now makes sense as I could never really understand why the Singers Hill Synagogue along side the mail box stood alone.