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No problem. I noticed in the Mail Extra that is said this Carl Chinn would include Easy Hill, so got a copy of the Mail.

There was no Broad Street in the late 18th century according to that.
 
easy row 2nd april 1903..oringinally known as the hill..it was sometime in the mid 1760s before easy hill came into being..perhaps its most famous resident was the printer john baskerville and the possible home of mr winkle in charles dickens pickwick papers...the photograph show easy row at the junction with edmund streeet... this is now the site of the central library and once again i must say that these buildings hardly look as though they are falling down around ones ears....its a crying shame....
 
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What happened to that maginificent decorated looking lamppost?

Yes it is, especially as it's replacement may get pulled down after 2013.
 
What happened to that maginificent decorated looking lamppost?

Yes it is, especially as it's replacement may get pulled down after 2013.

will they ever learn ell...the lamp post was probably melted down...
 
If only they listed it back then ...

All they cared about back then was the Inner Ring Road, building overpasses and subways.
 
Hello!
Could anybody tell me exactly where Easy Row ran, in conjunction with the present road layout? Also, were the buildings along it destroyed to make the ringway?
Thankyou!:frog:
 
Topcat don't know if this answers your question but in my old Wakelins Guide it says Easy Row ran from 26 Paradise Street to Cambridge Street, B1 central Birmingham.
 
If you enter "Easy Row" in the Search box (top right), it shows a number of East Row thread, including the following:

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=35800&highlight=Easy+Row

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=36999&highlight=Easy+Row

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=28867&highlight=Easy+Row

Unfortunately the pictures on several of these threads have not yet been replaced.

This map from 1795 shows it quite well. I do have maps and auction particulars for Easy Row in the 1860s (complete with who bought each property) - my husband's great great grandfather went to the auctions and the papers have survived! Maybe one day I will get round to scanning them all and adding them on here!

Easy_Row_-_1795.png
 

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If you enter "Easy Row" in the Search box (top right), it shows a number of East Row thread, including the following:

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=35800&highlight=Easy+Row

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=36999&highlight=Easy+Row

https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=28867&highlight=Easy+Row

Unfortunately the pictures on several of these threads have not yet been replaced.

This map from 1795 shows it quite well. I do have maps and auction particulars for Easy Row in the 1860s (complete with who bought each property) - my husband's great great grandfather went to the auctions and the papers have survived! Maybe one day I will get round to scanning them all and adding them on here!

Easy_Row_-_1795.png


Great stuff-thankyou. Shall enjoy perusing this:encouragement:
 
Hi top cat
Broad street was originally lined with Georgian houses but as the wealthy moved out they was converted. Into commercial premises
,from easy row one can see the old crown inn built in 1771,
On the corner of king Edwards place where henry. Mitchell. Commenced breeding before moving to cape hill
Beyond is the unitarian church of the messiah built in1865 and demolished 1978
I have got to
Most card pictures of broad street ,from five ways towards the centre of Birmingham was originally called Halesowen lane, renamed Islington
And finally becoming broad street in the mid 19 the century and may I had the woodman became the first pub to be called O'Neil's on broad street
In the early seventys it was the first one in the city before other O'Neil's set up
I have got two pictures of the very first shops set up on broad street for them years best wishes astonian,,,,
 
Hi John,

Yes, like you, I used to enjoy the same walk. I worked in Newhall Street in the early sixties, and I would walk up Edmund Street,
then turn left into Easy Row, past the Woodman, (there was a big Radio/TV shop on the same side), then left into Paradise St, and
down to the back of the Town Hall. Then turned left into Ratcliffe Place, and up to the fountain. Do you remember the
bronze Standard measures by the steps up to Edmund St. And sometimes Students? would put detergent in Chamberlain's fountain
and the whole thing would foam up. I remember a violin shop, but just in the little street at the far end of the Hall of Memory
gardens behind those massive stone shelters with bench seats at the back.

Happy days!

Kind regards

Dave
 
Hi Dave,

I'd forgotten those bronze measures but can recall them vaguely. I do remember the fountain being very frothy sometimes! There was also a little war memorial with a seat either side and a springbok (it must have been South African) near the fountain. It used to be a meeting-place for 'beatniks' - remember them?! I wonder what happened to that memorial - and the beatniks!

Maybe the violin shop moved. I can definitely remember one very near the Woodman. I remember that big stone shelter. Just behind it was a car showroom and I used to go to an evening class (German O-level) in a room above it (which was part of Matthew Boulton Technical College) in about 1962/63.

Happy days indeed!

John
 
Does anyone have any information regarding Easton Lloyd & Co Ltd of Broad St Chambers , Easy Row. I believe they were there in the 1920s but have no information of who they were,what they did and did they become insolvent,taken over,merged or simply closed down. Thankyou.
 
Scottowner,

As Mikejee says, they started business in the early 1920s and below is their last advertisement from the Evening Despatch dated 4th August 1943. During this period they placed around 1400+ similar rental advertisements in local papers, all quoting the same address, and then disappeared. I've not found a liquidation notice in the London Gazette, and Companies House no longer keep records for businesses that ceased trading more than twenty years ago.

Mr L.R. Easton of this Company gets a mention in this article from 1919 and may be of interest to you:-
https://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/15th-july-1919/19/out-and-home

Maurice
 

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The reason I am interested in Easton,Lloyd is that I am restoring a 1920 Staffords Mobile Pup Auto Scooter. In a September 1919 edition of "Motor Cycle" it mentioned that the sole distributing agents for UK were Easton,Lloyd & Co. It seems odd that this Company who seemed to specialise in Commercial vehicles would want to include a motor cycle scooter in their range.
 
Scottowner,

It is strange, but so is the story of Perry & Co. Ltd. of Lancaster Street, who for over 100 years were the largest manufacturers of pen nibs. But in the early 1900s they took on a young engineer, Cecil T. Bayliss (later made a Director), who expanded the Company into the manufacture of cycle chains and later designed his own motor cars, only three of which now exist worldwide, which were for a few years made by Perry & Co. Ltd. By 1919, the car business had been sold to a Walsall company, and in the 1960s the chain business was taken over by Renold Chain of Manchester, and the pen business was bought by British Pens Ltd. Perhaps a member of the board or of management of Easton Lloyd saw a business opportunity - stranger things have happened many times before.

As we don't know anything about the death of the business, it's difficult to know where to look for any possible surviving records. For instance, Perry & Co Ltd's records are held in Manchester Library, because the bulk of the business was bought by a Manchester company. My first port of call would be the Birmingham Archives of the Library of Birmingham, but don't hold your breath!

Maurice
 
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